Palestine: Do or Die!

Never before in the entire history of Palestine has the colonial power of Israel been so severely frustrated as now.

In all of the past 55 years of looting, plundering and killing the Zionist regime has never felt as vulnerable, insecure and uncertain as it does today.

Hardly a fortnight ago the international media was treated to a theatrical display of “statesmanship” led by the world’s super-violator of International treaties, George Bush, flanked by the visibly irritable Butcher, known as Sharon.

While some media sycophants lavished huge praises on the Aqaba launch of the “Road Map”, it was clear to all and sundry that the label of “peacemakers” was stretching it’s definition to the limit!

And as expected, before the proverbial ink had dried – while Bush on his Airforce 1 plane was flying over his latest loot, the rich oil fields of Iraq – Sharon’s thugs, inversely styled as Israeli Defense Force, (IDF) continued their devastation of the Occupied Territories.

Weeks before the Aqaba summit, Hamas leaders and in particular Abdul Aziz Rantisi, declared their willingness to enter a temporary truce (hudna) with Israel. “Hamas is prepared to stop attacks against Israeli civilians if Israel stops killing Palestinian civilians .. we have told Abu Mazen that there is an opportunity to stop targeting Israeli civilians if the Israelis stop assassinations and raids and stop brutalizing Palestinian civilians,” Rantisi was quoted in Haaretz on May 25.

However, in keeping with his earlier vows never to recognize, nor grant any legitimacy to Palestinian rights, on the eve of the Aqaba Summit, Sharon declared: “A Palestinian ceasefire is not enough.” He insisted that Bush backs him in his demand that Abu Mazen uses forceful means against “the terror organizations and their infrastructure”, as a precondition for any advance on the Road Map.

This bullish rational which exposes the sophisticated arguments advanced by Israeli diplomats about Hamas having pulled the trigger first, as damn lies, has been succinctly expressed by Tanya Reinhart, an Israeli academic and author as follows: “In other words, until the Palestinian organizations willingly begin to kill one another, the IDF will continue to do this job for them.”

Much to the dismay of representatives of the apartheid regime of Sharon, Reinhart eloquently reveals the diabolical nature of simulation:

“In the plans of Sharon and the army, the situation in the territories will remain precisely where it stands today: IDF soldiers present everywhere, demolishing, killing, abusing and causing starvation. Each week another piece of Palestinian land is stolen under the auspices of the Separation (apartheid) Wall Project. Even during the week of the peace summits when in the world of simulation the headlines heralded an easing of the closure, the IDF made sure to clarify that nothing would change. On the contrary, the restrictions over Palestinian movement were increased. (Haaretz June 3, 2003). The diabolical aspect of this plan is that from now on, only the Palestinians will be accused of whatever happens.”

The emasculated Premier Abu Mazen now stares at a blank, directionless Road Map. George Bush, having bagged both Afghanistan and Iraq – thereby providing the US military industrial complex with vast stolen resources – is pacing the Oval office in total rage. His bitterness stems from a resigned realisation that his administration is hopelessly intertwined with powerful zionist lobbies. Them alone with their hawks surrounding Bush, will decide how to interpret the Road Map in order to allow Sharon’s all-out war against the Palestinians.

For their part, Hamas is aware that its role, both in defence of Palestinian rights as well as a national liberation movement, has totally eclipsed the ill-fated Palestinian Authority. The imposed regime change which sought to marginalize Yasser Arafat, has turned full circle. Abu Mazen has no capacity to deliver, neither does he possess any power-base. This entire episode which allowed an imperial power and its surrogate regional power to select a leader in the best tradition of colonialism, has been a colossal blunder by them.

These series of blunders do not merely reflect an absence of morality and lack of desire to restore justice, they signal the certainty of processes which on the surface may be construed as compatible with their nefarious designs, but are in effect self-destructive.

Hence the pincer in which zionism finds itself and its horrible experiment of a racist state! The unsustainabilty of the project known as Israel is written on the wall. Jewish critics within Israel have charged Sharon with the unimaginable: shedding Jewish blood! Also many are campaigning for the dismantlement of Israel and have recognised the validity of an armed struggle by Palestinian resistance groups.

The global solidarity campaigns underway which seek the full restoration of all Palestinian rights, has assisted to reintroduce the word “Palestine” into the lexicon from which it had slipped out in the 1960’s.

High profile international seminars have ensured that Israeli sins do not remain white-washed. Indeed key global activists, instrumental in navigating sanctions against South Africa’s repressive apartheid policies are once again in the fore-front championing the just cause of Palestine.

SA’s Water and Forestry Minister Ronnie Kasrils, who was a member of the ANC underground for 30 years and a senior commander of its military wing, Umkhonto We Sizwe, gave a keynote speech at one such conference in London on divestment and sanctions against Israel.

Jewish himself, Kasrils who also leads an anti-zionist movement in SA known as “Not In My Name”, regards the parallels between the Palestinian struggle and the anti-apartheid movement’s decades of military and civil campaigns for majority rule as obvious.

The Intifada has in addition to exposing Israeli vulnerability, also served to unmask the false veneer of “democracy” of the zionist regime. Majority rule following the rightful return of Palestinian refugees numbering close to 6 million will end the nightmare once and for all.

The famous American guru of the “Clash of Civilizations” fame, Samuel P Huntington, is correct by saying that:

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organised violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-westerners never do.”

(Mr. Iqbal Jasarat is Chairman of the Media Review Network, which is an advocacy group based in Pretoria, South Africa.)