Israel Votes For Sharon's Likud Party: Palestinian Plight To Go From Bad To Worse

What can one do when a country elects a known war criminal?

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They call him “The Bulldozer.”

The nickname refers not only to his physical stature but also to his personality and his favorite tool.


Outside of Israel, most people know “The Bulldozer” as Ariel Sharon, the current Prime Minister of Israel.

He has always loved the slightest provocation, even gone out of his way to invite it; in fact as a young officer he was disciplined several times for unnecessarily provoking the Egyptians by putting his men in danger. Around the time of Israel proclaimed itself a state, he was the leader of Unit 101, a special forces company.

His men were staked out on a kibbutz near the border, with orders not to move until provoked. According to the story, he came running in one afternoon, saying: "Great news! They just killed the guard!" (On the theme of provocation to justify the use of force, keep in mind that it was Sharon's "visit" to one of the most sacred sites of Islam, together with a "guard" of over 1,000 Israeli soliders and police, that started the current intifada and, not incidently, got Sharon elected Prime Minister. Quite a comeback for someone who was accused by his own government of being a war criminal. He was found by an Israeli inquiry to be directly implicit in the massacres at Sabra and Shatila.)

In 1948, as a young officer in the IDF, as retaliation for a single murder, he led his heavily armed men into the nearby Jordanian (West Bank) village of Qibya– picked only because it was the closest. Most of the men of the village fled – they were largely unarmed, except for knives, and they feared that they would be rounded up and shot en masse, as had happened at several nearby Arab villages such as Tantura and Deir Yassin. That left mostly women and children cowering in back rooms and cellars.

As IDF snipers stood guard and prevented any escapes, members of Unit 101 proceeded methodically through the village and systematically dynamited 46 houses. It took four hours to destroy every home, with the people still inside. Palestinians claim that 73 women and children died, buried in the rubble. The official Israeli count is 69 dead and this is the number Sharon cites in his autobiography "Warrior."

In his famous address to the Knesset years later he outlined the same simple policy he has adhered to for 50 years: “They can ignore guns and bombs, but when we destroy their homes, we will get their attention. In Arabic, the worst curse you can call upon someone is to say ‘may your home be destroyed.’”

THE PLAN
As the man who invented the policy of building settlements in the West Bank after the 1967 war, he personally drew a map of where every settlement would be placed – the simple aim being to divide the West Bank into three areas, each completely surrounded with Israeli settlements - cut off and controllable. Identical in conception to the Bantustans of South African apartheid: isolate, control, subjugate.

A key element of his grand plan was to destroy as many Arab homes as possible, both to clear land for settlements and also to “break the spirit” of the Palestinians and making life so miserable for them that they would choose to move elsewhere.

His plan has proceeded without letup through several governments: since 1987 alone, 6,000 Palestinian homes have been dynamited or destroyed with bulldozers. In the process, 16,000 people have been left homeless, 7,000 of them children (source: Amesty International). In the life of most impoverished Palestinians, their home usually represents most or all of their financial security for the entire extended family. During the current Intifada, aerial bombing and shelling from tanks and artillery has resulted in the partial destruction of an additional 5575 homes and the complete demolition 480 homes. In one of the saddest turns of history, the People of the Book have somehow become the People of the Bulldozer.

Here in the West, based on the press coverage we see, most people conceive of a Palestinian home as a simple squatter’s mud hut. In some cases they are, but for the most part they are substantial homes that have been in the family for one or more generations — built and paid for with hard earned cash (Islamic law forbids mortgages). In about 1/3 of the cases, the Israeli Defense Force offers some sort of “reason” for the demolition, which is never questioned by the Israeli or American press. In many cases, no explaination is offered at all. For most Palestinian families, the home represents most or all of their family wealth — for many it is literally the only thing they own.

In many cases, the homes are destroyed as a "punishment." No judge, no jury, no trial, no evidence, no habeas corpus — not very "democratic" is it? In many cases the reasons are more trivial. In Gaza last year 13 homes were bulldozed to create a "clearer line of fire" for an IDF outpost. The outpost itself was abandoned a few days later.

The same applies to the olive trees. These are not merely ornamental as are most trees here in the U.S. For many in the West Bank and Gaza, the olive harvest is a major part of their income each year. Thousands of olive trees have been bulldozed or cut down (over 250,000 according to Amnesty International); in many more cases, the families that depend on them for their livlihood are deliberately placed under curfew or “closure” to prevent them from harvesting and the olives rot on the branches. The IDF sometimes claims that the trees "might hide snipers" but first, that is a particularly weak reason to bulldoze a producing tree that is also a source of livlihood and food for a family. More to the point, that certainly is not the explaination for the destruction of over 250,000 trees.

These "official" government reason cited for destruction are clearly the cover for the real reason: make life unlivable for the Palestinians; chip away at their residency house by house, resident by resident, inch by inch.

This is particularly ironic as for decades now, one of the main ways for members of the American Jewish community to remember a loved one or send a Channukah gift has been to send a donation to “plant a tree in Israel.” This is in keeping with the Israeli goal of “making the desert bloom.” Unfortunately, a great portion of the open land on which these forests are planted are in fact the bulldozed ruins of former Arab villages. These villages have not only been destroyed, they have been "erased" from history. When Sharon invaded Beirut, the first place he stopped was the offfices of the Palestinian History Project. They had been methodically assembling a history and survey of all of the villages of the former Palestine. Sharon knew of this and it was a thorn in his side. He quickly confiscated all of the records and had them efficiently "disappeared."

Since the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993, which specifically forbade the growth of West Bank settlements, an additional 70,000 acres of land have been confiscated, 674 homes bulldozed and 282,000 trees uprooted in the West Bank alone. (http://www.miftah.org). The population of the Jewish settlements has DOUBLED – to 200,000. Not only are there substantial subsidies for any Jewish person from anywhere in the world who wants to move to the Occuppied Territories, they also are excused from property taxes.

Whether you think the settlements are right or wrong, no matter whether you side with the Israeli’s or the Palestinians, we hope you will agree that using oppression, economic strangulation and the destruction of private homes and livlihoods is not a moral and ethical way to pursue political goals.


Some quotes:

"We must do everything to insure they never return. The old will die and the young will forget. We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters." (David Ben Gurion – First Prime Minister of Israel. 1949).

"There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries, not one village, not one tribe should be left" (Joseph Weitz, one of the founders of Israel and it's first President, 1940)

"We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country .... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." -- Theodore Herzl – founder of Zionist movement (from Rafael Patai, Ed. The Complete Diaries of Theodore Herzl, Vol I)

"... it is the duty of the [Israeli] leadership to explain to the public a number of truths. One truth is that there is no Zionism, no settlement, and no Jewish state without evacuating Arabs, and without expropriating lands and their fencing off." -- Yesha'ayahu Ben-Porat, Israeli Cabinet Minister, 1951.

"The very point of Labor's Zionist program is to have as much land as possible and as few Arabs as possible!" --Yitzhak Navon ("moderate" ex-Israeli president and a leading left wing party politician.)

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