[The following article appeared in the January 11 issue of the French-language fortnightly Inprecor. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
TEL AVIV - The Camp David accords of late 1978 and early 1979 have already been buried. In Washington; in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and in Fez, Morocco, the U.S. and Arab bourgeoisies have been trying to put together a new framework to defuse the ongoing crisis in the Middle East and stabilize the imperialist order in this region, which is of central strategic importance to Wall Street.
The majority of the Arab bourgeoisies, in contrast to the late Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat, are convinced that any peace plan, if it is to be successfully applied, must contain a solution to the Palestinian question that is acceptable to a significant portion of the Palestinian people and their leaders.
Precisely because the Camp David accords evaded that question, Israel was relatively eager to support the agreement, gaining a peace accord with the largest Arab country without having to commit itself to withdrawing from the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 or recognizing the Palestinian national movement.
The Israeli veto of the Saudi Fahd plan proposed in August was, therefore, to be expected, despite its openly proimperialist character. For Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his government, it is crucial to carry on as if the political framework opened by the Camp David accords still exists. That is why, after nearly two years of a freeze in negotiations on the future of the "autonomy" plan for the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, Defense Minister Gen. Ariel Sharon, who is responsible for the occupied territories, just set up a "civilian administration" to replace the military government that has administered the occupied territories since June 1967.
'A new page' in occupation?
After setting up the "civil administration," General Sharon announced that a new page has been turned in our policy in the occupied territories." meaning, he added, a more humane attitude toward the population.
But being a creature of habit, he was anxious not to leave any ambiguity: "We will be good to those who collaborate with us and fierce with those who oppose us. Calm will either reign for all, or there will not be calm for anyone."
Officially the civil administration differs from military government on three levels. First, the military authorities are no longer responsible for anything but "maintaining order" under the authority of the head of the civil administration, Professor Menachem Milson. Milson is a reserve colonel who was part of the military government for many years.
Second, the diverse tasks of civil administration are to progressively pass into the hands of Palestinian functionaries and will no longer be under the army's direct authority.
Third, it is envisaged that a local "leadership" will eventually be set up, composed of collaborators who are ready to accept the framework of "autonomy" under Israeli domination and totally disassociate themselves from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
The first two elements — the civil administration and the increased responsibilities of Palestinian functionaries — in no way change the character of the occupation. Their fictitious nature is shown in countless examples, such as the fact that the "civil" administrator of the Gaza Strip is none other than the colonel who was the military governor and has, for the occasion, gone out of uniform.
Search for collaborators
By contrast, the third element - the search for Palestinian collaborators — is more significant. It aims to achieve what the Zionist state has been unable and unwilling to do during the first fourteen years of the occupation - find intermediaries within the occupied Palestinian population who would "represent" the Palestinians before the occupation forces and serve as a counterweight to the PLO.
What might still have been possible in 1968 or 1971, based on a large layer of moderate, pro-Jordanian notables, for example, is today impossible. Over the course of years, the policy of total repression and the opposition by the occupation forces to any political organization or to any form of local leadership have left the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people in the eyes of the immense majority of the occupied masses.
The Israeli government, using notorious collaborators who have no credit with the masses and no support among the Arab regimes, is ten years too late in trying to set up pseudorepresentatives of the occupied population.
The League of Villages, led by the collaborator Mustafa Dudin, is currently the backbone of this plan. The principle behind it is simple: Israel is now preventing the distribution of most of the material aid for the Palestinians that comes from abroad (from the Arab states and the mixed PLO-Jordan commission). It is using the League of Villages as the channel for the meager budgets allocated by the Zionist government, the limited contributions allowed from abroad, and the construction permits and various authorizations the population needs. This body therefore becomes, at least for the population living in the countryside, the sole means of taking care of the diverse problems of daily life.
Through these methods General Sharon hopes to counterbalance the weight of the PLO and the Palestinian village leaders who are tied to the resistance organizations, and to create moderate "representatives" of the occupied population.
Palestinians reject 'civil administration'
But even in the villages the League of Villages is having very little success. Through the proletarianization of many peasants, the long occupation has significantly reduced the gap that once existed between the cities, countryside, and villages.
The killing of Yusef Hatib, leader of the League of Villages in the Ramallah area, three weeks ago, and the various attacks and demonstrations against those who would like to more openly choose the path of collaboration point out the likely future of this plan.
The carrot is much too small to induce substantial sectors of the Palestinian population to get caught in the trap of the "civil administration."
Since power passed into the hands of Professor Milson, the Palestinian population on the West Bank has clearly and massively shown its opposition to the "civil administration" plan. General strikes in most of the cities on the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, demonstrations by high school and primary school students, mass meetings with the participation of all the representative elements of the Palestinian population, declarations by local tradeunion and religious leaders — all these leave no doubt in anyone's mind about the real sentiments of the inhabitants of the occupied territories.
"We have no chance of finding Quislings* in the occupied territories," explained Reserve Gen. Shlomo Gazit, who was formerly in charge of coordinating activities in these territories.
In an October 29 article in Ha'aretz, Yehuda Litani explained: "Recently the military government proposed to certain inhabitants of
*Vidkun Quisling, a pro-Nazi Norwegian politician, headed the Norwegian puppet government following the German invasion in February 1942. His name has become synonymous with collaboration with an occupying power.
the occupied territories that they take charge of the departments in which they work [in the military administration]. But up to now they have refused... basically because they fear the negative reactions from the population of the West Bank."
In the same newspaper, Amos Elon, one of Israel's more astute political observers, summarized the situation: "It is even more difficult to expect the participation of Palestinians in the establishment of 'total autonomy' in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But that is precisely the objective this government has set for itself and on which it has run aground and continues to run aground
"Without the participation of the Palestinians, there will not be autonomy. Who would want to be in Professor Milson's place today, agreeing to head up this civil administration? What might perhaps have been possible several years ago is virtually inconceivable in the present situation.
"At a press conference some months ago," Elon continued, "this scholar [Milson] expressed his conviction that it is possible to politically 'break' the PLO in the occupied territories. Is the population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip going to start turning its back on the PLO precisely at a time when the PLO is definitively recognized by the peoples of the world?"
The rejection of the Israeli occupation by the Palestinian population has reached levels that are unprecedented in recent years. For example, the Gaza Strip, which has reputedly been "calm" since the murderous pacification carried out by Gen. Ariel Sharon in the early 1970s, saw several days of general strikes and mass demonstrations that quickly turned into bloody confrontations with the occupation forces, resulting in the death of a young child and several dozen wounded.
And there is every reason to believe that the establishment of the civil administration will have the effect of bringing together the organization and struggles of the populations in the two main components of the occupied territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Behind the carrot lies the stick
"If they do not want our civil administration, that means they want repression." That seems to be the logic guiding General Sharon and Professor Milson. And in this area they have not skimped on resources. In one month the civil administration has carried out as much repression as the military government generally did in a whole year.
They closed Bir Zeit University, the main institution of higher education for the Palestinian population. They closed the daily newspaper Al Fajr. They arrested well-known leaders like Dr. Azimi Shoubi, a member of the Al Bira municipal council; Ahram Khania, editor in chief of the daily Al Shaab; and Dr. Samir Kateb, president of the Union of Doctors. Dozens of people, mostly students and student leaders at Bir Zeit, were placed under house arrest.
But the new dimension in the repression in the occupied territories is best seen in the "collective punishment" - the curfews imposed on neighborhoods, villages, or camps from which stones or bottles were thrown, and the dynamiting of houses.
There has been heavy criticism of the dynamiting of three houses in Beit Sahur, near Bethlehem, even from within the Labor Party. These houses were destroyed on the pretext that the children of some of the families living in the houses had thrown stones at an Israeli army command car. Labor Party figure Abba Eban and Victor Shem Tov, the general secretary of Mapam (the United Workers Party — a component of the Labor Party coalition) denounced these dynamitings.
But as Menachem Begin himself has noted, this form of punishment was not invented by the present Likud government. Until the Labor Party was ousted from the government, in May 1977, it carried out the dynamiting of 1,224 houses.
In an editorial entitled "Not in My Name!" in the November 20 Davar, the daily newspaper of the Histadrut union federation, Hanna Zemer wrote: "Once again, we are dynamiting houses, we are blocking up apartments, we are welding shut the steel shutters of stores. I hear the cries of mothers and the tears of children; I see people whose housing has just been taken. Even without trying to compare what cannot be compared, one cannot help being reminded of sad memories, of another time in another
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place...
And in a style featuring less pathos, Yehuda Litani wrote in the November 18 Ha'aretz: "When you destroy houses on an assemblyline basis (seven houses were destroyed in the last two weeks) so that 'no one will throw a single stone on the West Bank,' you provoke an escalation. It is difficult to imagine that a population whose houses are being dynamited will become peaceful. It may be afraid and live in fear, but it will always find people who have the courage to throw stones, even in the most frightening situation, and even some who will fire shots, throw gasoline-filled bottles, and place bombs."
There can be no doubt about the consequences of the policy of the stick. Indiscriminate repression that strikes equally against those who are called "extremists" and those who are moderates, against armed commandos and youth who throw stones, can only provoke a generalized realignment around the most radical positions.
As Dani Rubinstein writes in the November them led a demonstration where people shouted 'PLO yes, Israel no!""
20 Davar: "The policy of Minister Ariel Sharon in the West Bank is the coarsest and most violent since Israel has had power in the occupied territories. • Bethlehem and Beit Sahur are among the calmest cities in the West Bank and their mayors, Elias Freij and Hana al-Atrach, do not belong to the Committee of National Guidance (made up of supporters of the PLO) and are not considered extremists. Now, for the first time in their careers, both of
Growing opposition inside Israel
Every day on the television news Israelis can see the horrors of the occupation and General Sharon's expedient methods. They also see the determination of the high school students in Beit Sahur, the merchants in Gaza, the Bir Zeit University students, and therefore the ineffectiveness of the repressive measures taken by the so-called civil administration.
Among the mass of Jewish workers we are increasingly seeing a sense of weariness, a refusal to believe that this time the Palestinians will finally learn their lesson and have no choice but to accept the solutions imposed by Menachem Begin.
But there are increasing numbers who understand that it is suicidal to give a free rein to Ariel Sharon; and that it is precisely the extreme character of the repression that makes the emergence of a vast movement in opposition to what is happening today in the occupied territories not only necessary but also possible.
In recent weeks it has no longer been just Arab students and radical groups in the Jewish community that have demonstrated against the closing of Bir Zeit University, the dynamiting of houses, and "collective punishment." There have been hundreds of people who, even yesterday, were not ready to deliberately get involved alongside the Palestinian masses.
The growing impact that the Committee in Solidarity with Bir Zeit University is having and the broad sympathy toward its activities confirms that for the first time since 1967 the base exists for a large, united movement against the occupation.
The views of the Palestinian people will, in the final analysis, decide the viability of the different occupation plans that the Zionist governments will develop. But the existence of a massive movement against the occupation within the Jewish population of Israel will not only speed up the process of withdrawal of Israeli forces from the occupied territories, but also create the basis for collaboration between Jews and Arabs, which remains the absolute precondition for a just and durable solution to the Palestinian question.
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