File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2002/postcolonial.0204, message 32


Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 10:39:56 -0800 (PST)
From: "S. w." <chemicalis-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Fwd: Humiliating and Exiling Arafat and the Palestinians



--- Mid-East Realities <MERL-AT-MiddleEast.Org> wrote:
> Reply-to: "Mid-East Realities" <MER-AT-MiddleEast.Org>
> To: "MER" <"Mid-East Realities"
> <MER-AT-MiddleEast.Org>>
> From: "Mid-East Realities" <MERL-AT-MiddleEast.Org>
> Subject: Humiliating and Exiling Arafat and the
> Palestinians
> Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 09:31:19 -0500
> 
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> 
>     THE GOAL IS TO SYMBOLICALLY STRIP AND HUMILIATE
> ARAFAT,
>                  SYMBOL OF THE PALESTINIANS, AND
> EXILE HIM
>              IN VERY WEAK AND POLITICALLY DESTITUTE
> STATE
> 
> MID-EAST REALITIES - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org -
> Washington, DC - 4/02/2002:
>     The Israelis are not planning to martyr Yasser
> Arafat, rather they are planning to grossly
> humiliate and weaken him, while at the same time
> crushing all Palestinian resistance and arresting
> key members of the Arafat regime -- except for those
> like Nabil Shaath, Abu Mazen, and Abu Alla, who have
> been playing ball with the Americans and the
> Israelis for a long time now and are conveniently
> not around these days (plus a few others like Rajoub
> and Dahlan and Erakat who might still be useful to
> meet with General Zinni now and then).
>     The likelihood is the "plot" to do this to
> Arafat, and to the Palestinians, was finalized at
> the White House, the Pentagon, and the CIA last
> month when Sharon and entourage visited Washington. 
> 
>     At the moment the Americans, working in tandem
> with the Israelis no matter what they say in public,
> are trying to convince Arafat to personally go into
> exile in Morocco.  And then when the inevitable
> American arranged "peace conference" takes place
> down the road, one more time, it won't be Arafat and
> the PLO at the table and the Palestinians will have
> been sufficiently crushed and collectively tortured
> so that some new dastardly even more repressive
> apartheid-style arrangement can be forced down their
> collective throats...one more time.
> 
> 
> 
>            HUMILIATING SURRENDER FOR PALESTINIAN
> POLICE
>                  Israeli army in campaign to destroy
> security forces 
>                                By Suzanne Goldenberg
> in Ramallah, West Bank
> 
> The Guardian - Tuesday April 2, 2002:   Cornered and
> hopelessly outgunned, the Palestinian policemen tore
> off their uniforms and stripped to their underpants,
> filing out one by one in the now familiar drill of
> surrender to the Israeli army. 
> 
> As the Israeli army swept into three more West Bank
> towns, a disturbing picture emerged yesterday of a
> systematic campaign to destroy and dismantle the
> Palestinian police. 
> 
> The capture of the 22 policemen at the Darraghmeh
> apartment buildings in Ramallah offered a prototype
> for the Israeli army's expanding offensive: raids on
> residential and commercial buildings, hospitals,
> private homes and television stations and round-ups
> of Palestinian men, punctuated by fierce gun battles
> and, Palestinians say, summary executions. 
> 
> In many instances, the raids have focused on the
> Palestinian police, who are entitled to bear arms
> under the Oslo peace accords, and who are Yasser
> Arafat's main instrument for the ceasefire Israel
> and the US are demanding. 
> 
> The soldiers are also making use of civilians as
> shields, forcing men to march ahead of them at
> gunpoint as they shoot their way into suspected
> hideouts of armed Palestinians. 
> 
> It is unclear how the 22 Palestinian policemen made
> their way into the Darraghmeh buildings, past the
> Israeli tanks prowling the deserted city. But by
> Sunday night, some two dozen Israeli forces burst in
> on them in an abandoned third-floor flat, tossing in
> a grenade which pitted the walls like a rash. 
> 
> The Israeli soldiers retreated to a stairwell,
> spraying the door of the flat with gunfire for 20
> minutes, neighbours said. They pulled back to a
> neighbouring building and seized an architecture
> student, Nader Mansi, 22, setting him the dangerous
> task of returning to the building to coax the
> policemen to surrender. 
> 
> "The officer said he wanted all the Palestinian
> soldiers to come out of the buildings first, and to
> take off their boots, their trousers, and their
> jackets," Mr Mansi said. 
> 
> The stairwell of the building yesterday provided
> evidence of the policemen's humiliating surrender, a
> jumble of boots, khaki trousers, and insignia in the
> colours of the Palestinian flag. 
> 
> They were discarded before the policemen emerged
> from the building, spinning around to show they were
> unarmed, before they were handcuffed, blindfolded,
> and bundled into an armoured personnel carrier. 
> 
> A splash of blood stained the doorway, where one man
> was shot dead at the start of the raid. "The first
> one who came down was stupid or inexperienced," said
> Randa al-Zeer, who watched the drama from her
> second-floor flat. "He came downstairs with his gun
> in his hands above his head. So they shot him." 
> 
> The Israeli army said the dead man was a suspected
> suicide bomber. 
> 
> Another policeman, who was shot in the back during
> the firefight, was left to bleed to death. "I went
> and checked his pulse. He was barely alive," said Mr
> Mansi. "I asked the officer to bring an ambulance,
> and he said: 'They are terrorists, they shoot at us,
> the policemen'." 
> 
> The rest of the raid passed without further
> bloodshed, unlike Saturday when five uniformed
> policemen were shot dead in a windowless room of a
> nearby building, apparently at close range. 
> 
> After the surrender of the policemen, civilian male
> residents of the flats stripped, marched down
> stairs, and sur rendered. Then came the women,
> pulling their shirts up above their waists,
> residents said. 
> 
> Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has described
> the broad military offensive in the West Bank as a
> war on terror: that is, against the Palestinian
> suicide bombers who have launched a relentless
> campaign inside the Jewish state. 
> 
> But in Ramallah at least, the focus appears to be
> the main Palestinian police agency: the national
> security force, whose commander in the West Bank,
> Haji Ismail, is one of Yasser Arafat's most trusted
> aides. 
> 
> Unlike other senior Palestinian officials, who have
> scattered, Mr Ismail is said to be hunkered down in
> Mr Arafat's crumbling headquarters, vowing to fight
> to the last alongside his leader. 
> 
> Mr Ismail's men are the most professional of the
> Palestinian police forces - which were trained by
> the CIA during the 1990s - and their targeting by
> the Israeli army sits uneasily with Israel's demands
> that Mr Arafat use the security forces to crack down
> on the suicide bombers. 
> 
> Yesterday, such doubts were beginning to emerge
> inside Israel as well. "Even if we stay on a long
> time, we will not be able to smash the terror
> infrastructure," said Danny Yatom, the former chief
> of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. 
> 
> · Four Britons and a Japanese student from Bradford
> University suffered shrapnel wounds yesterday after
> Israeli tanks fired warning shots near international
> "peace volunteers" in the Bethlehem suburb of Beit
> Jala. A woman who asked to be known only as Kate
> suffered a serious stomach wound but was said to be
> out of danger in hospital. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>           ARAFAT'S KEY AIDES TARGETED
>         Emphasis on Arrests Reflects Policy Shift 
>                         By Lee Hockstader
> 
> Washington Post - Tuesday, April 2, 2002 -
> Jerusalem) -- With its military sweep of Palestinian
> cities and camps, Israel has set out to hunt down
> hundreds of suspected militants and terrorists,
> among them some of Yasser Arafat's political and
> security lieutenants, a senior Israeli security
> official said today.
> 
> The determination to take in ranking officials from
> Arafat's Palestinian Authority represents a shift in
> Israeli policy, which until now has granted what
> amounts to immunity from arrest or assassination to
> Arafat's inner circle, the official said.
> 
> The official's remarks, coupled with similar
> comments in the Israeli media, constituted the most
> detailed attempt Israel has made to lay out the
> goals and scope of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's
> five-day-old military thrust into
> Palestinian-administered territory in the West Bank
> and Gaza Strip.
> 
> The official, speaking on condition of anonymity,
> said some of the suspects sought by Israel have
> taken refuge with Arafat, the Palestinian leader, in
> his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
> Others, he said, were among hundreds of Palestinians
> in the sprawling hilltop headquarters of the
> Palestinian Preventive Security Service, a powerful
> agency that is one of Arafat's main points of
> contact with the CIA and is Israel's negotiating
> counterpart in attempts to coordinate security
> agreements.
> 
> The Preventive Security headquarters, near Ramallah,
> was surrounded by Israeli forces determined to
> arrest all the wanted men inside. A spokesman for
> the Palestinian security force, Samir Rantisi, said
> Israeli troops launched an attack on the
> headquarters complex early this morning, using heavy
> machine guns and other weapons. Israeli helicopters
> also fired missiles at the building, the Palestinian
> officials said, engulfing it in flames and causing
> many casualties. Palestinian sources said the battle
> ended before daybreak and that the fire had
> subsumed.
> 
> "Most of the important activists of Ramallah are now
> in these compounds," a senior Israeli security
> source said. "They are not going to get away. We are
> going to arrest all of them."
> 
> Among the most pronounced changes in its policy,
> Israel has also decided to track down and arrest
> Arafat's top political lieutenant in the West Bank,
> Marwan Barghouti, the Israeli security source said.
> Barghouti, 42, an electrifying speaker and
> charismatic street leader, is often mentioned as a
> possible successor to Arafat. Despite identifying
> him as a key figure in terrorist and other attacks,
> Israeli until now has exempted Barghouti from arrest
> on the grounds that he is too popular, too
> influential and too close to Arafat.
> 
> "We're going to arrest him, of course," said the
> source. "Our big mistake is we used to respect the
> [Palestinian] VIPs too much."
> 
> He also said Israel is studying the possibility of
> arresting a number of top Palestinian security
> officials, most of whom have been in close contact
> with the CIA since Arafat established the
> Palestinian Authority in 1994.
> With the goal of building Palestinian agencies
> strong enough to rein in militant Islamic and other
> groups, the CIA provided extensive advice, equipment
> and training to Arafat's security chiefs, with
> Israel's knowledge and approval. Over the years,
> U.S. officials based in Tel Aviv developed
> reasonably close relations with their Palestinian
> colleagues.
> 
> These include Tawfiq Tirawi, Arafat's intelligence
> chief in the West Bank, and Rashid Abu Shbak, the
> No. 2 man in the Preventive Security force in the
> Gaza Strip. According to Israel, Tirawi has been
> involved in planning attacks on Israeli targets
> since the outset of the current Palestinian uprising
> in September 2000, and Abu Shbak is the key figure
> in the manufacture of Palestinian rockets and
> mortars in Gaza.
> 
> In widening its list of wanted men to include some
> of Arafat's top aides, Israel faces a dilemma.
> Israeli officials have often said they would like to
> somehow exile or remove Arafat in the hopes that the
> next generation of Palestinian leaders would be more
> "moderate" and "pragmatic." But it is precisely that
> group of Palestinian leaders -- men in their forties
> with growing power bases -- whose arrests Israel is
> now contemplating.
> 
> Israeli officials acknowledge that the dilemma goes
> deeper, and includes the question of whether to
> expel Arafat. Sharon, who calls Arafat a "bitter
> enemy" and has publicly wished him dead, has favored
> expulsion, despite opposition from the United States
> and its Western allies.
> 
> Israel's security and intelligence agencies appear
> to agree with only part of this assessment. On the
> one hand, the agencies contend Arafat would
> represent a greater threat to Israeli interests if
> he were overseas, with free access to the world's
> leaders and television cameras, than he does caged
> up in his Ramallah headquarters surrounded by
> Israeli tanks, Israeli newspapers have reported.
> 
> On the other hand, the agencies have warned that
> Arafat's likely successors include militants who
> made their names organizing attacks on Israel, but
> lack the prestige and power to exert near-term
> control over Palestinian areas, rein in radical
> groups or make political compromises with Israel.
> 
> Staying "with [Arafat] is a very hard alternative,
> and without him is also a very bad alternative,"
> said the security source.
> 
> For the time being, Israel is keeping its hands off
> some of Arafat's most senior security chiefs,
> apparently hoping to preserve some infrastructure
> that might corral militant groups and would-be
> terrorists in the future.
> 
> Chief among them is Jibril Rajoub, chief of
> Preventive Security in the West Bank, who Israeli
> officials believe has not joined the Palestinian
> militants and others who have taken refuge inside
> the Security Service headquarters. They also include
> Mohammed Dahlan, Arafat's security chief in the Gaza
> Strip, who has close ties with the CIA and is
> regarded as a pragmatist by Israelis and Americans.
> 
> As Israeli officials describe it, the current
> military campaign, in scale and ambition, goes well
> beyond any previous offensive in the conflict.
> Israeli forces have already entered four of the
> eight largest Palestinian population centers in the
> West Bank -- Ramallah, Tulkarm, Qalqilyah and
> Bethlehem -- and are preparing to enter more. About
> 20,000 military reservists have been called up for
> duty in what the army has dubbed Operation Defensive
> Shield.
> Speaking Sunday evening, Sharon defined the
> operation's goal as to "wipe out terrorist
> infrastructures from their foundations," suggesting
> a long and arduous campaign. For the time being,
> there is substantial support for the Israeli policy
> from the Bush administration, Israel's main
> strategic ally.
> 
> But there is a growing tension between the ambition
> of Sharon's goals -- which many Israelis say are
> virtually unattainable -- and the constraints of a
> world worried about instability in the Middle East,
> especially the Arab world. Some Israeli officials
> are mindful of international criticism and suspect
> Israel will be forced to curtail operations within a
> few weeks.
> 
> "Every additional day of occupation [of Palestinian
> territory], every additional day of pictures of
> tanks opposite women and children increases the
> international pressure on the government," wrote
> Nahum Barnea, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper
> Yedioth Aharonoth. "Sharon knows he is living on
> borrowed time."
> 
> Shimon Peres, the foreign minister, played down the
> idea that Israel might have set too broad a goal for
> itself or was in effect planning to reoccupy the
> territories it ceded to the Palestinians in the
> mid-1990s under the Oslo agreements. "We will be
> staying weeks at the most, not months," he said. "We
> are not fighting a war of prestige here, we are
> fighting a war of existence. Our first concern is
> not our image but our lives."
> 
> Correspondent Daniel Williams in Ramallah
> contributed to this report.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>                                
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