Column
Threat of mass expulsion adds to Palestinian woes
By ROSEMARY RADFORD
RUETHER
Daily life for Palestinians in the
Occupied Territories grows continually more oppressive. Curfews for several
days a week, sometimes many days in succession, have become routine.
Curfew has now become house arrest. People cannot leave their
homes even to go across the street or into their gardens. Their plants and
animals die. Farmers cannot work in their fields to plant, care for or harvest
crops. People can be shot simply for standing in open doorways. Twenty-four
hour curfews on every Friday prevent the Muslim population (the vast majority)
from going to the mosque. Access to hospitals is blocked. Children are
prevented from going to school. Many people can’t get to jobs. About 60
percent of the population is unemployed. More and more are living at a
starvation level. The number of malnourished children is growing.
The Israelis typically arrive in villages with dozens, even
hundreds of tanks. Houses are demolished or ransacked. People are harassed and
humiliated. Injuries and deaths by shooting occur every day. The leadership
class is being systematically eliminated through targeted assassinations, which
often kill bystanders. The ministries of an incipient Palestinian state have
been largely destroyed and the Palestinian Authority rendered nonfunctional.
The entire Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories has been
literally imprisoned in fragmented territories divided from each other and from
Israel by walls, trenches and checkpoints.
Since Sept. 11, the Sharon government has closely allied itself
with the United States by portraying its treatment of the Palestinians as
“fighting terrorism.” While the Bush government initially made some
statements supporting a Palestinian state to curry favor with the Muslim world
for its intended invasion of Afghanistan, it has since virtually given a green
light to Sharon to carry out any measures of repression that he wishes. The
United Nations, the European Union, the Arab nations have been silenced and do
nothing in regard to the Palestinians, rendering them isolated under
Israel’s iron fist.
What is the purpose of this extreme repression of Palestinians as
a total population in the Occupied Territories? Clearly the design of such
treatment is to render daily life intolerable and to force people to leave.
There has, in fact, been a steady trickle of people leaving the area,
especially the middle class, but most Palestinians do not have the means to
leave or refuse to leave. Consequently there is now increasingly open talk of
forcible expulsion or “transfer.” Posters have sprung up with slogans
such as “Shalom plus transfer equals security,” thereby paralleling
shalom (peace) and transfer as the joint means to security for Israel.
Mass expulsion, or “ethnic cleansing,” of the
Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories in Palestine is increasingly
being advocated by the Israeli government, political pundits and journalists.
These Israelis look to the possibility of a U.S. war with Iraq as a
“cover” under which to carry out this ethnic cleansing. Recent polls
show that 40 percent of Israelis are in favor of it, while almost a third favor
expelling Palestinians who are Israeli citizens as well. Palestinians have even
been referred to in frankly genocidal language as a “cancer” for
which a “second course of chemotherapy is needed.” The first
incomplete course was the forcible expulsion of a million Palestinians in
1948.
In October, 98 Israeli academics sent a cry of alarm about this
possibility of a mass expulsion of Palestinians to the world community. They
wrote: “We members of Israeli academe are horrified by the U.S. buildup of
aggression against Iraq and by the Israeli political leadership’s
enthusiastic support for it. We are deeply worried that the ‘fog of
war’ could be exploited by the Israeli government to commit further crimes
against the Palestinian people, up to full-fledged ethnic cleansing.” The
Israeli ruling coalition includes parties that promote “transfer” of
the Palestinian population as a solution to what they call “the
demographic problem.”
Politicians are regularly quoted in the media as suggesting
forcible expulsion. Escalating racist demagoguery concerning Palestinian
citizens of Israel may indicate the scope of the crimes that are being
contemplated. The international community must pay close attention to events
that unfold within Israel and the Occupied Territories, and make it absolutely
clear that crimes against humanity will not be tolerated and to take measures
to prevent such crimes from taking place.
American citizens must realize that the responsibility for this
extreme oppression of Palestinians lies as much with Washington as with the
Sharon government in Jerusalem. It is our government that allows this to happen
and is deaf to any critical response. American citizens must insistently
confront their state and national representatives and demand that they take a
clear stand opposing both the daily oppression and the possibility of ethnic
cleansing of the Palestinians. Americans should take this appeal of the
academics in Israel and use it to demand that their elected representatives
openly take a stand against any such ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from
their homeland in Palestine by the Israeli government.
This cannot wait until these events have already happened, only to
express some shock and light taps on the wrist to rebuke the Israeli government
for having engaged in such crimes. What is needed are clear statements now that
such crimes will not be tolerated and that the U. S. government is prepared to
take steps to protect the Palestinian people from such ethnic cleansing and to
prevent the Israeli government from using any possible war in Iraq or any other
events to carry out such crimes. Clear sanctions must be enunciated in advance
to forestall such crimes from happening.
Rosemary Radford Ruether is a professor of theology at
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Ill.
National Catholic Reporter, November 29,
2002
|
