What now in Israel-Palestine?

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday April 12, 2002 17:55 by matt - solidarity newspaper solidarity at onetel dot net dot uk PO Box 28124, London SE6 4WS, England

Two nations, two states! Israel out of the Occupied Terrorities!

An editorial from the latest issue of "Solidarity" (Vol.3 No.5, published in London) gives an overview of the issues.

On Saturday 30 March the Israeli government began a new invasion of the West Bank’s cities. Its first act was to
send more
troops into Ramallah. The army began to bulldoze their way into the compound of the PLO headquarters where
Yasser Arafat had been under house
arrest. Other West Bank towns were put under siege.
Although the media has been barred from certain areas, the whole world knows about the terrible battering the
Palestinians have faced. We know about
the destruction of ambulances, houses and shops. Many parts of the West Bank’s shaky governmental
infrastructure, which had already been battered in
previous months of Israeli military actions, came under attack once more. Maybe one and a half million people
were put under curfew, terrified of
venturing out. Homes were without water and electricity. Ambulances and health workers could not get to the
injured and dying. People were beaten up by
soldiers. House to house and office to office searches were conducted. An estimated 4-5,000 people have been
arrested and detained.
The Israeli Defence Force met greater-than-expected resistance from the Palestinian militias at the Jenin
refugee camp — a one kilometre square patch of
land which is home to over 15,000 people. As we go to press it seems some hundreds of Palestinians have
been killed. And perhaps 50 Israeli soldiers —
most of them reservists — have died. There has been another suicide bombing in Haifa.

read the rest of this article which argues that we "have to do more than take sides or make emotional appeals. In
this conflict there are
complex issues which need to be worked through" and that "The only solution remains the one indicated by consistent democracy — two states for two peoples, Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Arab. Many on the left in
Britain reject “two states” — although it is PLO policy — in favour of a demand for the destruction of Israel. In this, the left does not help the Palestinians.
That same left often sympathises with the suicide bombers. They say the bombings of Israeli civilians are “understandable” or by implication justifiable. We
can of course sympathise with the Palestinian youth who are driven to desperation. But we do not sympathise with the actions of the suicide bombers who
resist any dialogue between the peoples. Wanton killing of civilians is a dead-end method; to destroy Israel, to provoke wider war, or to invoke Allah to
punish the infidels, are dead-end aims."

you can find it at http://www.workersliberty.org.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=60&mode=&order=0