Israeli bullets and the scourge of poverty are the enemies in Palestinians daily struggle for survival. Khaled Amayreh reports from occupied Jerusalem With less than six weeks to the Israeli general elections slated for 28 January, the Israeli occupation army stepped up its repressive measures against Palestinian population centres, killing additional Palestinians, demolishing homes and imposing extremely harsh restrictions on ordinary citizens. Many of the recent killings took place in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli tanks, armoured vehicles and watchtowers encircle every Palestinian town, village and refugee camp, ready and willing to shoot to kill any "suspicious" person. In most of these cases, the victims are not suspicious at all. They are ordinary innocent civilians, killed for merely walking in the direction of a Jewish settlement or strolling alongside the electric fence separating Gaza and Israel proper. Such was the fate of five members of the Al-Astal family who were killed in Khan Younis on 12 December, when an Israeli tank killed them all with a direct hit. The five unarmed labourers had apparently sought to jump over the Israeli fence in the vain hope that they would find work in Israel. Instead, they found and received instant death, as did many other Palestinians who find themselves pressed between the shadow of death by Israeli bullets and the equally haunting spectre of Gaza's grinding poverty. The Israeli army spokesman who confirmed the killing of the five, first said they were "suspected terrorists", but admitted later that they were "labourers". The Al-Astal family's tragedy is part of a long list of "mini-massacres" of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, the most recent of which include the Bureij massacre at the end of the month of Ramadan, the Rafah and Khan Younis massacres two months ago, and the Hay-Al-Daraj massacre in Gaza town nearly four months ago. And, of course, there are the daily sporadic killings of "stray Palestinians". The repugnant reference has recently been used to describe a mentally-handicapped Palestinian; a woman who was walking with her children in a wide open area; a seriously-ill person being conveyed to hospital by a taxi cab, in violation of the seemingly eternal curfew. So far 40 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians struggling to make a living or walking home, were killed in the first half of December, making it one of the bloodiest months since the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada on 28 September 2000. Meanwhile, the Israeli army has also stepped up its demolition of the homes of Palestinian civilians. Until recently, the Israeli army would justify the exceptionally harsh measure, which seems directed at inflicting maximum emotional pain on Palestinian families, who watch helplessly as their homes are reduced to rubble in a matter of minutes and often without having the chance to retrieve any of their belongings. Earlier this week, the Israeli army destroyed more than eight homes and several greenhouses in Khan Younis for no apparent reason other than perhaps that they were located near a Jewish settlement. Several more Palestinian homes were also destroyed in Hebron, in the vicinity of the Ibrahimi Mosque. The Israeli army claimed that "shots were fired from the direction of the homes" in Hebron. But it remains clear that the real purpose behind the frantic pace of home demolitions, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, is to punish the Palestinian resistance and, in the case of Hebron, to expand Jewish settlements. Indeed, the Israeli government in Hebron last week served demolition notices to the owners of more than 15 homes in the town's old quarter to widen a road used by Jewish settlers. Furthermore, the Israeli army is actually cordoning off Palestinian neighbourhoods in many Palestinian cities, such as Hebron and Nablus. The measure is aimed at preventing Palestinians from driving or even walking from one neighbourhood to another. In many cases, such as in Nablus, the claustrophobic closure is supplemented by dumping huge piles of earth and dirt and digging deep trenches across main streets and thoroughfares in major Palestinian towns. When Palestinians venture to defy the crippling restrictions, whether by circumventing the Israeli hurdles, or just walking in the streets in violation of the curfew, the Israeli occupation soldiers often respond with bullets. On 16 December, at least 13 Palestinian youngsters were injured, three very seriously, when Israeli soldiers opened fire on dozens of young boys who wanted to walk freely in the streets of their town. Some observers opine that current levels of Israeli repression seem to reflect the loss of any semblance of moral balance on the part of the Israeli government and army. In fact, some Israeli writers have gone as far as to level the same accusation at the Israeli people. One of those writers is the prominent Ha'aretz columnist Gideon Levy, a courageous journalist who has made a lot of enemies within the military establishment and right-wing quarters by exposing army brutalities against Palestinian civilians. On 16 December, Levy castigated the Israeli populace for its callousness and apathy toward the Israeli-created Palestinian calamity. "Israel continues to close its eyes, not to see, not to hear and not to know what it is doing to three million people who live less than an hour from our homes. If this crass disregard is hard to accept in normal times, the approach being that what doesn't interest me doesn't, it is nothing short of criminal [these days]." Levy, like many other observers and ordinary people on both sides of the divide, expressed his frustration at the macabre reality. "Daily killings of innocent people and mass arrests without trial are issues that should at least be the subject of public discussion, but here no one takes an interest. And the imprisonment of the entire Palestinian people is continuing uninterrupted and unreported... whole cities, parts of which lie in ruins, are under almost ceaseless curfew, an entire population is unable to move from one village to the next or from city to city without the authorisation of the occupation army. But within the Israeli public there is not even an echo of this, no one asks why, or for how long, or whether this state of affairs doesn't induce terrorism rather than prevent it." But such voices seem to have a limited audience. Ariel Sharon and his reelection team seem quite convinced that killing more Palestinians and destroying more Palestinian homes will guarantee him a landslide victory on 28 January. And if this doesn't achieve the required result, it will at least prompt the Palestinians to carry out some desperate suicide bombings in Israel, a sure prescription for tilting the political mood in Israel further to the right.
