As Israel commits war crimes in Gaza, many Palestinians are wondering if they wouldn't be better off free of the Palestinian Authority Israel seemingly aims to break, writes Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank Israel has escalated its criminal military onslaught against the unprotected Gaza Strip, with the Israeli army and air force destroying universities, government buildings, streets and general infrastructure. On Tuesday morning, Israeli warplanes fired air-to-ground missiles at buildings of the Islamic University in Gaza City, causing widespread damage. An Israeli army spokesman described the bombing as "a message of deterrence". This is the second time in less than a week that Israeli warplanes have targeted the largest institute of higher education in the occupied territories, which has a student population of more than 15,000. Last week, an Israeli F-16 fighter dropped a large bomb on the college campus, creating a huge crater, but leaving no casualties. The bombing of Gaza's main university was preceded by a sequence of incendiary measures against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its Hamas-led government, including the bombing of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's headquarters, the destruction of Fatah offices, and the arrest of some 64 lawmakers, officials and government ministers. According to legal sources, many of the interned ministers and lawmakers have been kept in solitary confinement in Ramle prison, south west of Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert tacitly admitted this week that the detained officials -- many of them elected in January's parliamentary elections in the West Bank -- were hostages to be used as bargaining chips for the release of an Israeli soldier taken prisoner by Palestinian liberation fighters near Gaza. Last week, the Israeli air force destroyed the main power stations in Gaza, plunging the world's most densely populated region into total darkness, forcing 1.3 million Gazans to resort to primitive means to maintain whatever semblance of normal life they could, cooking with wood fire and using kerosene lamps to light living rooms at night. Hospitals, including prenatal wards, also suffered as a result of power outage. Israel, emboldened by the absence of any international outcry against its outrageous actions in Gaza, has threatened to step up the obliteration of Palestinian civil infrastructure. In light of statements by Israeli political and military officials, it is quite possible that the next phase of the Israeli campaign will include the bombing of schools and water installations as well as media outlets, public transportation systems, more government buildings, and hospitals. One Israeli army general was quoted as saying, "this time, there will be no red lines, and all aspects of Palestinian life will be under attack." Israel's sabre rattling, including stepped-up night time raids and vandalising of Palestinian charities, businesses and homes in the West Bank, have so far failed to cajole the captors of Gilad Shalit, the hapless soldier, to release him. On Monday, around 9am, the captors issued an ultimatum to the Israeli government, warning that they would consider "this case closed" and that "Israel would bear full responsibility for the consequences" if it did not respond to their demands by a specified time. That deadline expired Tuesday 6am. As of Tuesday afternoon there have been no new messages from the soldier's captors, an ominous sign in such circumstances. Captors have demanded that Israel frees Palestinian children and women interned in Israeli detention camps, including hundreds incarcerated without charge or trial and used as hostages or bargaining chips to blackmail Palestinian society into pacification and submission. Israel refused all demands, vowing, with characteristic righteousness, not to negotiate with "terrorists" and that they would not free prisoners with "Jewish blood" on their hands. Needless to say, this oft-repeated and essentially racist mantra excludes even the faintest allusion to the oceans of Palestinian blood shed knowingly and deliberately by Israeli occupation soldiers, including the recent slaughter of an entire family on a Gaza beach. This is not rhetoric. A Palestinian Health Ministry report released last week and based on verified death certificates issued by Palestinian hospitals showed that Israeli troops and paramilitary Jewish terrorist-settlers killed as many as 951 Palestinian children and minors since September 2000 alone. The increasingly Talmudic-minded Israeli military establishment refused even to comment on the report, reinforcing long-held convictions among Palestinians that the Israeli army regards the value of Palestinian life as less than zero. Israel's refusal to negotiate the release of Shalit, coupled with threats to assassinate Palestinian officials, prompted Shalit's father to accuse the Israeli government of seeking to "achieve deterrence at the expense of my son". Meanwhile, Egyptian mediators continued their exhaustive efforts to forge a face-saving deal for both sides whereby the soldier would be released in return for a tacit but sincere pledge from the Israeli government to free a number of Palestinian prisoners, particularly those not convicted of killing Israeli occupation soldiers and settlers. Egypt's envoy to the PA, Omar Aql, has denied Israeli reports that he is "getting exasperated with the Palestinians and threatening to terminate mediation efforts to overcome the problem." Aql told reporters in Gaza Monday, "we don't use the language of threats and ultimatums with our Palestinian brothers." Qatari officials have also been in contact with both Palestinian and Israeli officials, but there is no word yet as to whether these contacts furnished anything by way of a result. Now, according to Israeli media reports, the Israeli government has allegedly relegated the declared goal of freeing Shalit to a secondary status with toppling the Hamas-led government ever more appearing as the real goal behind the present onslaught. On Monday, Israeli state-run radio quoted unnamed "military officials" as saying that the operation in Gaza "opened a window of opportunity that could bring about a strategic breakthrough in Israel's efforts to defeat Hamas." There is no doubt that Israel, a regional superpower, could decimate the PA and its Hamas-led government within 24 hours if it chose to. The Palestinians, after all, are a prisoner population under military occupation, all but powerless to stop let alone recoil an all-out Israeli blitz. The crucial question is what would Israel do next even if it levelled Gaza and left hundreds extra dead? There is no doubt that the toppling of the Hamas government would be welcomed by the gung-ho Bush administration. Israel and the US likely hope that with Hamas decimated, PA President Abbas would declare a state of emergency and re-establish a Fatah-led government. This is wishful thinking at best. There is little doubt, in light of present realities in the occupied territories, that an Abbas government would be viewed as a quisling entity not unlike the disgraced "League of Villages" which the Israeli occupation army created in the late 1970s as an alternative to the nationalist Palestine Liberation Organisation. If and when Israel succeeds in bringing down the Hamas-led government, therefore, the most likely result would be anarchy and further humanitarian destitution and chaos throughout the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Israel would be forced to step in and take over governmental responsibilities. Ironically, this is precisely what many Palestinian leaders are hoping to see happen, not so much because they want to see the Hamas-led government fall (Hamas today is more popular than ever), but rather to bury finally the Oslo Accords which created a Palestinian entity without authority or sovereignty, and which now has become a ceiling on Palestinian aspirations, while Israel consolidated its dominion over the totality of Palestinian life. Indeed, as one Palestinian government minister who escaped arrest remarked, "what is the point of maintaining a government and an authority whose ministers and officials must keep hiding in order to escape Israeli arrest and abduction?"
