Targeting Al-Aqsa, pushing ahead with settlements, assassinating activists, interfering in Palestinian affairs: business as usual this week for Israel, reports Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank Evoking the usual mantra of fighting "terror", Israel is steadily reverting to a modus operandi of provocation vis-à-vis the Palestinians. Israeli occupation forces have of late been carrying out nightly raids inside Palestinian population centres, aiming chiefly at assassinating suspected resistance activists. On Sunday, 23 October, an Israeli death squad assassinated Laui Al-Saadi, believed to be the head of Islamic Jihad's armed wing. A member of Fatah-affiliated Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade was also killed in the operation at Tulkarem refugee camp in the northern West Bank. On average, the Israeli army these days kills two to three Palestinians per day. The killings are often followed by utterly mendacious statements alleging that the victims were planning to carry out suicide bombings inside Israel and that the lives of hundreds of Israeli civilians were saved as a result of the "liquidation of the terrorists". In the context of the same policy, Israeli warplanes on Tuesday, 25 October, launched a series of attacks on civilian facilities throughout the Gaza Strip, including a charity organisation in the southern town of Rafah. The air strikes damaged two buildings and seriously injured at least five civilians, including a four- month-old toddler. The Israeli army said the attacks were in response to the firing of home-made projectiles by Islamic Jihad onto Israeli territory Monday night. The projectiles fell onto open ground causing no casualties or damage. Reacting to the assassination of their top man in the West Bank, Islamic Jihad's military wing said it was no longer bound by the tahdia or de facto ceasefire. "We will not stand passive and handcuffed while the blood of our fighters is being shed, let the calm go to hell. The Israelis will pay dearly." The nearly daily assassinations of Palestinian activists coincide with an ongoing spate of arrests of political activists and community leaders affiliated with Hamas. According to conservative estimates, as many as 800 professionals, university professors, students, businesspeople and intellectuals have been arrested in the course of the past five weeks. Many of the detainees are believed to be actual or potential candidates for the upcoming Palestinian elections, due to take place on 27 January. In fact, Israel is not only targeting potential candidates, but also ordinary community activists without whose efforts and organisation skills Hamas wouldn't be able to conduct an effective election campaign. This means that Israel is hell-bent on weakening Hamas as much as possible or even paralysing the movement prior to elections by arresting its entire political leadership in the West Bank. According to Palestinian lawyers defending the internees before Israeli military courts, the vast bulk has been sent to the notorious Negev desert detention facility at Kitziot for open-ended incarceration. The charges? "Hostility to Israel" and "endangering the security of the area". This week, Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman Lior Ben Dor told Al-Ahram Weekly that Israel was no longer making any distinction between Hamas's political leadership and its military wing. "Every Hamas member or activist is a terrorist as far as we are concerned." Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has confirmed this hardline policy. A spokesman at Sharon's office was quoted by the Israeli press as saying that Israel would continue to seek to prevent Hamas from taking part in the elections. The statement contradicted an earlier statement by the Israeli Minister of Justice Tzipi Livni who said that Israel had no interest in foiling Palestinian elections. Livni had apparently made her remarks to appease the Americans following the Abbas-Bush meeting at the White House in which President Bush reportedly indicated that his administration wouldn't oppose the participation of Hamas in the Palestinian elections. A far more dangerous Israeli provocation of Palestinians this week took the form of an Israeli High Court decision allowing extremist Jewish messianic fundamentalists to pray at Al-Haram Al-Sharif (the site of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock) in Jerusalem. The decision, unprecedented since the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, indicated that Israel was moving steadily towards changing the status quo at this place, Islam's third holiest site. Jewish extremists, including the so-called Temple Mount Faithful -- a messianic group whose avowed goal is the destruction of Islamic holy places and building of a Jewish temple on the site of Al-Aqsa -- hastened to act on the court decision. Earlier this week as many as 50 extremists were permitted by the Israeli police to enter the Al-Haram Al-Sharif esplanade where many of them were seen performing Jewish religious rites. The provocative move infuriated Muslims, with Al-Aqsa Foundation, which caters for Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem, describing it as a "declaration of war on Islam and Muslims". Reacting to what happened, Adnan Al-Hussein, head of the Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem, warned that allowing Jews to gradually arrogate a foothold at Al-Aqsa could set the entire region on fire. He accused certain Arab and Muslim countries of encouraging Israel to "rape Al-Aqsa in broad daylight", by normalising relations with Israel. "Israel is receiving active encouragement from these treacherous regimes that show no respect to Islam and Al-Aqsa. How many Arab or Muslim leaders have protested against what happened? Are they waiting until Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are blown up?" he told the Weekly. Faced with angry reactions, the Israeli High Court on Monday decided to "amend" the decision, calling it a "slip of a pen". It was obvious, however, that the decision was anything but a mistake as one of the court judges voiced the view that "allowing Jews to pray at the Temple Mount was not a terrible thing". It is amply clear that these provocations, including the re- imposition of a draconian blockade of Palestinian towns and villages, and the declared policy of barring non-Jews from using main intercity roads throughout the West Bank, have one main aim: pushing the Palestinians into a corner and coercing them to restart the Intifada. According to Israeli thinking, the resumption of violence on a wider scale would enable Israel to achieve two main goals: first, corrode, weaken and eventually topple the Mahmoud Abbas regime, which would further throw the already fragile Palestinian Authority (PA) into chaos and anarchy. Needless to say, in such an atmosphere, the organisation of Palestinian legislative elections would be utterly impossible. Second, Israel would use the inexhaustible mantra of Palestinian "terror" as a propaganda rubric to pursue and complete its territorial designs in the West Bank, namely the completion of the "separation wall" and the implementation of the E-1 plan, including the building of a huge connecting Jewish-only housing block between East Jerusalem and the Maali Adomim settlement. The plan, if carried out, would cut off East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and irreversibly kill any real prospect for the creation of a viable Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. In other words, the current Israeli policy is aimed ultimately at killing the "roadmap plan for peace". This week, PA official Nabil Shaath voiced clear pessimism with regard to the fate of the roadmap. He told the Weekly that, "the peace process is facing a real predicament." "We will wait a few months to see how things evolve. If the roadmap doesn't help us recover our rights, then it will face the same fate of previous initiatives and peace plans."
