Democratic Palestine : 11 (ص 10)
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- عنوان
- Democratic Palestine : 11 (ص 10)
- المحتوى
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Setting things right
That a crisis was in the making has
been obvious since Operation Galilee
when 1,150 Palestinian political prison-
ers were liberated in exchange for two
Israeli soldiers captured by PFLP-Gen-
eral Command during the Israeli inva-
sion of Lebanon. This great victory for
the Palestinian revolution was a source
of bitterness, anger and heated debate
in the Zionist society. The government
came under hard criticism for releasing
«hardened terrorists» especially as 600
opted to remain in the occupied ter-
ritories. Many Israelis advocated that
they all be expelled. There was also
much speculation that the rightists in the
government only approved the ex-
change in order to use it as an excuse for
later releasing imprisoned members of
the «Jewish underground». In fact, in
late August, Police Minister Haim Bar
Lev proposed releasing 1000 Israeli
prisoners for the coming Jewish New
Year, among them persons detained for
terrorism against Palestinians.
In reality, the Zionist government
was forced to concede the exchange.
and the current repressive campaign is
its way of setting things straight.The
campaign also aims to insure that any
peace negotiations will involve only Jor-
dan, not the PLO.
Fighting the crisis
There are other things that the Is-
raeli government is trying to set straight:
namely the economic crisis and imba-
lance in the immigration-emigration ra-
tio. Despite US doctoring with massive
aid injections, the Israeli economic crisis
remains essentially unresolved. The
class collaboration inherent in a colonial
society, and the need to present a high
standard of living to attract new immi-
grants and hold on to settlers, makes it
difficult to impose such measures as are
regularly dictated to ‘third world’ coun-
tries by the IMF.
As it is, the measures currently con-
templated include massive lay-offs of
state employees. This will swell unem-
ployment which is already on the rise.
The number of Israelis applying for un-
employment benefits rose by one-third
in August alone. Greater unemployment
runs counter to the other Zionist con-
cern: reversing the immigration-emigra-
tion imbalance. Since 1981, more set-
tlers have left ‘Israel’ than have arrived.
In 1984, 17,000 left the country and
30,000 are expected to do so this year.
An Immigration Ministry official has
reported that 50% of new immigrants
from western countries leave again. The
government has deemed this serious
enough to initiate the «Come Back» pro-
ject in conjunction with 20 Israeli com-
panies, to lure back the estimated
35,000 professionals now residing in the
US. In this context, escalated aggres-
sion and racism against Palestinians
serves to make clearer than ever the
nature of ‘Israel’ as a fortress state. @
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Military Operations
eee
On August 4th, a Palestinian military spokesman announced that
within the last two months, Palestinian freedom fighters had carried
out 59 military operations against the Zionist occupiers in Palestine.
Eleven of these were against military targets and 31 involved explo-
sives. Thirty-eight were carried out in the Gaza Strip, 15 1n the part of
Palestine occupied in 1948, and 6 in the West Bank. There were
moreover 6 attempted operations which were unsuccessful. Follow-
ing is an account of some of the most recent operations.
August began with a series of
attacks on Israeli vehicles in the
occupied West Bank. On July 31,’stones
were thrown at an Israeli bus passing Al
Amari refugee camp near Ramallah:
one settler was injured. On August 2, a
petrol bomb was thrown at an Israeli bus
as it drove through Azzariya village near
Jerusalem. The next day an Israeli car
traveling between two settlements was
fired on by a machinegun. On August 4,
10
a fire bomb was thrown at a border
police patrol, injuring two of the police,
near Ain Alma refugee camp, near Nab-
lus. On August 5, stones were thrown at
an Israeli bus carrying settlers, near
Jalazone refugee camp; the bus was
damaged, and the driver fired on youth
outside the camp. In the following days,
grenades were thrown on an Israeli veh-
icle passing to a settlement south of
Hebron; an Israeli bus was targeted by
gunfire near Alfa Menashi settlement.
An Israeli settler was killed in Nab-
lus on August 8th, and a petrol bomb
targeted an Israeli car near Tulkarm.
The next day a petrol bomb was thrown
at the house of a policeman in Balata
refugee camp near Nablus. On August
10th, a Kiryat Arba settler from the US
was stabbed in Hebron, requiring hos-
pitalization.
On August 11, there were two sepa-
rate bomb attacks against Israeli military
vehicles in the Gaza Strip, and a third
against a car. The next day, a molotov
aimed at an Israeli truck injured the
driver, also in the Strip. In Qalqilia in the
West Bank, a petrol bomb was thrown at
an Israeli vehicle.
On August 14, stones were thrown
at an Israeli Egged bus in Jerusalem,
and at an Israeli military vehicle in the
Galilee. The next day, machinegun fire
was opened on an Israeli bus near Qal-
qilia; an Israeli car on the way to Kiryat
Arba encountered a mine; and an Israeli
patrol was attacked by hand grenades
near Khan Younis, Gaza Strip.
On August 16, there was a roadside
bomb against an Israeli vehicle near Beit
Haga settlement, near Hebron; a gre-
nade targeted an Israeli military car in
Ramallah. On August 17 and 19, fire
bombs were thrown at Israeli military
vehicles in the Gaza Strip. On August
18, an Israeli car was stoned on the Tul-
karm-Bata road, and one passenger
injured.
On August 20, a booby-trapped car
was detonated only minutes before it
would have exploded in the center of
Netanya, on the coast. This followed a
bomb explosion in the town two days
earlier.
On August 24, an Israeli from
Netanya was shot and killed in Tulkarm.
Another. from Tiberius. was wounded by
gunfire near Jenin.
On August 31, two firebombs were
thrown against settlers outside
Jerusalem. On September 2, a bomb
exploded at a Jerusalem bus stop;
Israeli radio reported that 6 Israelis were
treated for shock. On September 3, two
Israeli soldiers were stabbed in Hebron;
one later died of his wounds.
On September 4, Katyusha rockets
landed in the northern Galilee for the
second time in a week.
An Israeli truck driver was stabbed
in the Gaza Strip on September 5; a fire
bomb targeted an Israeli bus near Nab-
lus. On September 9, an Israeli soldier
was injured by stones in a village outside
Hebron. - هو جزء من
- Democratic Palestine : 11
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