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In the looking-glass world of Middle East politics, it is
easy to forget that Ahmad Saadat, the imprisoned Palestinian leader
Israel summarily arrested in Jericho late on Tuesday, is wanted for
masterminding the killing of the Jewish state's most notorious racist
politician-general.
Rehavam Zeevi, head of the Central Command in the late 1960s and early
1970s, personally developed and managed Israel's brutal regime in the
newly occupied West Bank. After retiring from the battlefield, he waged
a relentless war against "the Arabs" on the political front. His Moledet
party, founded in the 1980s, advocated the ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians from Greater Israel--in other words, from Israel and the
occupied territories.
His thinking became so acceptable after the outbreak of the intifada
that he was appointed tourism minister in Ariel Sharon's first cabinet.
Maybe Sharon thought that, with Zeevi for company, he really might start
to look like a man of peace.
Zeevi's killing by gunmen in a Jerusalem hotel in 2001 was about as
close as the Palestinians have managed to get to emulating an
Israeli-style targeted assassination--with the difference that, in the
Palestinian operation, no bystanders were killed.
Israelis were, and still are, horrified by the killing of Zeevi, with
most taking the view that the Palestinians broke all the rules of
engagement in targeting an elected politician. That neatly ignores the
point that Zeevi's death was retribution for Israel's earlier
assassination of a widely respected Palestinian politician, Abu Ali
Mustafa, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine.
But what is sauce for the goose was never going to be sauce for the
gander.
Ahmad Saadat, Mustafa's successor and the man blamed by Israel for
Zeevi's killing, raced to the top of the army's wanted list. Under
international pressure, the Palestinian Authority, in the days before it
was entirely dismembered by the Israeli army, arrested him.
To prevent his targeting for assassination by Israel, and in the vain
hope of winning a reprieve for Yasser Arafat from his effective house
arrest in Ramallah, the Palestinian leadership brokered a deal with
Britain and the United States in 2002. The two countries agreed to
provide monitors to guarantee Saadat's confinement in the tiny West Bank
town of Jericho, in the sun-baked lowlands of the Jordan Valley.
Four years later, on Tuesday morning, Britain reneged on its
understandings with the Palestinians and quit Jericho, but not before
telling Israel it was going. As if waiting for its cue, Israeli armour
rolled into Jericho at once to capture Saadat and a handful of other
wanted men.
To Palestinians, the British broken promise, as well as the hasty exit
from Jericho and apparent collusion with Israel, all smacked a little
too painfully of other episodes of British foreign policy in the Middle
East. There were echoes of 1956 and London's pact during the Suez Crisis
with Israel on the invasion of Egypt. And there were echoes too of 1948,
when Britain hurriedly abandoned Palestine, though not before it had
effectively fulfilled the Balfour Declaration's promise of creating a
Jewish homeland by allowing hundreds of thousands of Jews to immigrate.
That in large part explains the outpouring of rage from Gaza to Ramallah
on Tuesday, as well as the kidnapping of foreigners. Britain's duplicity
was a reminder--if it was needed--that nothing has changed in a century
of Western "diplomacy".
So what was Britain's defence of its inflammatory action? According to
foreign minister Jack Straw, Britain had no choice but to pull the
monitors out of Jericho because of growing concerns for their safety.
That will have sounded more than hollow to Palestinians. The intifada
has all but passed Jericho by. With a population of about 15,000, it is
the quietest place in the West Bank and Gaza. During the decades of
Israeli occupation it earnt a unflattering reputation as the dumping
ground for small-time collaborators, the ones Israel did not reward with
safe haven in its own territory.
Jericho is a small Palestinian island in a sea of Israeli occupation.
Most of the Jordan Valley has been entirely controlled by Israel for
decades. According to reports in the Hebrew media, Israel is poised to
announce the Valley's annexation sometime after its elections later this
month.
Around Jericho itself the Israeli army has dug a deep ditch to prevent
all unauthorised movement in and out of the city. And beyond that is the
busy "settlers' highway" through the occupied Jordan Valley, linking
Jerusalem with the north of Israel, officially known as Gandhi's
Road--after Rehavam Zeevi. He earned the nickname "Gandhi" as a skinny
youth in the army.
In fact Jericho has been so peaceful during the intifada that six months
ago, Israel reopened it to tourism, allowing package tours to pass
through the Israeli-manned checkpoint on the only route into the city. I
myself have visited the city on several recent occasions, staying in its
hotels and enjoying their open-all-year swimming pools. What is
apparently safe for tourists and journalists is not safe enough for
British officials.
The problem now is that Straw's "concerns" about safety may become
self-fulfilling. A backlash against foreigners is as certain as the
attack on Tuesday against the British Council offices in Gaza. There are
few tourists in the West Bank any longer, particularly since Israel made
entering so difficult with the construction of its wall. But there are
still a significant number of foreigners working for humanitarian
organisations.
Their presence is important. Many of the organisations themselves have
become little more than sticking plasters, unable to cope with the
festering sores of Palestinian life under an ever-more restrictive
occupation. But having foreigners living in Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron
offers an insurance policy--even if a small and inadequate one--against
more reckless Israeli army incursions. At the very least, foreigners can
bear witness.
There would be nothing worse than the West Bank--after Israel's limited
withdrawals and the completion of its wall--becoming a tiny Palestinian
ghetto-state, one where neither the international media nor aid workers
dare venture. There is also nothing that would satisfy Israel more.
Jonathan Cook, a British journalist living in Nazareth, is the author of
"Blood
and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State",
published by Pluto Press next month. His website is
www.jkcook.net.
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