Life Under Israeli Occupation

The Israeli state was quick to use the terrorist attacks on the United States to legitimize its own attacks on the Palestinian people as part of the "war on terrorism". In the three days that followed the attacks against the U.S., the Israeli army launched a series of military offensives in the occupied territories, resulting in the death of at least 12 Palestinians and the injury of dozens more. There has been virtually no Western media coverage of these incursions, which include raids on the towns of Jericho and Jenin. Under the pretext of combating terrorism, Israeli tanks and troops arrived in the villages before the crack of dawn, destroying homes and firing on "suspected terrorists". Among the dead were a nine year old girl and an elderly woman who was killed by shrapnel while sleeping in her bed.

According to Roni Daniel, an Israeli military correspondent for the country's Channel 2 television station, "These actions couldn't have gone on for so long if it weren't for the attack at the World Trade Center. This is a window of opportunity that the Israeli army will use to push Arafat into a corner."

Similar raids occurred while the eyes of the world were focused on Durban, South Africa, during the United Nations Conference Against Racism. While the Israeli delegation angrily denounced the conference for, amongst other things, anti-Israeli propaganda, an Israeli combat helicopter was firing rockets at the Tulkarm refugee camp. While the operation targeted a suspect accused by the Israeli government of planning terrorist activities, the two victims, 22 year old Omar Mahmoud Subeh and 19 year old Mustafa A'ahed Anbas had the misfortune of being Palestinian and in the wrong place at the wrong time, as they were the only casualties. On August 30, hours before the withdrawal of the American and Israeli delegations from the conference, a combat helicopter opened fire with heavy machine guns on the residential areas within the Tulkarm camp. A Palestinian street sweeper, on duty at the time of the attack, was shot dead, while another three civilians were wounded. On the same day, Mousa Safi Qudeihat, 50, a physician from the Kharas village near Hebron, was killed as he was crossing a street on his way to the offices of the Ministry of Health during heavy shelling of Hebron by Israeli soldiers. Seriously wounded during this same operation was ten year old Bilal Ismail El'Amassi, who was back-to-school shopping with his family when he was hit in the back by a bullet.

While these kinds of deadly assaults on the civilian Palestinian population are the most blatant examples of violations by Israeli occupying forces, there are many others.

Since the outbreak of the latest Intifada almost a year ago, the Israeli governments of both Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon have enforced a policy of closures in the West Bank and Gaza. The end result is the confinement of more than three million people, for a period of close to a year now, in their own villages and homes. According to a delegation from Amnesty International, which visited the occupied territories in July of this year, "almost every road to every village ... south of Jerusalem was blocked by mountains of earth or concrete blocks. The main north-south road between Nablus, the largest city in the West Bank, and Jenin, is empty of vehicles other than army vehicles for many stretches. Army checkpoints consistently turn back Palestinian vehicles. In a number of documented cases, Palestinians requiring urgent medical attention have died." The Amnesty International delegation concluded "closures constitute the collective punishment of a whole people. In all cases, the closures deny the right to freedom of movement and suffocate economic life." Amnesty International also pointed out that the closures are not effective in preventing violent attacks against Israelis, their stated intent, as the recent spate of suicide bombings have shown.

Besides closure, the Israeli government has continued to demolish Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem, all the while expanding Israeli settlements. In Rafah and Khan Unis, more than 70 homes have been demolished since March, most of them one-storey buildings occupied by refugees who lost their family homes in 1948.

Israel is a High Contracting Party to the Geneva Conventions. Yet its actions towards the Palestinians, regarded as "protected persons" under the Conventions, are in breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War. Article 33 states clearly that: "No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. ... Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited."