Once Again, Palestinians Must Die for Attention

At least 13 Palestinians have been killed and dozens wounded in confrontations with Israeli security forces in the West Bank and Gaza in the past 10 days. This violence can come as a surprise to no one who has traveled in those Israeli-occupied areas in recent months. If it continues, it could force American policy-makers--even in an election year--to reconsider the United States’ very permissive policy toward the Israeli occupation of those areas.

On a roadway near Bethlehem, in the West Bank, a stretch of 25-foot-high wire fence symbolizes the situation of the occupied areas’ 1.2 million Palestinian residents. Trapped behind the fence are the thousands of residents of the Dehaisheh Palestinian refugee camp. In front of the fence, Israelis living in the increasingly lush settlements burgeoning on nearby hills drive along with apparent ease, secure from the stones that Dehaisheh boys once used to throw at them.

For two decades now, Palestinians have lived under Israeli military rule. During that period the West Bankers have been allowed two elections, at the municipal level only, and the Gazans none. And after the second of the West Bank elections brought to the city halls a crop of mayors dedicated to broadening the fight for Palestinian rights, those mayors were summarily unseated--or deported--by the Israeli administration, to be replaced with Israeli appointees.

The Israeli administration of the territories has been described over the past few years as “civilian.” But in reality it is staffed by Israel Defense Forces officers, controlled by the Defense Ministry and backed up by the armed might of the IDF.

Under Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the ministry has reinstated the practice of allowing security forces to detain Palestinian nationalist suspects for up to six months without formally charging them or bringing them to trial. It has also resumed the deportation of key community leaders, which is expressly forbidden by the Geneva conventions concerning the protection of civilian populations in time of war.

Meanwhile, the scores of thousands of Israeli settlers who have moved into the territories come under normal civilian Israeli jurisdiction. (This Kafka-esque situation has been described by Israeli researcher Meron Benvenisti, in a direct allusion to South Africa, as “a herrenvolk democracy.”)

The major demand of the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza is simply that the Israelis leave. One politically astute Palestinian friend said that he would accept the sponsorship of any Arab regime, even distant Qatar, that could negotiate an Israeli withdrawal.

U.S. policy toward the occupied areas was forcefully expressed in September, 1982, when President Reagan unveiled a peace plan that explicitly ruled out Israeli annexation of the territories. The plan prescribed instead a joint Palestinian-Jordanian administration there. That plan remains U.S. policy--as does a U.S. commitment to U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which envisages an exchange of land for peace along all of Israel’s frontiers.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir rejects the notion that Resolution 242 applies in the West Bank and Gaza. He has been stubborn in his rejection of the 1982 peace plan. He scuttled recent efforts by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to move toward an Israeli-Jordanian peace effort that would have been conducted, at Jordan’s insistence, behind the fig leaf of an international conference.

And what has all this rejectionism brought to Israel under Shamir’s tenure? Ever-increasing levels of U.S. aid, with each Israeli man, woman and child now subsidized to the annual tune of around $1,000. Attempts by various administrations to control this aid drain have regularly been reversed by Congress, many of whose members seem addicted to the support of pro-Israeli political-action committees from around the country.

In Israel, debate over the territories has split the country along political lines. On the right, those who advocate annexation are increasingly open in adding that this might involve the “transfer” of some of the Palestinian population. On the left, many of those committed to traditional Labor Zionism’s ideals of having a society that is both Jewish and just advocate speeding up negotiations for an Israeli pullback. This latter group includes such luminaries as Abba Eban, former ambassador to the United Nations.

Lately the debate has been stimulated by a realization that continued control will only bring Israel a mounting demographic problem. Already there are more Arab children under age 4 in the area under government control (including Israel) than there are Jewish children of that age.

The Reagan Administration has notably abstained from trying to influence the Israeli debate (though it has interfered quite openly in Israeli economic policy). That has left the field open for Shamir and his rejectionists.

But now Palestinian activism might force American politicians to throw their weight into the Israeli debate. At the very least, American presidential candidates should pledge to uphold the human rights of the territories’ Palestinians, including those guaranteed by the Geneva conventions. They should also join the international consensus on the urgency of real negotiations over the territories’ long-term political status.

In that way the fence might one day come down from around Dehaisheh.