http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/30/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast
Hebron's orphans
Harassment by the Israeli authorities
leaves Palestinians angry and despairing.
Could that be the intention?
All comments (194)
* Seth Freedman
*
o Seth Freedman
o guardian.co.uk,
o Monday June 30, 2008
o Article history
Sitting in the courtyard of one of
the orphanages facing closure by the
Israeli Defence Force,
Rasheed admitted he'd all but lost
hope of preventing demise of the
institution in which he's worked
for 12 years.
"I want to ask the Israeli
public one simple question,"
said Rasheed,
who teaches English to the orphans.
"'Do you want to live in
peace with the Palestinians?'
If the answer is yes,
then they need to know they're
not taking the right track here
[by shutting down the orphanages
and attacking the Islamic
Charitable Society,
which administers them].
This method plays into
the hands of Hamas,
Islamic Jihad,
and the other extremists;
no one here will just sit
back and watch the collapse
of their community."
The ongoing saga of the orphanages
has seen several raids by the army
on ICS-affiliated businesses and
schools,
and severely weakened the charity's
ability to continue its desperately
needed pastoral care in Hebron.
The army claims ICS is a front for Hamas,
but has not provided a shred of evidence
for the assertion.
"Sometimes they say we're funded by Hamas,
other times they say we're funding Hamas,"
noted Rasheed drily.
Despite an appeal to the Israeli courts,
the judge handling the case has refused
to discuss the matter again until October.
In the meantime,
the army's punitive measures
against the charity continue.
"They've served more eviction
notices on the schools and welded
shut the doors;
they've raided nurseries and
taken away the children's
birth certificates;
and at the same time ICS
is facing financial [meltdown],"
said Rasheed.
"Last month we only got
40% of our salaries,
and this month we may
not get paid at all."
Even if the army doesn't physically
shut down the entire ICS network,
he said,
they would eventually force its
closure via a process of economic
strangulation.
"The boys have been asking me
if they'll ever see me again
after the summer vacation," he added,
"|and I don't have an answer for them."
Rasheed anticipates further
raids over the holidays,
despite the ceasefire brokered
between Hamas and Israel in Gaza.
"The military are very stubborn,
and they aren't prepared to back
down on this issue."
Despite the crippling tactics
of the Israeli authorities,
Rasheed is keen to differentiate
between the actions of Israeli
officialdom and the man on
the Israeli street.
"Rabbi Ascherman [of Rabbis for Human Rights]
has been fantastic in his sup****t,
and so have many others from within Israel."
"I believe that the soldiers who
raided the sewing workshop and
threw the equipment in the city
dump are not truly Jewish.
We in ICS know the difference
between Zionism and Judaism.
However, when it comes to the army,
I believe that if all of the Palestinians
left the West Bank and fled to Jordan,
the IDF would follow us all the way to Amman."
"It's not a case of 'the Arabs will
throw the Israelis into the sea',",
he said,
"but more a case of them
throwing us into the sea."
He added that the Israeli government
loved to complain of Palestinians
sending their children to be suicide
bombers,
"yet they do everything possible
to encourage this to happen".
"I have never even thrown a rock;
I just want a peaceful life,"
said Rasheed.
"I've got a wife and two
daughters to look after,
but the army are suffocating us.
This used to be a rich city;
now over 70% of the residents
live in poverty.
I don't let myself dwell
on my daughters' future,
because it's too depressing.
If one of them met a man living
abroad who asked me for their
hand in marriage,
I would say 'mabrouk, yalla'
and be delighted for them."
Making life so intolerable
for the Palestinians that
they up and leave their
ancestral home is as
effective a tactic as
any to cleanse the land
of undesirables,
and leave the field open for
Israeli settlers to fill
the void.
Rasheed believes that the Israeli
authorities are doing everything
in their power to undermine the
moderates in Palestinian society
in order to drive the public into
the welcoming arms of the extremists.
"When [prime minister] Fayed -
sent PA police to patrol Jenin,
the IDF raided the area the
same night," he said.
"They do whatever they can to weaken
the PA in the eyes of the Palestinians.
Is this how to sup****t the moderates?"
Similar thinking appears to be
behind the case of the orphanages.
Appeals by EU politicians,
UN representatives,
activists in Israel,
and even Israeli judges
have all fallen on deaf ears,
leaving the residents of Hebron
under no illusions about the
type of opponent with which
they are dealing.
If all proper channels of
intervention turn out to
be culs-de-sac,
then it's little wonder that
the locals turn to the only
groups offering to defend
their honour,
namely the militants of
Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
That the hounding of ICS and
its charitable work in the
community is abhorrent is
in no doubt.
What is questionable, however,
is the mindset of the officials
who are giving the army carte
blanche to to carry out such
a cruel operation.
Instead of weakening Hamas
(who they have still not
proved are connected to ICS),
they are strengthening them
with every raid on the weak
and defenceless orphans.
Assuming those in the upper
echelons of power are no fools,
it would seem there is something
far more sinister behind their
desire to radicalise the
Palestinian public.
As I wrote last week,
it appears that there is a
burning desire to create
what they fear,
in order to give their relentless
campaign of occupation and oppression
at least some modi*** of justification.
How long they can continue to fool
all of the people all of the time,
however, is another question.
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