Israel Launches Brutal
New Offensive

U.S. Gives Full Backing

by Phyllis Bennis

Hanan Bannourah, with her father and son says, "The Israelis bulldozed our first home in 1991. We saved and saved to build our new home" together with other Palestinian members of the Greek Orthodox Church in Beit Sahour. Just as the homes were being completed on Church land, the Israelis told them they are illegal and will be destroyed.

Protected by the U.S., Israel is ramping up the ferocity of its illegal occupation to new levels.

The offensive is so brutal that Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, chief of staff of the Israeli armed forces, and four former heads of Israel's security service publicly criticized their government's hard-line policies. Hundreds of Israeli fighter pilots and reservists have publicly refused to participate in "illegal and immoral attacks" on Palestinians. Some have been sent to jail.

The Bush administration, almost alone in the world, was unwavering in its support for Israel's latest offensive--even though the offensive has torpedoed its "road map to peace in the Middle East." Scattered Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians did not help matters.

In October and November, Israel escalated military assaults on Palestinian towns, cities and refugee camps. Israel even deployed U.S.-supplied F-16 bombers and helicopter missiles to attack Palestinians in Nuseirat and Rafah refugee camps, both in the Gaza Strip. The blitz left numerous dead and wounded, and hundreds of people homeless.

According to Amnesty International, "the repeated practice by the Israeli army of deliberate and wanton destruction of homes and civilian property is a grave violation of international human rights and humanitarian law, notably of Articles 33 and 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and constitutes a war crime."

In violation of the road map's call for a freeze on settlement activity, the Sharon government announced plans to build 11,806 housing units in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip by the end of 2003.

MASSIVE LAND GRAB

Under the guise of security, Israel is conducting a massive land grab of Palestinian agricultural acreage and water by constructing what Palestinians call the "Apartheid Wall." The Wall separates Israel from the West Bank but confiscates much Palestinian territory onto the Israeli side.

When combined with land already seized by Israel for settlements, the Wall will expropriate more than half of the West Bank. According to a new UN report, it will trap more than 200,000 Palestinians on what will become the Israeli side of the Wall and disrupt the lives of one-third of all Palestinians. When complete, the wall will divide Palestinian land into a patchwork of ghettos, cantons and military zones separated by Israeli soldiers and checkpoints.

The Wall is so massive that, after the Great Wall of China, it is only the second human-made object visible from space.

Secretary of State Colin Powell has voiced some criticism of Israel's Wall. But, despite congressional authorization to do so, the Bush administration refused to deduct anything from its multi-billion dollar Israeli loan guarantees to press the Sharon government to stop Wall construction. It also vetoed the 14-1 UN Security Council vote protesting the Wall as a violation of international law.

The U.S. likewise vetoed the Security Council's unanimous denunciation of Israel's publicly announced plan to kill or otherwise remove duly elected Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

U.S. support for Israel appears boundless. As the U.S. Campaign Against Israeli Occupation points out at www.endtheoccupation.org, "each year Israel--the 17th largest economy in the world with the world's 4th largest military--receives approximately $3 billion [per year] from U.S. taxpayers. In April 2003, Congress authorized an additional $9 billion in loan guarantees to Israel. Israel stands in violation of at least 43 United Nations resolutions, and has been protected from many more by the U.S. veto on the Security Council."

Phyllis Bennis is author of Before and After: U.S. Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis and a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.

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