Palestinians facing Nazi-type action

"If the United States coughs, we catch cold," the Governor of Bank of England, Sir Eddie George said once. His comments, as you might have already guessed, were relating to the likely impacts of any form of U.S. economic recession on Europe, and indeed the world.

Unfortunately this is also true when the matter is political realities. But when the hawks in President George Walker Bush's administration have channelled their frustration at failing to apprehend Al Qaida's Osama bin Laden into a desire to attack Iraq, Europe and the world have followed.

Now sadly, with all the ongoing sabre-rattling over Saddam Hussain every minute of the hour, no one listens to the voices of despair emanating from, or the atrocities happening daily in, the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Let us start from the Nazi-like statement by the Israel's Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon who believes the Palestinians demography is "like cancer" which needs "amputation or chemotherapy."

Answering questions by the Israel's Ha'aretz, General Ya'alon says: "The characteristics of the Palestinian threat are invisible, like cancer. When you are attacked externally, you see the attack, you are wounded. Cancer on the other hand, is something internal. Therefore, I find it more disturbing, because here the diagnosis is critical."

He goes on: "If the diagnosis is wrong and people say it's not cancer but a headache, then the response is irrelevant. But I maintain that it is cancer. My professional diagnosis is that there is a phenomenon here that constitutes an existential threat."

Whether Ya'alon sees his current policy in Occupied Palestinian Territories, in a way as if he is applying chemotherapy, he says "yes" and adds: "There are all kinds of solutions to cancerous manifestations. Some will say it is necessary to amputate organs. But at the moment I am applying chemotherapy."

Later on in the interview he explains: "They (the Palestinians) believe that time is on their side and that, with a combination of terrorism and demography, they will tire us out and wear us down."

Now with open backing by Israel's Premier Ariel Sharon, the "demography" part of the threat in Ya'alon's view means that each and every Palestinian is a cancerous cell that has to be eliminated. To be a demographic threat, one needs do nothing: you only need to be Palestinian.

The earth has not moved in a protest to these Nazi-type remarks by obviously an ambitious chief of staff.

Unlike what happened to one of Ya'alon's predecessors, namely General Raphael Eitan, Israel's Chief of Staff at the time of 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when Sharon himself was a defence minister.

Presenting his credentials to the Israeli public as a extreme right-wing politician, Eitan told the New York Times, April 14, 1983: "When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle."

Eitan at the time was shunned by many people inside Israel and the world at large, including UK's Foreign Office and the U.S. State Department.

Apart from a handful of human rights NGOs, there is hardly any voice of protest against the unequivocal Nazi comments made by Ya'alon.

If we look into another area of distress in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the daily human suffering of what seems to becoming "helpless and forgotten" Palestinian people, the situation is miserably and dangerously grave.

By the end of the first week of September a city under Israeli occupation, Nablus, had been under curfew for 77 days continuously. The population has been allowed to leave their houses for a total of only 56 hours during this period.

A day earlier, according to the Palestine Monitor, five international volunteers in Nablus were arrested by the Israeli army and taken to Ariel settlement (later deported). No official protest was made by any of these internationals governments.

Also in Nablus, two days earlier the Israeli army deported two Palestinians to Gaza. This followed a bizarre ruling by Israel's High Court of Justice that the two could be "legally relocated" for two years.

The decision was taken on the basis of the sibling-ness of the two to Ali Ajouri who was extra-judicially killed by the Israeli army on August 6 for his connection with suicide bombing.

Yet and despite the anger expressed by some human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, no official or government protests have been heard.

In an assassination attack in the neighbourhood of Jenin, five Palestinians were killed in Tubas when two Apache helicopters fired a number of missiles at a car. Among the killed were a six-year old girl and a 14-year-old boy who were playing in the vicinity of the attack. The intended "target" of the attack escaped unharmed.

Another ugly killing took place in Beni Na'im, near Hebron, where four Palestinian workers were shot and killed in a cold-blooded murder by the Israeli troops. They were working nightshift at a factory when five Israeli soldiers appeared. Then they were handcuffed and beaten severely by the soldiers before they were shot.

All this happened in one week which saw 17 Palestinians killed in all. Also this week, four houses in Silwan village and Ras Al 'Amoud were confiscated. Three were closed down and the fourth was demolished. The houses belong to families of four Hamas members detained in Israeli prison accused of attacking Israeli targets.

Israel is continuing, at full speed, its policy of collective punishment under the world's nose, and hardly anyone is raising a finger.

Mustapha Karkouti is the former president, Foreign Press Association in London.