The catastrophe lives on for Palestinians

Our Associate Editor Today Palestinians are observing the anniversary of nakba or catastrophe to mark the creation on May 15, 1948, of the state of Israel. As if a reminder of the circumstances in which Israel came into being, Israeli troops shot dead five Palestinians policemen in the West Bank on Sunday and launched a fierce bombardment in Gaza. Israeli ships off the coast fired at Palestinian police posts and helicopter gunships rained missiles on armoured cars. More than 15 Palestinians were injured in Gaza.

This carnage also coincided with the visit to Washington of Mahmud Abbas, the number two man in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), signifying perhaps last ditch efforts by Arafat to get the political process back on track. Abbas will meet U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and discuss the turbulent situation prevailing in occupied territories. He will also discuss with American officials the Mitchell Report which has evoked a very positive reaction from Powell. Israeli settlements constitute a central topic of the report.

Once again it has come down to the settlements issue. The Mitchell report has brought into focus this burning problem which Israel refuses to acknowledge and Palestinians refuse to compromise on. The Mitchell Commission, headed by former American senator George Mitchell has clearly stated in its report that a freeze on settlements is essential for a peaceful settlement between Palestinians and Israelis. This is as categoric as an American-led commission can be. But Israel has made short shrift of the report.

The settlements issue goes to the heart of Palestinian grievances. It began after the 1967 war when Israel, according to a well thought out policy began to encourage its citizens to settle on land, West Bank and Gaza Strip, snatched from Syria and Jordan. Over the years, these illegal settlements on Palestinian land have kept on increasing. According to a BBC report, there are now 150 such Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The same report says that since the 1993 Oslo Accords, Jewish settlers in occupied land have increased by 70 per cent, from 125,000 to 200,000. This is in addition to the 200,000 Israelis living in 11 settlements in East Jerusalem. Similarly, 40,000 illegal houses have been built by these settlers, helped by Israeli governments, in the same period.

Now Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon says the expansion of settlements will continue. There is near-universal condemnation of this policy, but no government in Tel Aviv has allowed this pressure to alter it. There can be no greater mockery of international law or global public opinion. But Israel is unaffected.

The settlement issue is only one manifestation of Israel's attitude towards the world in general and Palestinians in particular. Israel draws the motivation and justification for every action, right or wrong, from a twisted interpretation of its history and a warped view of its own position in the global scheme of things.

The belief that "we are the chosen people" has been so deeply entrenched in the Israeli psyche that it overrides all legal and moral restraints. It places Israel, as far as Israelis are concerned, above all worldly constraints and beyond the reach of international law. As a result, the world has to deal with a country which lives by the rule that if it feels something is right, it is.

And so Israel gets away with murder, literally. No other country in the world, including America, could be so blatant in its crimes, and live them down with ease. The story of Israel thus is a story of crimes gone unpunished. It forcibly occupies land it does not own, drives its inhabitants out and says it is now the proud owner. Then it refuses to give heed to international law which says those driven out must have at least some of their land back. When the legal residents demand their land and their rights, they are branded terrorists, killed and their homes destroyed.

It is a grisly tale which continues to unfold on a daily basis. Each new day brings fresh tragedy. The threshold of pain and suffering meted out to Palestinians is now increasing daily and nothing is sacred as far as Israel is concerned. Four month old babies are killed, activists are assassinated in cold blood, homes are bulldozed with impunity, tanks are used against unarmed civilians, rockets are fired at refugee camps and helicopter gunships blast places of abode. Complete mayhem is let loose, defying all norms of civility and honour. Yes honour, because even in wars there is a sense of honour. But for Israel all these concepts are alien, all laws inapplicable and all Palestinians sub-human.

Nations with such psyche don't make peace, they enforce their diktat and call it peace. This is a fundamental point which explains to a great extent why the Oslo peace process is now in tatters and why a new peace track remains an obscure possibility.

Palestinians have limited options. They can roll over and play dead; they can settle for crumbs thrown their way and call it an "independent state"; they can latch themselves to the whims of United States and hope to get the best deal possible; or they can, like Hezbollah, fight.

Whichever option they choose will depend a great deal on where they can locate the point which joins ideology with practicality. Yasser Arafat knows Israelis better than perhaps anyone else. His lengthy dealings with America have also given him insight into how the Washington establishment thinks. He knows his limitations, and theirs too. But he also knows that Palestinians are fed up of these limitations and the political games they produce.

If there is any new factor in the violent Palestinian-Israeli equation, it is this anger directed at all those who have failed to give the Palestinians the one thing they seek: justice. Anger is a potent force, but it become lethal when channelised in a coherent direction. One clear outcome of this widespread anger is the 'radicalisation' of the Palestinian street, and thus the increasing relevance of organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah.

This contrasts sharply with the disillusionment that Palestinians feel about the Palestinian authority. It is now seen as a corrupt and inefficient organisation whose agenda has lost its steam, and its coherence, somewhere down the line. Ditto for its chairman.

The situation is exacerbated by Sharon. If the political process had any chance at all, that has been completely destroyed by Sharon's gung-ho approach towards the whole issue. By launching an undeclared war against the Palestinians, he has forced them to match escalation in order to defend against aggression. What we are looking at therefore is a sustained and bloody conflict whose flames may spread far and wide.

The real danger lies in the fact that there is no one controlling the spiralling chain of events. Washington's power lay in its ability to decisively influence both the Israeli prime minister and Arafat. Radicals on both side remained on the fringe. With the Bush administration's "hands off" policy, this influence is waning. Sharon, for instance, has refused to stop the expansion of settlements despite Washington's unfavourable reaction.

On the other side, Arafat failure to deliver on anything and his lack of a clear agenda has weakened his position among hi