[News] Mustafa Barghouti: Occupation as withdrawal

[News at freedomarchives.org]

  Occupation as withdrawal

By: Dr. Mustafa Barghouti*

The evidence is piled high, yet some remain in denial, still believing 
Sharon plans to
"withdraw" from Gaza. Sharon himself never used the word "withdrawal", yet 
the word has spread
like wildfire. The international media invented it, the Arab media picked 
it up and Palestinian
officials seem to have believed it. Arab officialdom now acts as if 
"withdrawal" is just around
the corner.

All Sharon ever wanted to do was to turn Gaza into one enormous big prison. 
Sharon seeks to
surround the strip with Israeli forces on all sides and prevent its 
inhabitants from
communicating with the outside world by air, sea or land. Sharon dreams of 
a Gaza he can invade
and attack at will. This is his scheme. This is the alternative he offers 
to the roadmap and the
assortment of other "peace plans".

Sharon is working overtime to undermine any possibility of an independent 
Palestinian state. He
is using the apartheid wall to annex and Judaise 58 per cent of the West 
Bank. His methods are
simple. He is directing one military blow after another at the towns, 
villages and camps of the
West Bank and Gaza. Sharon wants to splinter the unity and struggle of the 
Palestinian people.
He wants to compromise the future of the occupied territories, from 
Jerusalem to Gaza. The
disengagement plan is his attempt to conceal his true intentions.

Sharon has repeatedly announced the death of the roadmap, by word and by 
deed. But none of this
has dissuaded the defeatists in our midst to cease their endless attempts 
to fit Sharon's scheme
into that same roadmap.

Sharon's tanks are rampaging through Jabalia and Beit Lahia, just as they 
did in Khan Yunis,
Rafah and Beit Hanun. The simple fact is that Sharon is doing to Gaza what 
he did to the West
Bank in2002 . He is reinstating the occupation, one step at a time, until 
he judges the time
ripe to re-impose complete occupation.

Sharon is not retaliating for Palestinian acts, as some claim. He has a 
clear strategy, and he
is justifying it with every possible excuse. His scheme is being put into 
action regardless of
anything the Palestinians say or do.

At the most recent Israeli cabinet meeting Sharon had wanted to call up 
reserves and wage
"Operation Protective Shield II", an operation to re-occupy Gaza entirely. 
His ministers
convinced him to carry out the plan in stages, as has been widely reported.

In Rafah, Israel has been demolishing homes, one row at a time, for the 
past two years. The
number of demolished houses now exceeds2 ,000. These are the brutal 
mechanics of ethnic
cleansing, aimed at widening the so-called Philadelphia corridor to 500 
metres and in doing so,
to sever all links between Gaza and Egypt.

Yet some people still think of taking part in the future management of 
Gaza, of acting as
policemen in this big Israeli prison. What is taking place in Gaza is not 
withdrawal, or the
preparation for a withdrawal. It is not even redeployment. What is 
happening in Gaza is the
reinstatement of full occupation, of apartheid and racial discrimination. 
It is an attempt to
reconfigure occupation and make it less costly to Israel. This is why 
Sharon wants to get the
settlers out, all of6 , 000of them. That gives him the freehand he needs to 
act with utmost
brutality in Gaza.

We don't need to react to Sharon. We don't need to react to him or his 
ideas. We need to boycott
Sharon. We need to reject his plans altogether. We need to send a clear 
message, to the Arabs
and the world, that we reject Sharon's schemes and intend to fight and 
defeat them. We need to
formulate a unified Palestinian stand. We want Sharon's government 
boycotted and placed under
sanctions for it is a government that has broken every law and norm.

As for the Palestinian dialogue, it has to focus on unifying our energies, 
on coordinating our
methods of struggle -- not on sharing a cake that exists only in the 
imagination of the
defeatists. The occupation is waging a full war against us and we have to 
confront this war with
unity and steadfastness.



* The writer is secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative.

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