[News] Britain's Duplicity - Israel's Raid on the Jericho Jail

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/cook03152006.html
March 15, 2006


Britain's Duplicity


Israel's Raid on the Jericho Jail

By JONATHAN COOK

In the looking-glass world of Middle East politics, it is easy to 
forget that Ahmad Saadat, the imprisoned Palestinian leader Israel 
summarily arrested in Jericho late on Tuesday, is wanted for 
masterminding the killing of the Jewish state's most notorious racist 
politician-general.

Rehavam Zeevi, head of the Central Command in the late 1960s and 
early 1970s, personally developed and managed Israel's brutal regime 
in the newly occupied West Bank. After retiring from the battlefield, 
he waged a relentless war against "the Arabs" on the political front. 
His Moledet party, founded in the 1980s, advocated the ethnic 
cleansing of Palestinians from Greater Israel--in other words, from 
Israel and the occupied territories.

His thinking became so acceptable after the outbreak of the intifada 
that he was appointed tourism minister in Ariel Sharon's first 
cabinet. Maybe Sharon thought that, with Zeevi for company, he really 
might start to look like a man of peace.

Zeevi's killing by gunmen in a Jerusalem hotel in 2001 was about as 
close as the Palestinians have managed to get to emulating an 
Israeli-style targeted assassination--with the difference that, in 
the Palestinian operation, no bystanders were killed.

Israelis were, and still are, horrified by the killing of Zeevi, with 
most taking the view that the Palestinians broke all the rules of 
engagement in targeting an elected politician. That neatly ignores 
the point that Zeevi's death was retribution for Israel's earlier 
assassination of a widely respected Palestinian politician, Abu Ali 
Mustafa, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

But what is sauce for the goose was never going to be sauce for the gander.

Ahmad Saadat, Mustafa's successor and the man blamed by Israel for 
Zeevi's killing, raced to the top of the army's wanted list. Under 
international pressure, the Palestinian Authority, in the days before 
it was entirely dismembered by the Israeli army, arrested him.

To prevent his targeting for assassination by Israel, and in the vain 
hope of winning a reprieve for Yasser Arafat from his effective house 
arrest in Ramallah, the Palestinian leadership brokered a deal with 
Britain and the United States in 2002. The two countries agreed to 
provide monitors to guarantee Saadat's confinement in the tiny West 
Bank town of Jericho, in the sun-baked lowlands of the Jordan Valley.

Four years later, on Tuesday morning, Britain reneged on its 
understandings with the Palestinians and quit Jericho, but not before 
telling Israel it was going. As if waiting for its cue, Israeli 
armour rolled into Jericho at once to capture Saadat and a handful of 
other wanted men.

To Palestinians, the British broken promise, as well as the hasty 
exit from Jericho and apparent collusion with Israel, all smacked a 
little too painfully of other episodes of British foreign policy in 
the Middle East. There were echoes of 1956 and London's pact during 
the Suez Crisis with Israel on the invasion of Egypt. And there were 
echoes too of 1948, when Britain hurriedly abandoned Palestine, 
though not before it had effectively fulfilled the Balfour 
Declaration's promise of creating a Jewish homeland by allowing 
hundreds of thousands of Jews to immigrate.

That in large part explains the outpouring of rage from Gaza to 
Ramallah on Tuesday, as well as the kidnapping of foreigners. 
Britain's duplicity was a reminder--if it was needed--that nothing 
has changed in a century of Western "diplomacy".

So what was Britain's defence of its inflammatory action? According 
to foreign minister Jack Straw, Britain had no choice but to pull the 
monitors out of Jericho because of growing concerns for their safety.

That will have sounded more than hollow to Palestinians. The intifada 
has all but passed Jericho by. With a population of about 15,000, it 
is the quietest place in the West Bank and Gaza. During the decades 
of Israeli occupation it earnt a unflattering reputation as the 
dumping ground for small-time collaborators, the ones Israel did not 
reward with safe haven in its own territory.

Jericho is a small Palestinian island in a sea of Israeli occupation. 
Most of the Jordan Valley has been entirely controlled by Israel for 
decades. According to reports in the Hebrew media, Israel is poised 
to announce the Valley's annexation sometime after its elections 
later this month.

Around Jericho itself the Israeli army has dug a deep ditch to 
prevent all unauthorised movement in and out of the city. And beyond 
that is the busy "settlers' highway" through the occupied Jordan 
Valley, linking Jerusalem with the north of Israel, officially known 
as Gandhi's Road--after Rehavam Zeevi. He earned the nickname 
"Gandhi" as a skinny youth in the army.

In fact Jericho has been so peaceful during the intifada that six 
months ago, Israel reopened it to tourism, allowing package tours to 
pass through the Israeli-manned checkpoint on the only route into the 
city. I myself have visited the city on several recent occasions, 
staying in its hotels and enjoying their open-all-year swimming 
pools. What is apparently safe for tourists and journalists is not 
safe enough for British officials.

The problem now is that Straw's "concerns" about safety may become 
self-fulfilling. A backlash against foreigners is as certain as the 
attack on Tuesday against the British Council offices in Gaza. There 
are few tourists in the West Bank any longer, particularly since 
Israel made entering so difficult with the construction of its wall. 
But there are still a significant number of foreigners working for 
humanitarian organisations.

Their presence is important. Many of the organisations themselves 
have become little more than sticking plasters, unable to cope with 
the festering sores of Palestinian life under an ever-more 
restrictive occupation. But having foreigners living in Ramallah, 
Nablus and Hebron offers an insurance policy--even if a small and 
inadequate one--against more reckless Israeli army incursions. At the 
very least, foreigners can bear witness.

There would be nothing worse than the West Bank--after Israel's 
limited withdrawals and the completion of its wall--becoming a tiny 
Palestinian ghetto-state, one where neither the international media 
nor aid workers dare venture. There is also nothing that would 
satisfy Israel more.

Jonathan Cook, a British journalist living in Nazareth, is the author 
of "<http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=224729>Blood 
and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State", 
published by Pluto Press next month. His website is 
<http://www.jkcook.net/>www.jkcook.net.


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