From uprising to war.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Salt, Jeremy
• Date: 01 January 2001

By the middle of 2001, the third Palestinian intifada (1) was no longer an intifada, or 'shaking', but a war. Not a civil war as Robert Fisk described it (2)--by definition there cannot be a civil war in a territory under occupation--but a colonial war between occupier and occupied.

The Middle East is giving every indication of heading towards a great calamity. The intifada does not just signal the end of a 'peace process', that was debauched from the beginning, it may well be the prelude to something infinitely worse than a colonial struggle in occupied territories. There is not one portent that is positive. Peace plans have been ineffectual. One plan, put together by President Mubarak and King Abdullah, was rejected by Israel because it called for a freeze on settlements as a necessary condition to the resumption of negotiations. Far from freezing settlements, the government of Israel is expanding them, announcing in April the forthcoming construction of 496 houses at Maale Adunim near Jerusalem and 212 at Alfe Menashe near Nablus. The rhetoric on both sides is consistent with the violence. While Palestinian leaders are ritualistically calling for an end to violence, the people are demanding weapons to defend themselves. As for the Israeli government, it has steadily calibrated the methods by which it is attempting to suppress the Palestinians. Its tools now include reoccupation of the patches of territory from which it has withdrawn its forces; the open assassination of Palestinians by missiles fired at their cars and booby-trapped phone boxes; the killing of demonstrators by sniper fire; the bombardment of refugee camps from land, sea and air; economic blockade and the destruction of citrus and olive crops; and the use of F16 fighter jets against Palestinian targets, for the first time since the 1967 war. Yet, despite this onslaught, as this article is being written the Palestinians have not broken.

This raises the question of what comes next. The Bush administration made it clear upon taking office that it would not become as closely involved in the Middle East as the Clinton administration had been, yet step by step it is being drawn back into the centre. Historically, the Republicans are more sensitive to Arab concerns, but a substantial change of direction is unlikely. Only recently nearly 300 members of Congress--200 from the house and 87 from the Senate--sent Bush a letter urging the reconsideration of aid to the Palestinian...