May 2002

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

The Real Aim of Occupation

Except from an article dated 4/27/02, by Uri Avnery of GUSH SHALOM <www.gush-shalom.org> which will appear in Hebrew in Ma'ariv.

I sneaked into Ramallah in order to see it for myself. A shocking sight, indeed. Take, for example, the Palestinian Ministry of Education. It is housed in an imposing building, probably going back to British times, a mixture of neo-Classic European and oriental styles. In front of it there was a rose garden--"was," because a tank has crisscrossed it, leaving only one purple rosebush in all its glory.

April 20, Copley Square © Ellen Shub

On the upper floor, where the archives and computers were housed, the destruction was total. The computers were taken apart and thrown on the floor, the safe blown open, the papers strewn around, the drawers emptied, the telephones crushed. Some of it was just plain vandalism. The money in the safe was stolen, the furniture upturned, the papers dispersed. But when one looked closer, the real aim of the operation became clear. All the hard disks were taken from the computers, all the important files taken away. Only empty shells remained. All the important contents of the ministry were taken: the lists of pupils, examination results, lists of teachers, the whole logistics of the Palestinian school system.

The Ministry of Health suffered the same fate. The hard disks that contained all the information, state of diseases, medical tests, lists of doctors and nurses, the logistics of the hospitals had been taken. Even the people most critical of the Palestinian Authority admitted that these two ministries, Education and Health, had been functioning well. They have been utterly destroyed.

This happened to virtually all the Palestinian government offices. Gone is the information pertaining to land registration and housing, taxes, and government expenditure, car tests and drivers' licenses, everything necessary for administrating a modern society. The lists of terrorists were not hidden in the land registration books, the inventory of bombs was not tucked away among the list of kindergarten teachers. The real aim is obvious: to destroy not only the Palestinian Authority, but Palestinian society itself: to push it back with one stroke from the stage of a modern state-in-the-making to the primitive society of Turkish times.

On that day I passed, with a group of Israeli peace activists, through the center of Ramallah--from the mass grave in the hospital parking lot to the besieged headquarters of Yasser Arafat. We carried Hebrew posters and encountered much sympathy and not a single sign of hostility. Even at this time, the Palestinians know the difference between the Israeli peace camp and those who are responsible for this brutal attack. Here, perhaps, lies the only glimmer of hope.

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