For the Right of Self-determination of the Palestinian People

For almost 55 years now, the state of Israel, backed by the United States, has waged a brutal war of aggression and occupation against the Palestinian people. Israel’s war against the Palestinian people is one of the most flagrant examples of the dogged determination of US imperialism to ignore international opinion and support the bloody and cruel suppression of a people in order to pursue its policy of hegemony. As CPI(M) pointed out in the past, the Oslo agreements of 1993 did not constitute a "peace process". They were used, in practice, by Israel to subvert UN Resolution 242, to push the Palestinian people into isolated enclaves, to legitimize continued Israeli settlement and massive infrastructure projects in the occupied territories, to deny the Palestinian people their right to Jerusalem, and to strangle the socio-economic viability of the Palestinian enterprise. The Palestinian Authority, far from being permitted to exercise autonomous authority, was expected to participate, ironically, in policing the aspirations of the Palestinian people themselves for self-determination, independence, a distinct national identity and a decent standard of living. By the end of the 1990s, the situation had reached a flashpoint. The spark of the second Intifada was lit on September 29, 2000. Ariel Sharon (then leader of the opposition), in an act of provocation designed to bring on a fresh round of revolt and repression, came to the Haram-al-Sharif compound in Jerusalem, home of the Al-Aqsa mosque, surrounded by hundreds of riot police and a handful of die-hard Likud Party colleagues. Before the day was out, what was to become the second Intifada had begun. Over the 18 months since the second Intifada began, Israel has perpetrated with US support and arms and financial aid, a policy of unprecedented barbarity against the Palestinian people. It has used Apache helicopter gunships, F-16 fighters, artillery, tanks and infantry to kill and maim Palestinian people, to destroy the infrastructure in Palestinian territories and, indeed, to confine Yaser Arafat in house arrest and, most recently, to destroy his office and office compound. It has pursued a carefully planned policy of extermination of key Palestinian leaders. Arafat himself, addressing the NAM meeting in May 2001, described the "war of destruction and annihilation" that threatens the "lives, property and human and national rights" of the Palestinian people. "All this", he added, "is in addition to what the Palestinians are exposed to as a result of the ongoing military escalation from the land, sea and air." By early March 2002, the official death toll of the second Intifada was 1,443 persons, of whom 1093 were Palestinians. Israeli ruthlessness has known no bounds: among those killed by security forces and settlers include defenceless civilians, pregnant women and children and they were killed by direct fire and shrapnel, and even bludgeoned and clubbed to death. By the beginning of this year, more than 11,000 had been injured, 1,500 of whom were permanently crippled. In the first year of the Intifada, the revenues of the Palestinian Authority declined by 57 per cent. While 46 per cent of the Palestinian population lived under the poverty line of $ 2 a day, Israel refused to pay $ 350 million in taxes that it owed to the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian authorities put the overall unemployment rate among the Palestinian work-force at 60 per cent. Special mention must be made of the role of Ariel Sharon, Israel’s current Prime Minister, in the new round of repression. Sharon has been characterized by, among others, Prof. Noam Chomsky, as a war criminal whose record of crimes goes back 49 years to 1953. He is also the person who, as Defence Minister in 1982, authorised the massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, in which 3,000 civilians are estimated to have been murdered. At present, the end-game of the Israeli regime ahs been characterized as having the following objectives: "topple Arafat even kill him, if the US would allow it, disorganise the Palestinian Authority, force as many Palestinians as possible to leave, choke the life-liens for the rest, establish a new system of local "chiefs". Though the latest Security Council Resolution 1397 speaks of a future scenario of two states – the existing Israel and Palestine – "within secure and recognised border", the question remains of an unconditional recognition of the right of the Palestinian people of self-determination and a distinct sovereign Palestinian state. In this connection, the Palestinian National Council pointed out that: "The occupation of Palestinian territory and parts of other Arab territory by Israeli force, the uprooting of the majority of Palestinians and their displacement from their homes by means of organized intimidation, and the subjection of the remainder to occupation, oppression and the destruction of the distinctive features of their national life, are a flagrant violation of the principle of legitimacy and of the Charter of the United Nations and its resolutions recognizing the national rights of the Palestinian people, including the right to return and the right to self-determination, independence and sovereignty over the territory of its homeland." From the time of India’s independence struggle, Indian public opinion was fully in favour of the Palestinian cause, but unfortunately, the present BJP-led NDA government’s pro-imperialist policy has departed from that and is not rendering the much-need support to the Palestinian people’s struggle and not condemning the Israeli barbarities. The 17th Congress of the CPI(M) re-asserts, therefore, the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people, and stands in solidarity with the struggle for an independent, sovereign Palestinian state, one that recognizes, inter alia, the right of return. No lasting peace can be established in West Asia until the establishment of a sovereign and independent Palestine.