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Much Like Auschwitz
Israel's regard for Palestinians can be summed up in how it
imprisons and terrorises them, writes Khaled Amayreh in the
occupied West Bank
By Khaled Amayreh
10/25/07 "Al-Ahram" --- - A few weeks ahead of the upcoming
"peace conference" in Annapolis, Maryland, Israel has been
displaying its "goodwill" towards the Palestinians. At the
notorious Kitziot Prison, a real concentration camp minus gas
chambers, crack Israeli soldiers have been ganging up on
helpless and fettered Palestinian prisoners, shooting, beating
and humiliating them under largely concocted pretexts.
On Monday 22 October, in the quiet hours before dawn, hundreds
of soldiers from two notoriously brutal army units, code-named
Nachshon and Massada, stormed the prisoner camp for what was
described as a "routine inspection". During these routine
inspections, inmates are forced to take off their clothes and
are subject to every imaginable form of humiliation. Whoever
protests is normally placed in open-ended solitary confinement.
Rudely awoken, Kitziot's estimated 1,200 inmates, already fed-up
with draconian punitive measures, decided to resist their
tormentors. According to one prisoner leader, this resistance
had not been planned, coming as an instinctive defensive reflex
to "obvious provocation".
Some prisoner leaders pleaded with the detention camp's
administration to wait until morning to carry out the impromptu
inspection. The administration's response came in the form of
bullets, sonic grenades (which the Israelis call stun grenades),
tear-gas and smoke bombs.
"I don't know what a Nazi concentration camp looked like, but I
imagine that Kitziot looked very much like a concentration camp
yesterday," said Abu Ahmed, a detainee from Hebron, who has been
languishing at the facility for nine months without charge or
trial.
Abu Ahmed, who was speaking via a smuggled mobile phone,
described the assault on the prisoners as "planned and
premeditated", calling Israeli claims that the soldiers were
only defending themselves against rioters "obscene lies meant to
cover up a criminal act".
The pogrom-like attack on the helpless Kitziot prisoners lasted
for more than two hours as a huge cloud of smoke hovered over
the area. When the dust settled, there were hundreds of
prisoners who suffered significant to serious wounds, mostly in
the head and upper body. At least nine inmates were severely
injured, including Mohamed Sati Al-Ashkar, who was hit with a
live round in the head, causing massive brain haemorrhage.
On 23 October, Al-Ashkar was pronounced clinically dead.
As is usual in such circumstances, the Israeli media and
government spokespersons switched to damage-control mode,
disseminating disinformation about what happened while barring
reporters access to the notorious facility.
Even serious newspapers like Haaretz played a role parroting
army propaganda that "violent clashes" took place between the
prisoners and guards and that only "non-lethal methods" were
used to disperse the protesting inmates.
The Israeli army has so far refused to reveal what it was that
killed Al-Ashkar, whether a sonic bomb that hit him on the head,
whether he was beaten with a club, or whether he was hit by
plastic-coated bullets. Usually the Israeli army waits several
days before issuing statements on such cases, seemingly to allow
any protest sentiment to die down.
The murder at Kitziot is only a small leitmotif of the ferocious
onslaught of repression being visited on Palestinians in the
occupied territories, where Israeli death squads continue to
roam and strike. This happens despite -- or partly as a result
of -- close security coordination between President Mahmoud
Abbas's "forces" and the Israeli occupation army.
The low-key reaction by the Abbas regime is already raising
eyebrows in the West Bank, with many seeing the Kitziot assault
and general terror under occupation as a means of "softening up"
the Palestinians ahead of Annapolis for a peace deal that fails
to meet minimum Palestinian expectations.
Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, Israel continues its slow-motion
genocide of the occupied territory's estimated 1.5 million
persecuted inhabitants. "Gaza is being sacrificed, is being
decapitated but slowly, while the Arabs are watching 'Babel
Hara' and the world is preoccupied with Iran and a peace
conference in America," said one unemployed worker who used to
work in construction in Israel, alluding to a popular Syrian TV
series screened during the Holy month of Ramadan.
Another man, a plasterer, also unemployed because Israel won't
allow raw materials, such as cement, into the Strip, insists on
more daring language. "I don't know why the world doesn't call
things by their real name. Here the Jews are starving us to
death. Gaza is a large concentration camp. It is very much like
Auschwitz. Yes, there are no gas chambers and crematoria. But
people are dying for lack of food and lack of medicine.
"And I am 100 per cent sure that hadn't it been for the world
media and international public opinion, or whatever is left of
it, Israel would have disposed of us a long, long time ago," the
worker added.
Earlier this week, Gazan hospitals faced an acute and critical
crisis when they ran out of nitrous oxide, vital for operations.
Eventually, an SOS by Gazan doctors embarrassed Israeli leaders,
who decided to allow, for the time being, passage of a small
amount of the gas, which Gazan doctors say will last only a few
weeks.
When talking to foreign media, Israeli leaders and spokespersons
claim the hermetic blockade of Gaza is a reaction to Hamas's
takeover of Gaza in mid-June, following sporadic clashes with
Fatah. A few weeks ago, Israel declared Gaza a "hostile entity",
as if the occupied coastal strip of land where poverty, despair
and occupation violence define daily life had been treated as a
friendly entity before.
Finally, Israel doesn't want to take sole responsibility for
exterminating the people of Gaza. The Israeli government has
been inciting the powerful Jewish lobby, which deeply influences
American policies and politics, to pressure Egypt to seal its
border with Gaza so that the concentration camp can be
perfected.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly
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