Israeli soldiers murder in cold blood yet again

The brutal murder of an innocent 66-year old Palestinian man in his bed today has left another indelible stain on Israel’s already blood-stained image. This latest crime comes less than one week after a young Palestinian woman was killed by lethal tear gas fired by Israeli soldiers during a peaceful demonstration. Neither of these killings can be regarded as anything new; in fact, they confirm that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has now abandoned all pretence of having regard for human life. What else could explain the murder of an elderly man sleeping in his bed, except an appetite for murder? The victim’s son didn’t hear any shots and assumes that the killers used silencers on their guns; it looks and sounds as if this was a cold-blooded execution, with no effort made to establish the man’s identity. Clearly, those who carried out this crime did not feel constrained by moral principles or legal niceties. On the contrary, they appear to have been operating with a licence to kill Palestinians at will, despite the “regret” expressed by the Israeli military at the killing in Hebron.

The widespread anger within the Palestinian community at recent events is not directed solely at the Israeli occupation authorities. Many people across the occupied territories have laid the blame at the doors of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah, which collaborates with the Israeli occupiers on matters of Israeli security, regardless, it seems, of the deadly cost to the people of Palestine.

Accusations have been made by Palestinians across the West Bank that the Israelis and the PA – two sides of the same coin on these issues – operate a policy of “revolving door” detentions. When detainees are released by the Abbas-Fayyad PA security forces, they are immediately targeted by the Netanyahu-Lieberman government, and vice versa.

The murder of Omer Al-Qawasmi took place within hours of the PA releasing six prisoners who had been held in detention without charge; it was during the Israelis’ operation to re-arrest five of them that the 66-year old was shot and killed as he slept.

Palestinians, who have been politicised by years of resistance and struggle against alien domination, point out that there is now no clear division of roles between the occupying power and the PA which claims to represent those who are occupied.

The men who had been released on the orders of PA president Mahmoud Abbas had been on hunger strike for forty days when they were set free. The president’s political adversaries, Hamas, welcomed the decision as a positive step towards the resumption of reconciliation talks. The subsequent murder is a massive setback for such talks.

Israel’s re-arrest of the hunger-strikers casts the PA in the role of the other half of the occupation. The fact that Abbas had only ordered their release after pressure from the Amir of Qatar, one of his benefactors, has not gone unnoticed. All six men were on hunger strike in protest at their detention and had good reason to fear for their lives.

While the Abbas-Fayyad Palestinian Authority will continue to deny any involvement, this will not change the popular perception that the tragic murder of Omer Al-Qawasmi was one more bitter fruit of the “security coordination” between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli occupation.

Even if it had been the man wanted by Israel, Wael Al-Bitar, in that bed, should he have been executed summarily? In a normal country in which civilised standards of conduct and due process are followed, such an individual would be brought before a court of law and tried. Israel did not and does not bother with such procedures because there is no due process as far as Palestinians under the brutal occupation are concerned. Civil laws are there for Israelis; military force will do for the Palestinians.

If the usual crocodile tears are shed by the Israeli military as it goes ahead with an internal inquiry into Mr. Al-Qawasmi’s killing, his murderers will escape justice; that’s the way Israeli law works in the Wild West Bank, where “justice” for Palestinians comes out of the barrel of an Israeli gun. Who will benefit from this latest in a long line of extrajudicial killings? Almost certainly not the Israelis or their precious “security”; in as much as it would like to crush Hamas and see the end of all Palestinians in the West Bank – and nobody should be in any doubt that that is what political Zionism has been and remains aiming for – Israel will not succeed. The spontaneous outburst of anger at Omer Al-Qawasmi’s murder is a reminder that the Palestinians’ resolve to live on their own land is unbreakable.

The right-wing extremists in government in Israel and their fellow immigrants who now occupy the West Bank will not realise their dream of creating an “alternative” home for the Palestinians, on the other side of the River Jordan or elsewhere. Likewise, security cooperation with an occupier committed to the theft of more land will not deliver a Palestinian state for the Palestinian Authority. For this reason alone the PA will continue to lose credibility with its own people if, indeed, there is any left. It is already being said that the Abbas-Fayyad PA has moved beyond cooperation and entered a phase of integration with the occupation.

As for the League of Arab States and its individual members, some of whom still roll out the red carpet for the Israeli leadership, they must abandon their hypocrisy and short-sightedness. The time has come to take a principled stand, not in support of one faction against another, but in defence of the unprotected Palestinian people. If the cold-blooded murder of an elder cannot stir them into action, nothing will.