Rocks and guns, an uneven battle

The Israelis have one of the world's most formidable military machines equipped with state-of-the-art, US-supplied weapons systems which can out-shoot any combination of Arab armies in the Middle East.

Last week, Israel deployed some of its helicopter gunships and battle tanks with devastating effect against the mostly unarmed Palestinians. 

The scenes were reminiscent of a shoot-em-up Hollywood action movie as the bombings of a residential complex by the Israelis and the killings of three Israeli soldiers by a Palestinian mob were caught live.

As televison footage unfolded across millions of homes, the only handy weapons at the disposal of the Palestinians were rocks and stones. But the stockpiles of these home-made weapons seemed inexhaustible.

The New York Times reported that an Arab businessman in Dubai ran a newspaper ad announcing plans to ship some 50 truckloads of stones and 500,000 slingshots for use by Palestinian protesters.

Unlike regulations governing military supplies, the shipment didn't need either an export license or an end-user certificate.

Just before the first Palestinian uprising broke out in 1989, the Israeli government launched a vigourous tourist promotion drive in neighbouring Cyprus.

Extolling the virtues of the biblical land, the ad urged Cypriots to visit Israel, described as "only a stone's throw" from Cyprus.

But the ad was frantically pulled out of circulation when the unintended message literally hit closer to home. 

As rocks and stones came raining heavily on the Israelis last week, the violence kept escalating resulting in the killings of over 90 Palestinians over a two week period

With that, the US-brokered Middle East peace process was beginning to unravel.

Ali Abunimah of the Arab-American Action Network said that it was entirely predictable that the killing of the three Israeli soldiers would produce banner headlines and moral outrage of a kind that has been all but absent during two weeks of massacre of unarmed civilians by Israeli troops. 

The US bluntly ruled out any action by the UN Security Council to contain the spiraling violence — even as Secretary-General Kofi Annan was on a peace mission in the Middle East.

US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke told reporters that Washington will "strongly oppose" any attempts to bring the issue before the 15-member Security Council.

Any negative resolution, Holbrooke warned, will have an "explosive" effect on the situation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza.

"We have made this abundantly clear to our friends and colleagues in the Security Council," he added.

The new round of violence also threatened to derail the delicate negotiations being conducted by Annan who met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Describing the Security Council inaction as "scandalous", Ambassador Nasser al-Kidwa, Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations, said that the Council refuses to act "only when it concerns Palestinians" - implying the heavy political pressure exerted by Israel which prevents any action by the United States.

As a result of the influence the Jewish lobby wields in American politics, the US has always been viewed as a proxy for Israel whenever it wields its veto power in the Security Council on matters relating to the Palestinians. 

Last week the US abstained on a resolution which deplored "the provocation carried out at Al-Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem" where a visit by right-wing Likud leader Ariel Sharon was the spark that set off the riots in the occupied territories.

The original draft resolution, which called for an international commission of inquiry to probe the violence, was watered down to avoid a US veto.

The New York Times reported that President Clinton had asked to delay the vote for 24 hours so he could get personally involved.

The Times quoted unnamed American officials as saying that only after the Israelis gave their blessings did Washington go ahead— and abstained.

Holbrooke described the resolution as "biased, one-sided and unhelpful." "With that resolution, the Security Council effectively ended its usefulness in the Middle East crisis," he added

While Washington strongly supported Annan's peace efforts, he said, any session of the Security Council will only jeopardise the Secretary-General's mission. A Council session, he said, will not help peace in the region.

But Phyllis Bennis, Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, argues that the United Nations is the right venue for resolving the Middle East crisis— and it always has been.

"It is an international crisis that must be resolved by international law and the international community. 

The US should step back and let the UN do its job," she says.

But that is not likely to happen because the UN has always been marginalized by the US on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Editorial/ Opinion Contents