The run-up to the vote has been shadowed both by economic stagnation and by the conflict in the occupied territories, as Palestinians continue to react against the occupation and frequent military assaults mounted by the Israeli army.

In the West Bank town of Tulkarm, for example, as Israeli soldiers have reinforced their blockade of the city, youths calling themselves the "Striking Force" repeatedly hurl rocks at military patrols. On November 20, soldiers shot and killed one of these youths, 14-year-old Amr Qudsi, as he fled across rooftops. Army spokesmen claimed they had caught Qudsi throwing gasoline bombs. "They’re lying," said Saed, 15, who carried the wounded boy to an ambulance. "We only had stones." Similar scenes are repeated throughout the occupied territories.  
 
Leadership challenge
Sharon faces a challenge for the Likud coalition’s leadership from former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he roped in as a temporary foreign minister following the coalition’s demise. Netanyahu has cast himself as more hard-line than his rival, implying that Sharon’s policies are to blame for Palestinian suicide bombings, and calling for the expulsion of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat.

In the race for the Labour Party candidacy, Haifa mayor and former general Amram Mitzna defeated Ben-Eliezer, who served as defense minister under Sharon until the Labour-Likud coalition split. Mitzna, posing as an "outsider," advocates a combination of harsh military measures and negotiations with Palestinian leaders as he tries to make up ground against Sharon among frustrated Israelis who see no end to the war.

In contrast to Sharon’s position of refusing to talk until there are no more Palestinian attacks, Mitzna calls for opening up negotiations while at the same time unleashing repression on the Palestinians. He said, "We will fight terror as if there is no one to talk to and we will talk as if there is no terror."

The Jerusalem Post reported that Mitzna is "committed to separation from the Palestinians." That separation would be effected, he said, "through agreement and peace if [the Palestinians] want, and unilaterally, if they don’t want it."

The Labour leader also supports the construction of a "security fence" around Palestinian areas of the West Bank. He has called for the withdrawal in one year of Israeli soldiers and settlers from Gaza and the maintenance of a military cordon around the impoverished area.

As commander of forces in the West Bank during the 1987–92 Palestinian rebellion, or intifada, Mitzna was notorious for enforcing the army policy of breaking the arms of stone-throwing-youth.

Yasir Arafat and other leaders of the Palestinian Authority welcomed Mitzna’s selection as Labour candidate. "Our hands will be extended for the peace of the brave, which I have signed with my partner Yitzhak Rabin," said Arafat, referring to the Labour prime minister who signed the 1993 Oslo accords and other agreements with Palestinian representatives--deals that granted the Palestinian Authority some administrative control over pockets of territory within the West Bank and Gaza.

"I hope that Mitzna will follow up the same line" as Rabin, added the Palestinian leader.

Pressed by governments in Europe and the Egyptian government, Arafat has been calling on Hamas to suspend suicide bombings in the occupied territories during the election campaign, on the grounds that such attacks allegedly help the electoral chances of the "right wing."

Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi rejected Arafat’s call. "I’m shocked at what I hear people keep saying, that the Likud is violent and the Labour [Party] is peaceful," he wrote on November 21. "They are both violent."  
 
Demolitions of Palestinian houses
Both during and after the coalition government’s administration, Tel Aviv has maintained its policy of destroying the family homes of Palestinians accused of being combatants. On November 20-21 two demolitions were reported: one near Khan Yunis in Gaza involving dozens of tanks, which fired in all directions as the bulldozer did its work; another in Tulkarm involving the family home of a Palestinian killed three weeks earlier in a gunfight in an Israeli settlement.

At the same time, tanks and soldiers drove into Bethlehem and surrounded the Church of the Nativity, declaring it a "military zone." A spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon claimed the attacks were a restrained response to the November 21 suicide bombing of a Jerusalem bus in which 11 people died. Sharon wants to "avoid hindering the American effort to gain international support for a possible assault on Iraq," stated the New York Times.

Sharon’s Labour- and Likud-dominated coalition government broke up on October 30 after Ben-Eliezer refused to support Sharon’s budget proposals, which included substantial cuts to government-provided pensions and benefits for single-parent families--a growing proportion of the population--and university students. The defense minister demanded that money be taken from the subsidies provided to the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.  
 
Economic recession
The cost of the military campaign against the Palestinian resistance has exacerbated the recession that has gripped the economy since the last three months of 2000. The economy contracted by almost 1 percent last year and is expected to record a similar decline in 2002. Inflation is forecast to reach more than 8 percent by December, an increase of 6.6 percent over the previous year.

Unemployment now stands at 10.4 percent--more than a quarter of a million people--and rising. Labor and Social Affairs Minister Shlomo Benizri announced November 4 that in 2001 one in five Israelis was living below the official poverty line.

"People are buying less because they can’t afford large food expenditures," said Yoram Dar, the head of the Blue Square supermarket chain in a company report. "According to Manufacturers Association figures," he added, "average family expenditure on food fell 6.8 percent" in the year ending September.  
 
Preparations for Iraq war
Meanwhile, the Israeli government "is secretly playing a key role in U.S. preparations for possible war with Iraq," reported USA Today. Writing in the November 3 issue, John Diamond reported that the Pentagon has stored up ammunition, fuel, and other supplies in Israel over the past year to be "held in reserve for possible use by U.S. forces in combat contingencies."

Israeli infantry units that have racked up experience in the occupied territories have helped prepare U.S. troops for "urban warfare" in Iraq and elsewhere, wrote Diamond. "The Israelis have built two mock cities" for these war exercises, "complete with mosques, hanging laundry and even the odd donkey."

The reporter added that in recent months Israeli commando teams have slipped into western Iraq to survey possible targets, including the launch pads of Iraq’s Scud missiles.
 
 
Related articles:
Capitalist media falsifies Hebron battle as ‘masacre by Palestinians’  
 
 
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