America's War on the Palestinians

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The United States is waging a fierce, relentless war on the Palestinians in the eastern heartland of Palestine (the West Bank), using shameless, contemptible, and arrogant methods to bring the people to their knees, subjugate, humiliate, and subdue them, and turn them into mere reckless husks inhabiting animal-like human bodies, unaware of rights, unmoved to avenge their own dignity.

The eastern heartland of Palestine faces an imminent danger at the hands of the United States — a danger more severe than the one posed by the Zionist occupation itself, because it aims at demolishing the people and turning them into a band of mercenaries who barter, consciously or unconsciously, their homeland, their honor, and the future of their children and grandchildren for a small handful of money and short-lived daily material interests.

Occupation imposes a challenge, and has failed over the years to dissolve the Palestinian people, has failed to kill the people’s national rights, but the Americans, in cooperation with their Palestinian agents among politicians, academics, and counterfeit intellectuals, are achieving mounting success, working diligently to erase awareness and tear the people apart.

This matter goes beyond a mere warning bell, for the bell has already been rung again and again, and it goes beyond that to constitute a terrifying strategic danger to the fate of the people and the homeland, threatening to turn the Palestinian people into a historic farce that other peoples will hold up as an example of naivety and moral depravity, and of putting private interests above homelands, holy sites, and honor.

We stand before a great, harsh, and sacred task that cannot be set aside in favor of diplomatic and political hairsplitting, and it demands great effort from every one of us — man and woman, young man and young woman, worker and farmer, professional and craftsman, patriotic intellectual and non-intellectual alike.

We all stand before a historic test: either the last remaining fig leaves are torn away and our nakedness fully exposed, or we all stand together, bound as one, sharing the loaf of bread and each of us carrying the other, so that our necks rise again and we restore to the Palestinian people its dignity, its honor, and its determination to seize its rights.

This American war has principal features, landmarks, and practical steps that we can feel in the daily life of the eastern heartland. But before I come to the headings of this war, let me offer a condensed account of the pathways of American polarizing foreign policy that ultimately lead to control.

The United States prefers to follow the method of educating other nations in the American way, so that their sons and daughters become American in culture, and come to adopt American policy automatically, through this saturating education. This is a task carried out by the sons of the targeted countries among the intellectuals and academics tempted by American money and comforts. To this end, America has established thousands of centers and associations across the world that market its thought and culture, lavishing hundreds of millions of dollars on them every year.

The second pathway concerns economic and financial domination, and its substance is that America begins by weeping over people’s economic conditions, then offers them grants or loans, particularly through the colonial institution known as the World Bank. America begins by flooding rulers with some money, tying the country’s fate to American financial investments, and step by step drowning the country concerned in debt, until its economy turns into a mere dependency incapable of moving without American planning and direction. America begins by establishing projects that please the government and the people, but in the end they suck the flesh and the bone dry.

America works to replace one leader with another if it finds no cooperation. It is easy for it to topple leaderships, because it penetrates the security of states, possesses vast sums of money to recruit agents, and a variety of combat means to provide military support if needed.

America then turns to economic sanctions and blockade if its economic policy fails to produce dependency, hoping through this to bring the existing regime to its knees and force it to relinquish the nation’s political will. And if that fails, America turns to assessing the possibility of military action, and attacks if it judges this necessary and useful.

In Palestine, America is achieving success through the following:

Overseeing Security Coordination

America is the one overseeing the security coordination between Palestinians and Israelis, through the American Security Coordinator, whose personal name changes from time to time, and it is fully committed to reviewing Palestinian security actions to ensure their complete adherence to Israeli security requirements. America joins Israel in evaluating the state of the Palestinian security services, in terms of armament, readiness, salaries, training, the criteria for accepting people into the services, and the requirements for terminating their service. Together, the two evaluate candidates for leading the security services and their direct deputies and aides, and evaluate the officers in charge of special operations, and so on.

America continually insists that the Palestinian Authority adhere to standards and procedures for pursuing “terrorism” and “terrorists” (that is, the Palestinian resistance), and it constantly incites the arrest of resistance members, or those who might resist, from various Palestinian organizations, including Fatah, and it constantly offers advice and guidance, and sometimes issues orders to the Authority’s security services. On top of that, American and Israeli officers inspect the headquarters of the security services in various areas of the West Bank to confirm the Palestinians’ good compliance.

America works hard and diligently to turn Palestinians in the West Bank into a corps of mercenaries in the service of the Israeli security apparatus, and there are Palestinian politicians, academics, and military figures who help it in this and provide justification for its actions.

Overseeing Palestinian Security

America does not content itself with ensuring Palestinian compliance with Israeli security requirements; it works to grip Palestinian security fully in its own hand, steering it however it wishes. To this end, it works to: provide funding to the security services outside the framework of the donor states’ budget, which generally covers general running costs.

America allocates funds to build camps and headquarters for the Palestinian security services, and to spend on training, whether inside Palestine or in Jordan, or sometimes in Israel and the United States. It helps with military expenditure costs, and makes sure that Palestinian weapons do not function efficiently against the Israelis, while remaining sufficient to be used against Palestinians.

Of course, I do not doubt for a moment that America is not content with its direct agents who supply it with information — it plants various types of precise, sensitive listening devices, barely detectable to the naked eye, throughout various Palestinian security headquarters. It is quite likely that such devices are embedded in the building materials and foundations themselves.

America also enlists European and Canadian monitors, particularly in the field of policing, to make sure police practices do not provoke ordinary people, while at the same time adhering to standards that do not contradict Israeli wishes.

Gripping the Palestinian Authority’s Finances

From the very first moment of the implementation of the Oslo Accord, America worked, side by side with Israel, to control the sources of the Palestinian Authority’s income, so that the Authority, should it fall into hands America does not approve of, would have no capacity to make independent decisions. America understands, better than others, and through its repeated experience in many countries, that controlling the money means controlling the necks of rulers and paralyzing their capacity for decision-making. For this reason, it has worked to tempt many civilian and military leaders with money through various methods that do not look like bribery, and pushed toward inflating the Authority’s administrative staff to increase the number of people dependent on salaries tied to the donor states.

America gave money to many parties, and, together with the European states, provided thousands of luxury and non-luxury cars to make it easier for Palestinians to trade away Palestinian rights. It created a class of direct beneficiaries in both the civilian and military apparatus, arousing the envy of many Palestinians, and the contempt of many others. This class exists now, holding the reins of administrative affairs, and sees itself as genuine leadership that must be reckoned with at the popular level. It brought in a great variety of modern American-, Japanese-, and German-made cars, and provided a great deal of ease in internal and external travel.

America encouraged the Palestinian Authority to employ as many people as possible in the security and administrative apparatus, until the number of employees reached about 200,000 (I do not know the exact figure now, since it is kept undisclosed), a number Palestine does not need. The number of security-service personnel reached about 90,000, a figure the eastern heartland does not need at all. The eastern heartland (the West Bank) needs nothing more than a modest police force to maintain internal security, while national security can only be carried out by secret organizations working with the utmost discretion against the occupation.

It is true that it is the donor states that disburse the money to the Palestinian Authority, but they cannot do so without America’s and Israel’s permission. America and Israel grant that permission, tied fundamentally to how satisfied the two states are with the performance of the Palestinian security services.

Gripping People’s Daily Bread

The number of Palestinian Authority employees is far greater than the Authority needs, as I said above, but the goal was clear: to tie the largest possible number of Palestinians to an end-of-month salary, so that this number would think twice, and twice again, before supporting policies that might obstruct the arrival of that salary. This salary is not meant to help people, but to trade them off against Palestinian national rights. If a person is to get a salary, he must support the Palestinian Authority, and steer clear of supporting policies that do not align with the agreements signed with Israel. They have dried up the springs of money flowing to the people and boxed them into the corner of the salary, which has become the main — indeed the only — bread artery for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the eastern heartland (the West Bank).

Alongside this, work has gone into disabling much productive activity in the eastern heartland (the West Bank) because of imports from abroad. The Western states, led by the United States, have insisted that the eastern heartland fall within the free-trade system, even informally, through the Paris Economic Protocol, and a large part of Palestinian production has been destroyed as a result. The farmer can no longer make a living from agriculture, and the carpenter and the blacksmith have been hit hard, and many workshops and factories have been struck, such as the shoe factories in Hebron and the garment workshops in Tulkarm. Producers have been thrown into the street, begging for aid from non-governmental organizations, while the number of unemployed staff has swollen.

The goal is clear: to strip away Palestinian political will by stripping away the Palestinian capacity for self-reliance. It is true that the eastern heartland is not capable of achieving full self-sufficiency, but an economic policy built on developing the economy in a way commensurate with the requirements of liberation cannot accept increased dependence on others, especially when those others are enemies.

One Authority employee summed up the matter for me, in a conversation about the withdrawal of some government cars from their users, by saying: “I gave up Palestine for the car, and now I am prepared to fight to keep it.”

And of course, the Americans will throw people into the garbage tomorrow, once they are confident that people’s national spirit has been lost in the rush for the daily loaf of bread.

Manufacturing Leaders and Interfering in Their Appointment

Since the late 1970s, America has worked to manufacture Palestinian leaderships, particularly from among academics and intellectuals. It began by establishing non-governmental associations, in full view of the occupation, aiming to draw in Palestinians, and lavished money on them. I myself was subjected to an attempt to lure me down this path in 1983, and I refused. The American consul in Jerusalem tried to visit me at my home before the Madrid conference, and I refused — he was coming, according to the intermediary who spoke to me, to persuade me to join the Palestinian delegation heading to Madrid.

America has nurtured many individuals, over long years, with its own hand, and some of them now occupy senior positions in the Authority, and some of them negotiate. Every time I hear talk of negotiations, proposals, and approaches, I feel sorrow for this Palestinian people that offers sacrifices, because Israel is mostly negotiating with itself, or discussing matters with America’s Palestinian representatives.

America created the post of prime minister for the Palestinian Authority, and insisted that Mahmoud Abbas be prime minister. It pressured Arafat to appoint Dr. Salam Fayyad finance minister, and then played a leading role in his appointment as prime minister. And so it goes.

Whoever America manufactures, or appoints, will inevitably remain bound to what America wants, and America gives him a margin for give and take so that he does not appear a mere yes-man, or a bare tool in its hand. It tries to preserve some prestige for its collaborators, so that they remain at least convincing to the naive among the people.

America and Israel polish these manufactured leaders through various means — spreading word, for instance, that this leader is professional and defends what is right, or that he is clean-handed, unlike his thieving and larcenous predecessors, or that he is a man of learning and morals. They may even imprison him at times, to give him credibility, and so on. But what matters most now is that he be the one holding the money, regarded as the primary source of salaries.

Manufacturing American Intellectuals

In exchange for money, America has managed to build itself a line of Palestinian intellectuals and academics who applaud it, carry out its policies, and defend its positions. America has given a great deal of money to establish centers for democracy and human rights, for the defense of women, and other such causes, in order to draw in leaderships and tie intellectuals to the financial income they receive through their salaries and their comings and goings.

There is a fair number of university professors who have joined the fleet of Americanized intellectuals, who feed off the national rights of the Palestinian people. These intellectuals are the champions of a cultural whitewashing meant to erase the culture of the people and the nation in favor of an invading culture whose only aim is control and domination.

Many intellectuals have been engaged in gathering information about the Palestinian people under the label of scientific research, and have provided valuable information that has helped improve America’s, and other Western states’, capacity to penetrate Palestinian society, and to reach into it with policies built on the conclusions and recommendations of these Palestinian intellectuals. These people have received vast sums of money — to the point that a paper of a few pages could bring its author more than a thousand dollars. This is on top of the trips they received, and the conferences they took part in, held both inside and outside Palestine.

Has the world ever seen a simple Palestinian — a farmer, a worker, a craftsman — shake hands with a Zionist to sell the homeland, or establish relations with him, or bargain over Palestine? These are things that only those into whose mouths America has stuffed dollars — among the intellectuals and academics — have ever dared to do.

Providing Support Funds

Beyond controlling the Authority’s budget and directing it in the way it sees fit for Israel’s security and for financial dependency, the United States spends money establishing projects such as paving and building roads, constructing schools and clinics, and extending electricity and water networks, in order to build itself a pleasant face in people’s eyes. Such projects are usually undertaken by USAID, whose promotional signs are now widespread across various parts of the West Bank.

America wants people to taste the flavor of comfort, so that national concerns do not preoccupy them. When people are afflicted by comfort, standards of interest shift and change, and people turn to their own private interests instead of being preoccupied with the public concern. Whoever drives the luxury car, has the mobile phone, has enough money to eat in restaurants, is able to travel, and whose overall level of consumption has risen, does not think about turning back for the sake of a homeland. This rule does not apply to everyone, but it describes a present and powerful phenomenon in the Palestinian street.

Active in this field is the World Bank, which has long served American colonialism, and which continually studies economic conditions in the eastern heartland, steering them in a way that keeps the Palestinians’ neck tied to American economic will.

This Bank, together with various elements of American action and Palestinian collaboration, has succeeded in convincing a great many people that the Palestinian people cannot continue living unless it becomes a beggar. Vast numbers of people, when confronted with the truth, protest: “Where do we get our food from?” These people — most of whom pray and fast — have forgotten that the Messenger of God, peace be upon him, said: “For one of you to gather firewood is better than to beg from people.” They have forgotten his saying that the upper hand is better than the lower hand. The Americans and Palestinian intellectuals have cast a repugnant veil over the eyes of the people, whose substance is humiliation, abasement, and dependency.

Israel supported the head of a village council in the Tulkarm area because he joined the village leagues that the Palestinian Authority was supposed to control, so they paved the roads of his town, extended it water and electricity networks, and improved conditions in his village. People looked at that village, and some wished that every head of a village council were a member of the village leagues. Through financial support, the Israelis turned that collaborator into a hero in his own area, but his heroism was nothing but national faint-heartedness in exchange for projects that were never built to last.

The experience of nations bears witness that the World Bank and American money have carved deep furrows of debt, and that countries have become indebted, incapable of servicing that debt, and their rulers have turned into tools and mounts for American policy.

The Well-Mannered Thugs

America sends to Palestine Americans trained to deceive people, draw them in, and make them believe that all good things are for them and because of them. America is interested in people skilled in a “polite thuggery” that appears sweet on the surface and is malicious underneath. These people are trained to survey economic, social, and educational conditions, even though they are not true experts, and then present their various recommendations, which ultimately end up serving the interests of the United States, not the interests of the people.

For instance, the American experts said that privatization was the wise and successful economic policy, and pushed the Authority to privatize existing economic institutions such as electricity. This privatization means that profit becomes the obsession of the company owners, rather than the idea of liberating the homeland and restoring rights. How can a people proceed down a path of privatization built on an obsession with profit while it is under occupation? The existence of occupation demands a policy of mutual solidarity, cooperation, and support — not policies of profit. Regrettably, in Palestine we act like fools, tied to the tail of the American donkey.

Another example is the reduction of taxes on cars. People were greatly pleased by this step, but did not realize that its goal was to reinforce their consumerist mentality, and push them toward taking loans from financial institutions in the eastern heartland.

These thugs are capable of beautifying the ugly, and possess a strong capacity for argument, aided by the Arab’s sense of inferiority, which turns even the mangy into an expert. These illusory experts are con men, swindlers, and sophists trained in deception, lying, and the distortion of facts, and they are capable of manipulating rulers who owe their very existence as rulers to America.

Manipulating the Numbers

America manipulates numbers, particularly through the World Bank, which issues statistics pointing to the success of the rulers America supports. The numbers may speak of large economic growth, for instance, while that growth flows into the pockets of the wealthy, with the poor seeing only a meager trickle of it. Or the statistics may point to an increase in the number of cars, taken as a sign of prosperity, though this comes at the expense of national values and moral responsibilities. Or they may say the tax-collection rate has increased, without pointing to the weakening of production, and so on.

They deceive the people of the eastern heartland with numbers that do not reflect reality, as follows: they work to widen the gap between services and production, and between consumption and production. They are concerned with keeping the level of consumption in the eastern heartland higher than the level of production, so that the Palestinian people remains under the weight of debt, or as a beggar. Such a situation serves no one but Israel, feeding off the national and human spirit of the Palestinian people in the eastern heartland.

And who governs the eastern heartland? Those who govern the eastern heartland are the American Security Coordinator, the American consul in Jerusalem, and the American Central Intelligence Agency. The television faces, meanwhile, are Palestinian. This triad relies on secret and overt security agents, on USAID, on the World Bank, and on Palestinian intellectuals and politicians who have offered themselves in the service of American policy, and on the Palestinian security services. Some of them may not have wished, at first, to provide this service, but they are now entangled in it up to their ears, and cannot get out unless Palestinian conditions in the eastern heartland change fundamentally.

In sum: the Americans, in their war on the Palestinian people, are achieving success in the eastern heartland (the West Bank), but they have not yet won the battle. There remain great and widespread forces on the scene standing against this ongoing aggression, forces that are, in reality, active and capable of putting brakes on American advance.

But this invasion can be struck a powerful blow if Palestinian resistance becomes active in confronting the Israeli occupation.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الحرب الأميركية على الفلسطينيين” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.