by Charmaine Seitz

EARLY THIS morning, an Egged bus reportedly driven by Palestinian Khalil Adwa Irbi rammed into an Israeli bus stop outside of Holon near Tel Aviv. Nine Israelis were killed and 20 injured. The operation was claimed in a message to Al Jazeera Satellite Channel by "Students of the Engineer," a previously unknown group. Hamas' Izzadin Qassam brigades also called an Israeli radio station claiming responsibility for the attack. The operation is believed to be in retaliation for Israel's assassination yesterday of a Fateh security officer.

Ariel Sharon has been elected prime minister of Israel and already the temperature is rising. Since the February 6 Israeli elections, there has been a rapid escalation in Israeli and Palestinian attacks.

On February 11, for the first time in weeks, Israeli machine gunfire hailed the town of Bethlehem. Palestinian gunmen had shot and killed an Israeli settler as he drove nearby. For more than an hour, the Israeli tanks and guns fired into Bethlehem's residential areas, unsuccessfully seeking out the Palestinian shooters from the Palestinian homes. The townspeople sat in the dark, listening for ambulances and waiting for the battle to end.

"Sharon's success [in the elections] has introduced a program of escalation and a large gap between his and our positions," said Abbas Zaki, a leader of Fateh, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's faction. "In light of this escalation, silence means acceptance. If we say no to the Intifada, it means that we accept the new Israeli realities. We have no other choice but to continue our uprising."

On the morning of February 12, Israel shot and killed two Palestinian men - one taxi driver passing a checkpoint just north of Ramallah and another sitting on a bus on his way to work. Neither was involved in clashes. That night fierce fighting broke out in Khan Younis in Gaza, in which 95 Palestinians were injured. Doctors reported the Israeli use of gas that appeared to cause convulsions.

Three days earlier, Israeli tanks boomed for four hours straight as they shelled the Palestinian towns of Ramallah and Al-Bireh. Despite severe damage to Palestinian homes, the offices of Al Hayat newspaper and a Palestinian Red Crescent clinic, no one was seriously injured.

Then on February 13, Israel resumed its policy of assassinating mid-level Palestinian leaders - this time killing Force 17 Colonel Masoud Ayad in Gaza by hunting him down in his car with Israeli gunships. Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak congratulated the army on the killing of Ayad, whom Israel claims was a Hezbollah operative. Palestinians charge Israel with the assassination of as many as 20 activists, only a few of which the Israeli government has admitted killing.

One of the first moves of the new United States administration has been to request details on a list of slain Palestinians from Israel. The Israeli government has refused to answer the request. The United States has also called on Israel to release tax revenues owed to the Palestinian Authority to prevent a further deterioration in the Palestinian economy. So far, Palestinian economic losses are estimated at $2 billion.

At press time, Palestinian national security forces in the Gaza Strip received warning from Israel to evacuate their buildings, which they said, would be bombed, assumedly in retaliation for this morning's operation. -Published 14/2/01 (c)Palestine Report
 

by Alessandra Antonelli

OVER HER hundred years of life, Um Mustafa has endured many Palestinian catastrophes. There was the great Catastrophe of 1948, the creation of the state of Israel and the exodus of some 800,000 Palestinians from their land; the 1967 Israeli occupation, which divided part of her own family from Palestine forever and the first Intifada during which her nephews were jailed, tortured and even killed. In this last Aqsa Intifada, two more of her nephews have been killed.

But none of these grave events shook Um Mustafa's insistence in holding her head high against life's hardships as what happened one month ago in her own orchard.

"They came [the Israelis] with tractors and bulldozers and uprooted 30 of them," said Um Mustafa with difficulty. She points, trembling and weak outside the arched window of her home in Huwara near Nablus.

Until a month ago, that window had opened up to a plot of olive trees. For decades, Um Mustafa had lovingly tended the trees as if they were her family now scattered in and out of Palestine.

Since that morning Um Mustafa's life has changed. She has not recovered from the shock and subsequent stroke that left her face and tired body half paralyzed. Besides being her income, those olive trees were a bond, the very roots of Um Mustafa's family.

But the orchard lay too close to the Israeli settlement of Yitzhar and its entranceway. In recent months, the Palestinian shebab, young protagonists of the Aqsa Intifada, have thrown stones at passing settlers' cars under the protection of the twisted trunks of Um Mustafa's trees.

The story of Um Mustafa, who has spent all her life in this stone house, is only one example of the demolition and razing policies adopted by the Israeli government.

The cutting of trees and uprooting of planted fields throughout the Palestinian territories is part of an Israeli on-the-ground offensive carried out in tandem with the more visible military strategy. In these months, Palestinians have been under environmental attack.

The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture estimates that as of the beginning of December last year, the Israeli authorities have uprooted 44,000 trees. The lost harvest includes olives, almonds, oranges, figs and bananas.

The Green Palestine Project, a plan to rehabilitate Palestinian nature, financed by the United Nations Development Project and implemented by the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture, has been nearly paralyzed.

"We have not ceased our program, as someone stated, but we are certainly facing great difficulties in carrying out our task," said Adel Braigheeth, director general of forestry at the Ministry of Agriculture and head of the Green Palestine Project.

If Israeli military check points and seizures do not budge for ambulances and those in need of medical care, they certainly do not take into consideration loads of seeds that must be planted in certain regions at specific times of the year.

"We have a huge delay in our work, a high increase in the implementation costs," says Braigheeth. "In numerous cases, it is impossible to respect our schedule. If we skip one seasonal planting we have to wait for the following year," he explains.

In Deir Al Hattab, another village near Nablus, the inhabitants are still waiting for the establishment of a park for their children to play in. It is impossible to reach the village because it is completely closed by the Israeli army.

Even when the project tries to reach distant areas via side roads, troubles arise. Ten tons of seed were lost when the truck carrying them overturned trying to reach Jenin. Late planting and negligence of the already existing flora can lead to overall soil deterioration - a luxury that Palestinians cannot afford.

In all, it is not easy to quantify the environmental cost of the near-war situation that has engulfed the Palestinian territories over the past five months.

"It is not a matter of calculating the number of the cut trees, but the consequences of that cutting in the future. A fruit tree, for example, could have given flowers and fruit for the next 20 years. Most importantly, it would have contributed to pumping oxygen into the air for better air quality," says Braigheeth.

Despite joint efforts of the Palestinian agriculture and environment ministries to register the exact number of uprooted trees, it is still difficult to draw a precise map of the damage. Their efforts go back to the start of the Israeli occupation.

"It is still early to estimate the total environmental loss caused by this policy," said Braghteeh. "But we can state, with evidence, that now in the West Bank there are 26 Israeli military camps in 26 different forests, and that, over more than 30 years of occupation, Israeli settlements have been built in place of forests. Since 1967, Palestinian forested land has decreased by one third," Braigheeth estimates.

The complete deforestation in some areas and the localized uprooting of trees, all carried out in the name of Israeli security, has a direct impact on regional bio-diversity.

A natural forest is itself a universe of microorganisms, nurturing bacteria and fungi, as well as insects and animals. It develops and maintains its own complete natural cycle. To destroy a forest, therefore, means the destruction of the entire universe dwelling inside it.

"In the Palestinian territories, there are more than 2,700 species of vascular plants (those with roots, stems, leaves and flowers). This is a huge patrimony, granted by the peculiar position of the country, [which is] a conjunction of two continents, Europe and Asia," explains Braigheeth. Iraq, which is much larger than historic Palestine, has only 1,800 species, he says.

Israeli bulldozers are not the only source of the current environmental destruction. The economic sanctions Israel has imposed on Palestinians, blocking the delivery of gas during the winter months, has forced some Palestinians, in particular those living in Al Aroub near Hebron and Wadi Al Quf village in the north to burn wild shrubs and trees as alternative fuel.

On the battlefield, bullets and the release of the chemicals used in tear gas have also caused environmental harm - killing off several plant species and leaving the soil contaminated with spent ammunition.

All of these tiny little tragedies on the ground have gone virtually unnoticed by humans distracted by more compelling daily problems - except for those watching the sky.

Again due to its peculiar geographical position and mild climate, this area once offered shelter to birds migrating from northern Europe towards their final destination in Asia. Local birdwatchers and wildlife observers have reported to the Ministry of Environmental Affairs the decline, and in some cases, the total disappearance of some migratory birds.

Back on the ground, closures and curfews have prevented the proper disposal of waste, causing metropolitan environmental disasters.

First, there is the solid waste pollution of Hebron. Along with Huwara, Hebron has suffered the longest and most severe of curfews, where residents have been prevented from leaving their homes for hours on end.

"We have been under curfew for 90 continuous days, which has made it impossible to deliver ordinary services such as water supply, sewage maintenance or garbage collection, " said Mush Tahboub, head of the health department at the Hebron Municipality.
 
Hebron is divided into two areas, H1 and H2, with the latter under Israeli control. The Israeli military is present for the protection of 400 settlers residing in a neighborhood of 40,000 Palestinians.

"We were allowed to clean area H2 only when the curfew was lifted for a couple of hours - a hard task due to the conditions and accumulation of solid waste in that time," said Tahboub.

But Hebronites have cooperated, according to Tahboub. City residents have even accepted the parking of full garbage trucks beneath their windows when garbage could not be removed immediately.

"Several times, we were able to fill the garbage trucks and then were forced to park them in residential areas. The continuous closure of streets and city areas made it impossible to unload the waste in the regional dump in Yatta, 20 kilometers from Hebron, or to park the truck in the proper parking lot," said Tahboub.

Twice the garbage truck tried to use the bypass roads to reach the dump and twice its tires were shot out, according to Tahboub.

Residents have also complained that the Israeli soldiers on patrol in the city shot and killed several animals that were then left to rot.

"We had a couple of calls about that," said Tahboub "but I cannot say with certainty it was part of a deliberate plan to degrade the situation more."

What did appear to be deliberate, however, was the shooting of Fares Hashab, head of the street-cleaning department. He was hit by a bullet in the leg coming from an Israeli position in downtown Hebron while preparing his 60-man crew for work.

The accumulation of solid waste in the narrow alleys of Hebron's Old City ignited a chain of reactions hazardous to human health. The alarm was so great that the Ministry of Health warned of an epidemic.

"We are still in an emergency, " says Dr. Abdelaziz Shukeir, director of Hebron's public health department. "The continuous accumulation of waste brings parasites, insects and rats, all of which can cause infections to humans."

The winter rains have not helped. Shukeir says that most water is still collected in local wells that are easily polluted. The hospital has been put on alert for an increase in cases of amoebas, dysentery, typhoid, malaria or lishmania, a type of external infection.

But even medical waste cannot be properly disposed of. "This kind of waste should be collected and dumped in the appropriate sites everyday since several residuals are toxic," says Shukeir. Bottles or needles discarded in the wrong place can fall into children's hands, a hazardous new game.

Hebron is one case study for Palestinian environmental ills. But throughout the West Bank and Gaza, the problem of solid waste pollution persists. Israeli-enforced closures prevent waste from being collected and disposed of properly. Israeli bulldozers have damaged wells and sewage system. When sewage spills into the ground, it harms future food crops.

For Um Mustafa, bowed with age and pain, the landscape is desolate without her olive trees. It is, indeed, much more desolate than she can imagine. -Published 14/2/01 (c)Palestine Report