Good fences make good neighbours

By N.P | JERUSALEM

IF ISRAEL hoped that memories of its conquests would fade as the years passed, the marches on June 5th by Palestinians marking 44 years since its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan were a rude awakening. Hundreds marched again in an effort to return to the occupied Golan, only to be met by Israeli snipers. Eyewitnesses in Majdal Shams, the largest remaining town in the Golan Heights, spoken of hill-sides strewn with wounded, as some 20 ambulances ferried the bodies to hospital. By sundown, when Israeli forces resorted to tear-gas to clear protestors, news agencies quoting Syrian sources reported 23 dead.

Israel's security forces claimed success. Unlike the rallies a month ago, its defences stood unbreached. But the underlying trends are worrying. In May four Palestinians were killed at the border between Syria and Israel. A month later the numbers of deaths are climbing, feeding local resentment. Further protests are likely and the violence of Israel's response is further damaging its reputation. Government spokesmen claimed Israel was entitled to defend its borders, but international law experts question the claim that this includes the use of live fire against unarmed civilians. "Israel has other methods of law enforcement," says one. "The laws governing active hostilities are not applicable here."

The events also calls attention to the claims of Palestinian refugees to their homeland just as Israel would like to shelve them as a core issue in any final peace settlement. The Israeli government recently banned official commemorations of the "naqba", or catastrophe, the Arabic term for the 1948 war which created Israel but resulted in a mass Palestinian exodus. But Israel's lethal response last month to the marches commemorating the 63rd anniversary of the naqba and those on Sunday has only succeeded in reminding the world of the refugees' plight. The deadly clashes, Filippo Grandi, the head of the UN's Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, was quoted as saying, were a warning to the world that the issue over the right of return was not going away.

Finally, and perhaps most critically, the unrest heralds a new chapter in Israeli-Syrian relations. For almost forty years, its border with Syria has been one of Israel's quietest. The current clashes constitute something new, says a high-ranking Israeli officer. Without official Syrian support Palestinian refugees could not have reached the border, says Israel. It believes that the beleaguered Assad regime is encouraging Israeli-Palestinian clashes in an effort to deflect attention away from its own killing of unarmed opponents. Many in the Israeli government are hoping for the demise of a regime which can no longer secure their frontlines. "We're waiting for America to formally support regime change, and deploy forces as in Libya," says one security official.

A day later, quiet has returned to the border. But with demonstrators vowing to continue their sit-ins and fresh marches planned, the risks of further confrontations are high. Reeling from protests of its own, Syria is drawing Israel into its fray. So far Binyamin Netanyahu has baulked at a full withdrawal from the occupied territories along 1967 lines. He recently responded coolly to French proposals for a peace summit. But with Sunday's tensions all centered on Israeli-occupied territories, the argument that borders are most defensible when they are internationally recognised is mounting. While protests raged in areas which Israel still occupies (not only the Golan, but also the West Bank and East Jerusalem), there was quiet in those from where it has withdrawn to 1967 lines: Sinai, Lebanon and Gaza. The self-proclaimed Islamic "resistance" forces dominating both territories, Hizbollah and Hamas, paid lip service to the protests, but firmly kept their supporters away.