NEW YORK (28 November) - World headlines over the last two months have focused on the brutal physical repression by the Israeli army of the Palestinian Intifada (Arabic for "shaking off") or uprising. Israeli violence has killed hundreds of Palestinian freedom fighters and wounded some 10,000 while employing measures to starve out a Palestinian population penned in cities surrounded by Israeli forces.

What’s remarkable about the current situation is that --despite the violent repression and the strangling blockade-- the will to resist and keep fighting by the overwhelming majority of Palestinians has not been broken.

A recent Bir Zeit University survey of Palestinian opinion underlines that Israeli repression is reinforcing revolutionary determination..

The survey also documents the horrific impact of Israeli siege conditions: 85% say Israeli violent repression has had an adverse psychological impact on their children; 74% have been unable to visit family members in other locations; 69% have had family member lose their jobs and 87% have seen their living standards decline.

Yet 75% favor continuation of the "current Intifada;" 55% think Palestinian society "is ready for a long-term and intensifying conflict; 80% support military attacks on "Israeli targets" in the West Bank and Gaza.

Less than 1% support attacks on Israeli civilians within Israel’s 1948 borders.

And so, holding the moral high ground, Palestinian resistance —contrary to Barak’s intent-- has become more rooted in the masses of the people, especially a new generation of youth.

Today’s Intifadah has shaken up Palestinian society and traditional political organizations from top to bottom. Whatever they say for propaganda purposes, Barak and the Israeli leadership know full well that neither Yasir Arafat nor any other Palestinian leader can turn Palestinian resistance on or off.

Once this reality is grasped, the contradictions and irresolvable conundrum of Israeli policy can be clearly seen.

Zionist settlers and out-of-power politicians are attacking Barak for being too "restrained" toward the Palestinians. Rightist political circles are raising the slogan "Let the IDF Win."

As an editorial in the 24 November liberal Israeli daily Ha’aretz says, "The right is demanding that unrestricted and unlimited warfare be waged against the Palestinians." It quotes former Soviet political prisoner and current anti-Palestinian Israeli political leader Natan Sharansky as calling for the IDF to "destroy, demolish, and obliterate the officers, staffs and bases of the criminal organizations responsible for terrorist attacks." Other leading Israeli politicians, including Likud party leader Ariel Sharon, have openly called for the assassination of Palestinian leaders. Others have called for recapturing and reoccupying Palestinian cities.

These are military fantasies that, if attempted, would lead to political disaster for the Israeli state. Israel’s technical and material superiority cannot be exercised in a political vacuum. Indeed, Israeli rulers are paying a high political price for the brutality of their repression.

Serious Israeli commentators recognize the dangerous folly of "let-the-IDF-win" demagogy and flat-out military action to reoccupy Palestinian cities and eliminate any independent Palestinian leadership.

As a recent editorial in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth put it "Going back and conquering the densely populated Palestinian areas would ruin our only partner in negotiations…[we would] suffer casualties…[and] reduce our bargaining power. Neither would we gain anything from the wholesale killing of Palestinians. [E]very additional Palestinian fatality enflames the other side’s motivation to fight, shakes the stability and desire to preserve the peace in Egypt and Jordan, and increases the risk of the international community forcing a solution on us."

The Barak regime assumed brutal force and raw coercion would cow the Palestinians into servile compliance with the "solution" that Barak and Clinton tried impose at Camp David last fall.

Today they are reaping the whirlwind of that arrogance.

Meanwhile, Israel’s dilemma is also a huge problem for Washington’s continued domination of the Middle East and Gulf states with their huge oil resources. The stakes in Palestine and Israel --with a population less than greater New York City and an area half the length of the route of a Metroliner train from New York to Washington D.C.-- are huge in world politics.

Since Oslo the Arafat leadership has acceded to Washington’s "supervision" of the "peace process." It has provided political cover to Washington’s surreal pretense that it is an ‘honest broker’ between Israel and the Palestinians.

Today, however, mass Palestinian demonstrations single out Washington as the source of repressive Israeli military power and its indispensable political, financial, and military prop. The survey referred to earlier shows now only 3% favoring a leading role for Washington in any new negotiations, while 73% support military attacks against U.S. targets in the region. These sentiments are echoed in the mass street protests that have shaken neo-colonial Arab regimes subservient to Washington.

And despite the Israeli state’s obscene military and technological superiority, there is no military solution to its "Palestinian problem." It cannot simply crush the Palestinian masses, any more than Washington could crush the Vietnamese 25 years ago. Its military superiority is undermined --and will be decisively counteracted-- by its profound political weakness and moral inferiority. Von Clausewitz’s famous dictum that politics trumps weaponry is in full force today in the Middle East.

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