by Rime Allaf

If one puts to the side, momentarily, the moral, ethical, principled aspects of marking numbers on prisoners’ foreheads and forearms, then one could perhaps work out why the Israeli armed forces have begun using this method with Palestinian prisoners: Given the immense death toll that is rising faster than victims’ lists can be updated, it is clearly easier to count the dead when they are numbered, just as it is clearly easier to calculate how many more must be killed before Israel is purged of the Palestinian “problem.”
Naturally, not all the marked Palestinians have died. Not yet, that is. But when they are eventually killed, one by one or 30 by 30, some lowly officer in the Israeli Army will probably routinely check the name of the “victim,” find the corresponding ID number, and remove it from the database. This routine may prove wearing in the long run, considering the sheer magnitude of the task. As it stands today, counting from the beginning of the intifada, there are only about 1,000 or more victims down, with some 2,999,000 to go. But the Israeli Army is nothing if not persistent, and ethnic cleansing is easier when the logistics are regulated early on.
The Israeli Army has been continuing this brutal mission since last week in various West Bank cities, completely unchallenged. It apparently makes perfect sense to everyone that Palestinians, refugees in their own land, are dragged by the hundreds from their homes, blindfolded and handcuffed, and taken to “interrogation centers.” It apparently makes perfect sense to everyone that Israeli soldiers are scribbling ID numbers on the foreheads and forearms of these so-called suspected terrorists.
Israelis commanded through loudspeakers that all men aged between 15 and 45 give themselves up or face the consequences (death without an ID number?). Since army officials were quoted as saying they only arrested “people suspected of terrorist activity,” Israeli logic is that all Palestinian men are suspected terrorists ­ a logic that seems to be accepted, equally unchallenged, by the civilized world.
Comparisons of this most base of humiliations with seemingly similar Nazi practices have been dismissed irately by Israel. “Obscene and absurd,” retorted an Israeli Army spokesman. Of course, the Israelis have not tattooed the ID numbers on their prisoners’ arms; mere ink that eventually washes off is apparently an entirely different matter. Whether the humiliation will wash off as easily remains to be seen.
Some have remarked philosophically that the Israelis were fueling Palestinian despair and hatred. Others have wondered about the unexpected willingness and practical enthusiasm of the Israeli Army in allowing the media to observe and document the disturbing spectacle of civilians standing in line, hands on their heads, waiting for their turn without knowing what this turn entailed, unable to see the sorry chain-gang image they were composing. An image that a smug Israel wanted us all to see.
While all watched this exhibition, the voices of indignation have remained remarkably hushed. No international or Israeli outcry at this abominable practice has been heard. No outcry, that is, save for that of one sole conscientious objector who took his outrage to the media: that of a Holocaust survivor from Yugoslavia. Tommy Lapid, now an Israeli lawmaker, said publicly that the practice must stop immediately: “As a refugee from the Holocaust, I find such an act insufferable.” Insufferable, indeed; he should know. But his righteous anger has not been echoed by sufferers of similar torment, and many of his countrymen suddenly seem to believe it is acceptable for human beings to be mere numbers, prisoners without a name.
Others feel even this is not enough: Two ministers from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud Party have just resigned in protest at the government’s “soft line” on Palestinians.
Ironically, a few Israeli officials have admitted that numbering prisoners may have been a mistake, not because it is a horrendous act, but because it may give Israel a “bad name.” Raanan Gissin, spokesman for Sharon, shared his reservations about the ID numbers issue on Israel’s Army Radio: “If the idea was to convey a message of deterrence, clearly it conflicts with the desire to convey a public relations message.”
Israel is obviously unconcerned about the public relations issue at this stage, let alone about how friends or foes feel about the ID numbers issue, and even less about the rising number of victims. With no real pressure on Israel to control its killing spree, measly ID numbers inked on “suspected terrorists” can evidently go on degrading scores of Palestinians.
Every new day seems to become “the most violent day” since the beginning of the intifada. Every new incursion of the Israeli Army seems to become “the biggest” since the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Every new raid in the Occupied Territories seems to become “the most horrific” since, well, the one before it.
Still, the more Israel humiliates and the more Israel kills, the less it seems able ­ for the moment ­ to achieve anything: There still are Palestinians in Palestine.
The US administration seems to agree that these killings will not solve the “problem.” Secretary of State Colin Powell testified last week before a congressional committee, inferring that Sharon’s policy of large-scale retaliations against Palestinians was not working: “If you declare war on the Palestinians and think you can solve the problem by seeing how many Palestinians can be killed, I don’t know if that leads you anywhere.” Commentators deduced from these words that Powell was criticizing Israel for mass killings of Palestinians.
However, the next day, Powell reassuringly said that “we are seen as Israel’s biggest supporter, and we are, and we always will be.” He elaborated that while Israel is “faced with a legitimate problem of self-defense, they have to be very careful as to the means they use to defend their people, because it, in recent months, has just produced a series of escalations rather than bringing things under control.”
In other words, Palestinians shouldn’t be killed, not for their own sake, but really so that Israelis do not get killed in turn? It appears that for Powell, a Palestinian death is only deplorable because it possibly brings about that of an Israeli. This would also explain his discounting of the mere humiliation of an ID number inked on a Palestinian’s forehead and arm.
Disregarding the consequences of the continued physical and psychological oppression of the Palestinian people is not only cruel, but it is foolish and myopic. The Israeli occupier should know, more than anyone else, that unjust killings will be remembered for many years to come, and that an affront on dignity is a scar for life.

Rime Allaf is The Daily Star’s UK correspondent

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