Middle East In the Eye Of a Revolt

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The war of nerves in Am'ari, Jabalia and the other camps and towns of the West Bank and Gaza has been going on since 1967, when Israel seized control of the territories after winning the Six-Day War. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Israeli troops waged a ferocious struggle with the P.L.O., whose Kalashnikov-toting fighters killed scores of soldiers and civilians in the occupied territories. The Israelis eventually wiped out the P.L.O. threat in the West Bank and Gaza, helped in large part by King Hussein's successful 1970 campaign to drive the P.L.O. forces out of Jordan.

Since the mid-1970s the Israeli military, which runs the territories with a combination of soldiers and civilian administrators, has kept rebellion in check with a relentlessly efficient system of control and surveillance. It is a tribute to Israeli security, or to the self-restraint of the Palestinians, that not a single gun has turned up in Palestinian hands during the current unrest. But Jerusalem's peace of mind over the years has come only at the expense of basic civil liberties.

Palestinians in the occupied territories are almost completely disenfranchised. All mayors are now Israeli appointed. Israel tried twice, in 1972 and 1976, to sponsor municipal elections in the West Bank and establish a measure of self-rule. But the Palestinians undermined the process by electing candidates who openly declared their allegiance to the banned P.L.O.. In 1976 the P.L.O. won a smashing victory, electing its representatives as mayors of all the major towns and villages. The Israeli response was to declare some of the contests invalid and to deport some of the winners. There has been no balloting since then.

Today most political activity in the territories is banned, and membership in political organizations is severely restricted. This has helped spawn underground nationalist and religious movements that favor radical solutions. Paralleling the clampdown on political thought is a policy of strict, often arbitrary censorship of all newspapers, magazines and books that circulate in the territories. Last week Israel launched its latest crackdown on the Palestinian press. It detained six journalists, held two for interrogation and ordered one jailed for up to six months.

Israeli soldiers and border police can enter Arab homes without a warrant. Palestinians are routinely stopped and required to show identification papers. Arabs can be detained for up to six months without trial. Their houses can be sealed or demolished on suspicion that a member of the family is engaged in "terrorist" activity. They can be arrested for dozens of offenses that do not exist in Israel, including flying the Palestinian flag, reading "subversive" literature or holding a press conference without permission.