ZGram - 8/7/2002 - "Sharon Dooms Israel-and Perhaps the United
States-to Endless War"
irimland@zundelsite.org
irimland@zundelsite.org
Wed, 7 Aug 2002 16:49:11 -0700
ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny
August 7, 2002
Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
This article was written for the "Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs". I offer it, in part, because I want to alert you to
WRMEA's excellent web page at http://www.wrmea.com/ Their print
magazine is absolutely top notch - I have read it for years and
always wish the Germans had anything like that here in America!
One gets an eerie feeling reading the essay below, written about a
year ago, right after 9-11:
[START]
Sharon Dooms Israel-and Perhaps the United States-to Endless War
By Rachelle Marshall
As children all over the world began a new school year this
September, two pictures in The New York Times illustrated far better
than words the current nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
One showed Israeli children riding to school in an armored truck
escorted by Israeli soldiers. The other showed Palestinian girls
dressed in school uniforms being confronted by an Israeli soldier
holding a machine gun. In this picture the Israeli soldier was not
protecting the children but stopping them from entering their school.
It was one of 24 schools in Hebron closed by the Israeli army because
they were close to Israeli settlements or army outposts and therefore
regarded as security threats.
The two contrasting but equally sad situations reflect the fact that
Israelis now live in constant fear of suicide bombings, while
Palestinians are forced to endure the very conditions that breed
violence-restrictions on their every movement, impoverishment, house
demolitions, and almost nightly aerial bombardment. Even where
children are allowed to attend school they face formidable obstacles,
according to a Sept. 1 report by the Palestinian Ministry of
Education. Like students at West Bank universities, either they are
delayed for hours at army checkpoints or, where roads are blocked by
trenches and cement barriers, they must climb over mountains of dirt
and rocks to get to class. More than two thousand children injured by
Israeli gunfire must grapple with crutches or wheelchairs as well. At
least 95 schools have been severely damaged by shell fire. In many
areas school principals often have to transport books and supplies on
donkeys or horses. One of the most serious blows to the school system
is Israel's continued refusal to turn over the $65 million in tax
revenues it owes to the Palestinian Authority, money that is needed
to pay teachers.
Education Minister Abu El-Humos has called on the Israelis to end the
rocketing and other heavy artillery fire that terrifies, injures, and
kills children, and to restore Palestinian revenues, but Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon says he has no intention of doing either.
Sharon has made it unmistakeably clear that his object is to nullify
the Oslo agreements and undo any gains made by the Palestinians since
the accords were signed. In an interview with The New York Times on
Sept. 7 Sharon outlined peace terms that call for the Palestinians'
unconditional surrender. "Oslo failed," he said, and declared that
once a truce is reached, the two sides will have to work out a whole
new set of guidelines.
Meanwhile he has ordered that any talks between Yasser Arafat and
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres must be limited to arranging a
cease-fire. Referring to the Palestinian Authority as "a kingdom of
terror," Sharon said Israel would not lift the siege on the
Palestinians until there was a total absence of violence for seven
days, followed by a six-week "cooling-off period," and then a series
of confidence-building measures. These would include the total
disarming of Palestinians, but the expansion of Israeli settlements
would continue. "There are soldiers coming back from the army," he
said. "They want to get married. What are they going to do? They have
to get a formal agreement from Arafat?"
When he was reminded of a statement by special U.N. envoy Terje
Roed-Larsen that Israel's blockade was having a "devastating" effect
on the Palestinian economy, leaving more than 300,000 workers
unemployed and 2 million people without an income, Sharon was
unmoved. "Once we open the siege we immediately have casualties," he
said, forgetting that Israel has continued to have casualties despite
the siege. The futility of Sharon's unbending harshness was made
evident only a day later, when a middle-aged Israeli Palestinian from
the Galilee set off a bomb in the town of Nahariya, killing himself
and three others and wounding scores of Jews and Arabs. As usual,
Israel responded with heavy missile attacks on the West Bank and
Gaza, killing five Palestinians.
Although Sharon's intransigence is prolonging the conflict, he faces
no significant pressure to change course. The Labor Party is still
hopelessly divided after the defeat of Ehud Barak last February, so
much so that in early September when Avraham Burg, the moderate
speaker of the Knesset, narrowly defeated Binyamin Ben-Eliezer,
Sharon's hawkish defense minister, for party chairman, Ben-Eliezer
charged fraud and challenged the election. The outcome has not yet
been determined. The Israeli peace movement has no significant
representation in the Knesset.
Sharon's main advantage is that until very recently he enjoyed the
obvious support of the Bush administration. The U.S. Arms Export
Control Act allows countries to use weapons obtained from the United
States only in self-defense. When State Department lawyers were
challenged to justify Israel's use of American-made aircraft and
other weapons to assassinate Palestinian militants, shoot stone
throwers, and bomb civilian cities, however, they claimed the act is
"sufficiently ambiguous" to make it impossible to ban arms shipments
to Israel. Sharon's spokesman Raanan Gissin said Israel had not
received a single complaint from Washington about the use of American
weapons.
After Israeli helicopters fired missiles into an apartment house in
Ramallah on Aug. 27, and killed PFLP leader Abu Ali Mustafa while he
was sitting at his desk, a State Department spokesman criticized
Israel for inflaming the conflict. Nevertheless, on the same day,
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz, and other senior U.S. officials met for four hours
with top Israeli military officers and diplomats to discuss ways
Washington could help enhance Israel's security situation in the
region. "Israel knows that the State Department has to say certain
things in public," one military analyst said, "but in a face-to-face
dialogue there is a recognition of whose side the U.S. is on."
During his vacation in Texas last summer, Bush gratuitously offended
the Palestinians by saying, "I doubt that Arafat wants to conduct
honest negotiations with Israel that will lead to implementation of
[former Sen. George] Mitchell's recommendations." He called on Arafat
to "prove that he really wants to conduct peace talks to end the
cycle of violence."
Arafat responded by again urging Bush to support sending observers to
monitor a ceasefire, as the Mitchell commission recommended, and
reminded him that only the United States and Israel are opposed to
such monitors. Arafat might also have reminded Bush that it is
Sharon, not the Palestinians, who is refusing to resume peace talks.
Palestinian Minister of Planning Nabil Shaath said Bush's statement
"had given the green light to Israel to continue killing the
Palestinian people."
The Durban Walk-Out
The Bush administration's most conspicuous gift to Israel was its
decision on Sept. 3 to walk out of the U.N.-sponsored World
Conference Against Racism, making the United States the only country
besides Israel to leave the conference. Washington's decision to
abandon Durban and stand alone with Israel against most of the rest
of the world not only undermined America's claim to be a champion of
freedom and human rights but placed the United States in the position
of defending the indefensible. As Israel escalates its attacks with
the systematic destruction of refugee camps, the murder of
Palestinian activists and the use of helicopters, fighter bombers,
and tanks against a civilian population, U.S. support for Israel
becomes harder and harder to justify. The catastrophic attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11 suggest that it has
also become more dangerous.
No one doubted there was a connection between these attacks and
Washington's all-out support for Israel, along with its punishing
sanctions against Libya, Iran and Iraq. Israeli leaders said as much,
and all but expressed their satisfaction. "It's very good," former
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said immediately after the
horrendous event, then thought twice and said, "Well, not very good,
but it will generate immediate sympathy."
Sharon called attention to "our common values" and stressed along
with many other Israelis that the United States and Israel shared a
common plight. In fact, their two situations were hardly similar. As
of mid-September, 172 Israelis had been killed in the previous 12
months. In New York and Washington some 7,000 died in a single day.
Nevertheless Sharon insisted there was no difference between Arafat
and Osama bin Laden and abruptly cancelled talks between Arafat and
Peres that had been scheduled for Sept. 16. Just as Bush was
attempting to enlist Arab states in a coalition to fight terrorism,
Sharon made his job harder by launching a devastating offensive
against Palestinian-held territory. Israeli tanks, helicopters and
ground troops shot their way into Jericho, Jenin and Ramallah,
shelling houses and destroying offices in a series of rampages that
left 20 Palestinians dead and many wounded by shrapnel. Many
Palestinians expressed fear that with the world's attention focused
on America, Israel would repeat such assaults.
Except for a few young Palestinians who cheered (and received wide
publicity), most Palestinians strongly deplored the killing of
innocent people. But some Palestinians fear that Israel's
assassinations of Palestinian activists, combined with the grinding
misery of the entire population, is encouraging increasing militancy
among Palestinians.
Whether or not Sharon is deliberately inciting Palestinian violence,
it is clear he is putting Israeli security at serious risk-not from
the Palestinians, but from his own misguided policies. Sharon and his
cabinet are seriously contemplating the creation of a buffer zone
along the Green Line up to a mile in depth, in order to keep out
Palestinians. According to retired Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, it would
be "creating an illusion" to think this would keep suicide bombers or
terrorist cells from trying to get into Israel, but Palestinians say
the army is already digging trenches and building fences around
Jerusalem. The buffer zone would completely isolate Palestinian areas
from Jerusalem and the rest of Israel, and residents of villages
inside the zone would be placed under nightly curfew.
Palestinians charge that the plan violates signed agreements and
would further consolidate an apartheid system. But some Israelis are
pointing out that the buffer zone would restrict Israeli movement as
well, and that once again Jews would be living in a walled ghetto,
this time one of their own making. In 1967 and again in 1993 Israelis
had a chance to make peace with the Palestinians and with their Arab
neighbors by withdrawing from the West Bank and Gaza, but lacked the
wisdom and foresight to do it. As a result Israel again finds itself
surrounded by enemies, dependent on leaders whose chief skill is
exercising military force. Israelis will soon have to ask themselves
whether their insistence on occupying another people's land is worth
living under constant fear, facing an endless war that neither side
can win. With the Sept. 11 terrorist attack to remind us how closely
the fate of the United States is tied to Israel's, Americans may soon
be asking themselves the same question.
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[END]