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]