 |
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 12 - 18 October 2000 Issue No. 503 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
|
||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 12 - 18 October 2000 Issue No. 503
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
|
||
Egypt Elections Palestine International Economy Opinion Culture Books Interview Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Under siege
Following her talks with President Hosni Mubarak in Sharm Al-Sheikh a week ago, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that the situation in the region was "volatile and tragic. There have been too many funerals, too much sorrow, too many tears shed, too many lives shattered." Yet at no point in her long press conference did she admit that nearly all the sorrow, tears and shattered lives were Palestinian. It would harm the peace process -- in the view of Mrs Albright and the US administration -- to blame Israel for the brutal murder of 100 Palestinians, many of them children, and the maiming of 3,000 others. Albright even sought to justify the violence committed by the Israeli occupation troops following her return to Washington, saying that the Palestinians were "laying siege" to the poor Israeli soldiers by throwing stones at them.Eighteen-month-old Sarah, the youngest martyr in the new Palestinian Intifada, was killed by an Israeli sniper -- soldier or settler, for there is little difference -- who put a bullet in the back of her head last week. But surely this was justified, since she was indeed besieging the Israeli who shot her in cold blood. Twelve-year-old Mohamed Al-Dorra, murdered as his father begged Israeli soldiers to hold their fire, truly posed a grave threat to the Israeli occupation troops.
So the world's sole superpower is telling millions of people, who demonstrated worldwide this week to express their outrage at the barbaric use of force against Palestinian civilians, that Israeli violence is justified. Never has the "international community," led by the United States, watched so passively as civilians were slaughtered wholesale. Palestinians are protesting the Israeli occupation, the institutionalised racism to which the occupiers subject them every day, and the massacres carried out by the Israeli army. And that same army brings out live ammunition, tanks and missiles. Still, the United States and Mrs Albright do not think that these practices deserve to be condemned.
Can the US's policy be designed to reduce tension or restore calm? Hardly. The "international community" and its self-appointed leader only reacted when three Israeli soldiers were captured in a daring operation by Lebanon's Hizbullah. Is Washington telling the Arabs that it refuses to intervene, except when Israel wants it to? If so, the message is coming through loud and clear.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
