17 - 23 May 2001
Issue No.534
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 17 - 23 May 2001 Issue No.534 |
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Three-tiered master plan
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is proving his record by carefully escalating violence against the Palestinians. He has a definite agenda, writes Michael Jansen
Israel defines use of its extensive arsenal against the captive Palestinian populace as an "armed conflict short of war."
Eighth grade students during their moment of silence in the Arab Israeli village of Arabe
(photo: AP)
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's tactical objectives are three: crush Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation; destroy the Palestinian Authority (PA); and reimpose direct Israeli control over the Palestinian self-rule enclaves. His overall strategic objective is to finish off the peace process which he has opposed from its inception. Sharon's methods are double-barreled. On the one hand, the Israeli army is targeting the PA and its security apparatus by bombarding PA offices and installations and assassinating police and intelligence personnel. On the other, the army is mounting constant and increasingly destructive assaults against Palestinian civilian areas in defiance of the international prohibition against "collective punishment."
Of course, Sharon's ultimate aim is to inflict enough collective punishment to break the Palestinian will to resist. In the meantime he is working in stages. Sharon's aide, Raanan Gissin, has said that Israel seeks to keep the Palestinians "constantly under pressure" and to force them to spend their time defending themselves from attack instead of resisting the occupation. Sharon has carefully gauged the escalation in order to escape comment and condemnation by the international community. So far he has succeeded. The US and Europe, blind to the tragedy unfolding before their eyes, remain as mute on Sharon's current onslaught as they were during the first few weeks of his ferocious "Peace for Galilee" assault on Lebanon in 1982.
Looked at more closely, the full, deviant cunning of Sharon's methods becomes plain. By giving local army commanders the authority to attack Palestinian self-rule enclaves at will, Sharon has turned the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip into a free-fire zone. This is precisely what Israel did to southern Lebanon after establishing its so-called "security zone" along the border in 1985. Absorbing the lessons of its south Lebanon experience, the Israeli army is now launching "initiated" (or, allegedly, preemptive) operations against individuals or locations from where Israel claims the Palestinian resistance plans to attack Israeli soldiers and settlers. Such a policy legitimises unprovoked attacks on everyone and everything in the Palestinian domain.
Which the Israeli army has been doing. In the past month, the Israeli army has conducted several dozen incursions into areas under full Palestinian rule (designated as "Area A" under the Oslo agreements). Here Sharon's targets have been police posts and security officers as well as homes, schools, mosques, shops, workshops and plantations.
The Israeli army has also beefed up its strength in areas administered by the PA where Israel retains security control ("Area B" under Oslo). Israel's increased presence in "Area B," combined with repeated ground thrusts and air raids against "Area A," has blurred the edges of the areas from which Israel was supposed to withdraw its forces after the Oslo accords.
All this appears part of a grand plan. Ghassan Khatib, a leading Palestinian commentator, says Sharon is "undoing" the Oslo accords by extending Israeli control, inch by inch, over the territory that former premiers Yitzak Rabin and Binyamin Netanyahu evacuated. Palestinian International Cooperation Minister Nabil Shaath believes Sharon is treating the Palestinians as "a renegade province of the state of Israel."
The cost of Sharon's warped plans is high. According to the latest statistics on assaults on civilian areas since the Intifada erupted, Israel has bulldozed 800 homes and damaged another 3,000 with bombs. In the past two weeks alone Israel has flattened more than 60 homes. Sharon is making good his election promise to raze Palestinian neighbourhoods "row by row." Sharon's theory is that stateless Palestinians value their homes above all else and will pressure militants to cease resisting the occupation in order to preserve their dwellings.
Sharon is also ruining the Palestinian's land. The Israeli army is systematically wrecking the important farming sector of the Palestinian economy. In the past seven months Israeli troops have destroyed 2,465 farms producing fruits and vegetables, another 29 involved in animal husbandry, 114 storehouses for grain, 11 silos and stables, 1,440 beehives, 198 wells, 392 pools for irrigation and five and a half kilometres of water pipe. By wreaking such destruction in the countryside, Sharon seeks to break the Palestinian connection with the land which Israel covets.
Israel claims this massive operation is in response to Palestinian mortar strikes against Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and shooting attacks against Israelis in the West Bank. While Palestinians have launched about 150 mortar attacks in Gaza since the Intifada began, the mortars have inflicted few injuries and minimal damage.
Indeed, the Israeli army stepped up its operations in the West Bank just when PA security men had largely halted shooting incidents there. So far, the Palestinian resistance has not deployed mortars in the West Bank.
In the opinion of Danny Rubinstein, writing in Haaretz on May 14th, "The chief result of the Israeli campaign of attrition, so far, has been the precise opposite of what Israel sought. The campaign has produced greater (Palestinian) hatred and generated demands for revenge."
But Sharon is not directing his campaign at the Palestinians alone. By escalating military operations when his government is coming under pressure to accept the recommendations of the Mitchell Commission and the Egyptian-Jordanian peace plan, Sharon seeks to focus the efforts of the international community on halting ongoing "violence." His intention is to deflect attention from Israeli settlement activity, on which both the Mitchell Commission and the Egyptian-Jordanian have called for a ban. Sharon's aim is to exhaust the powers - that - be in a quest for calm so that he can continue building illegal settlements on Palestinian land unhindered.
This is an age-old tactic Israel has used to great advantage during its 53-year career as an occupier of the territory of others.
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