14 - 20 June 2001
Issue No.538
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 14 - 20 June 2001 Issue No.538 |
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A favour from a friend
The US will not be doing any good to the cause of peace in the region if its role is confined to reproducing Israeli proposals and presenting them to Arab parties as American ones. CIA director George Tenet knows how tense the situation is currently in occupied Palestine after nine months of confrontation against the Israeli army. Pressuring Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to arrest Palestinian activists Israel sees as threats to its security can only diminish the Palestinian Authority's credibility in front of its own people, and almost certainly lead to further violence in the region.
Following the Tel Aviv attack in which 20 Israelis were killed, all Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Jihad, met with Arafat personally and declared their commitment to the cease-fire he had announced. The militants released by the Palestinian Authority shortly after the Intifada began were not sent out to attack Israel. They were let go mainly to avoid an attack against the prisons where they were held by Israeli helicopters and F-16s.
To make matters worse, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has vehemently rejected any measures that would help Arafat sell the cease-fire to his people. Two weeks after it was announced, three million Palestinians continue to live under a tight siege that prevents them even from moving from one village to the other. Patients are dying at Israeli checkpoints, and women must give birth while waiting for a permit to go to the nearest hospital.
Knowing the "strategic" relation between Israel and the United States, it would be naive to expect Washington to put pressure on Israel. But by advising Tel Aviv to start seeing Palestinians as equal human beings and to end its occupation, the United States will be doing its own ally a great favour. Even Israel's military experts know that their country's military superiority over all the Arab countries and its possession of nuclear weapons will not help end its conflict with the Palestinians, or with groups like Lebanon's Hizbullah. Israel is not fighting a regular army that can be defeated in an open war. It is fighting against people struggling for their freedom, and who cannot give up until their suffering comes to an end.
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