Al-Ahram Weekly | Editorial

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 2 - 8 August 2001 Issue No.545
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

Above all laws
In just two days, 30 and 31 July, Israeli forces killed 18 Palestinians, among them children.
In Nablus, on Tuesday, US-made Apache helicopters fired missiles into a flat in a civilian building killing six people inside and two children, aged 8 and 10, who were standing in front of the building. The target of this attack were not activists preparing bombs or planning attacks against Israel, but a political leader of the militant Palestinian group, Hamas.
Yet in the face of such carnage Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, continues to repeat the ridiculous refrain that he is showing self-restraint. Disingenuously, he claims he is seeking only to deter suspected "terror" attacks when he knows perfectly well that the assassinations of Palestinians he is ordering the Israeli army to carry out serve only to increase the possibility of more attacks.
How, one wonders, does Sharon really expect the international public to swallow his claims that his actions are governed by the desire to restore calm? And should he have decided that international public opinion is gullible enough -- his actions, after all, draw only statements of condemnation from the worlds' capitals, which continue to exhibit their traditional aversion for anything so concrete as pressure, let alone action -- to accept at face value his words, how does he then assume that such crimes will convince Palestinians to return to negotiations?
The inevitable response to Tuesday's Nablus murders were statements by Hamas leaders threatening revenge, and declaring all Israeli politicians and military figures legitimate targets.
Sharon appears determined to ignore reality, to forget that with each Palestinian activist he orders his army to kill, he convinces yet more and more young Palestinians that revenge is the only possible response to Israel's crimes.
The United States and the world community must cease treating Israel as a state above the law, unbound by any international agreement or convention. For should they fail to do so, they will have become accomplices in Sharon's schemes to push the region towards a new war.

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