13 - 19 September 2001
Issue No.551
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 13 - 19 September 2001 Issue No.551 |
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Horror, horror
Graham Usher, in Jerusalem, writes on the implications of the Washington and New York attacks for the situation in the region
Late on Tuesday night a dozen or so Palestinian men gathered beneath a television in an East Jerusalem supermarket, a mere 100 metres from what had been the PLO's Orient House headquarters but is now an Israeli police zone ringed by nine concrete slabs. They were mesmerised by the replay after slow motion replay of an American airliner cascading in flames against the left-hand tower of the World Trade Center. It looked like a reel from a Hollywood movie. But it wasn't a movie. It was the World Trade Center. It was New York. And it was an airliner.
The vast majority of Palestinians absorbed this image -- together with the news that another plane had ploughed into the Pentagon -- with a sense of unreality. A minority -- those who danced in the streets of refugee camps in Nablus and Lebanon and the few dozen who handed out sweets near the supermarket -- appeared to lose hold on reality altogether.
Were they really pleased that perhaps thousands of people -- including, almost certainly, Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians -- had perished for being in the wrong aircraft on the wrong side of town on the wrong day? "We are happy America was hit. America is against us in supporting Israel", answered one kid. For him, too, mass human destruction had become just another flicker on the TV screen.
Other Palestinians grasped the gravity of the moment -- if not yet the scale of the carnage, then at least the political import. "I send the condolences of the Palestinian people to President Bush, his government and to the American people for this terrible act," said Yasser Arafat, with absolute sincerity. "We are completely shocked. It's unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable."
Stung by bogus claims of responsibility on Arab TV networks, leaders from the Popular Front and Democratic Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine rushed out fervent denials that their factions had anything to do with the WTC and Pentagon operations. Even Hamas' spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, voiced disapproval of the attacks, adding, though, "America's racist policies must not be forgotten."
The cause of this factional unanimity was the awareness -- shared by every Palestinian and Arab leader -- that the net effect of the assaults on New York and Washington will be the hardening of those "racist policies". And nowhere more so than in the indulgence the US is now likely to grant Israel's "counter-terrorism" actions, whether in the occupied territories or region.
Israeli leaders, typically, saw this opportunity and grasped it with all hands. Aside from expressions of sympathy and offers of support, one Israeli leader after another rolled up to declare what the "free world" now stands before is the Huntingdon chasm. On the high ground, us (America, Israel, the West) and, beneath, them (Arabs, Muslims and that ubiquitous alloy of both, Osama Bin Laden).
For example, Defence Minister, Binyamin Ben- Eliezer: "Extremist Islamic terrorism is the main threat facing the nations of the free world today, since its goal is to destroy everything connected to the values shared by democratic governments and western societies."
Or Foreign Minister Shimon Peres: "If there is anybody that can lead an attack to end this dangerous war [against 'them'], it is only the US -- with the help of all of us."
But for sheer audacity, the pick was surely former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Writing in Israel's Maariv newspaper on Wednesday he called on the US to form a "coalition of freedom" against the "evil forces". He even volunteered its first target: "the regime of terror standing opposite us," that is, the Palestinian Authority.
Ariel Sharon too saw the WTC and Pentagon attacks as a "turning point" in the "international struggle of the free world against the forces of darkness and those who seek to destroy our values and way of life."
But, as is his wont, he let actions speak louder than words. He declared a national day of mourning so that "Israelis could stand as one with the American people." Less publicly, he closed Israel's international borders and tightened the blockades in the occupied territories.
With the West Bank quarantined off from the outside world, Israeli tanks and US-made Apache helicopters and F-16 jets ran riot over the besieged Palestinian town of Jenin, where, say the Israelis, there is a "hornet's nest" of "extremist Islamic" suicide bombers.
In raids on Wednesday morning into Jenin and neighbouring Palestinian villages, nine Palestinians were killed and scores wounded. On a normal day an assault of this savagery would have made the world's headlines. Post-WTC, it will barely get a sidebar. "Under cover of what is happening in New York, Israel is attacking Jenin and carrying out brutal crimes against the Palestinian people," said Jenin Palestinian Legislative Council member and refugee activist, Jamal Shati, accurately.
Nor were the Palestinians of the Jenin region the only political casualties of the new crusade the Israelis are so eager to launch. On Wednesday Arafat had been due to meet President Bashar Al- Assad in Damascus, after months of meticulous preparation by his emissaries. The hope among most Palestinians was that faced with a common enemy and occupier, Syria and the Palestinians would bury the hatchet and enable a much required rapprochement between the "inside" leadership and the 600,000 or so Palestinian refugees who languish, without representation, in the camps of Syria and Lebanon.
On Wednesday morning Arafat aide Nabil Abu Rudeineh announced that the visit had been postponed due to the "current circumstances." He gave no other explanation. He didn't need to.
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