6 - 12 December 2001
Issue No.563
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 6 - 12 December 2001 Issue No.563 |
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He who holds the match
They may deny it, but analysts and diplomats agree that suspected war criminal Ariel Sharon would not have been able to carry out his massive military strikes on the Palestinians without tacit US approval. The strikes, directed principally against the PA and Yasser Arafat, began the instant Sharon returned from a meeting with George W Bush. After that meeting, Bush said Israel had the "right to defend itself."Against whom? An unarmed civilian population barely surviving under occupation? Did Arafat order the militants from Hamas to carry out the suicide attacks in West Jerusalem and Haifa? And what will Israel gain if it eliminates Arafat and the PA? These are questions neither Israel nor its supporters in Washington care to address.
Since the Al-Aqsa Intifada started over a year ago, Israel's occupation forces have conducted a persistent campaign to weaken the PA, the same authority that is supposed to "clamp down" on militants opposed to the peace process. But what about hard-liners in the Israeli government who oppose the peace process and openly call for ethnic cleansing, or the "transfer" of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza to neighbouring Arab countries? What about heavily armed extremist Israeli settlers who commit atrocities against innocent Palestinian civilians? Shouldn't these "terrorists" be jailed, or forced to keep their opinions to themselves? Instead, thanks to Sharon, they are high-ranking officials.
The Israelis have killed 1,000 Palestinians since the Al- Aqsa Intifada started. Those lives are worth no less than those of the 25 Israelis killed this week.
The mainstream US media, led by CNN, spends hours of air time denouncing "Palestinian terror" and blaming Arafat. No wonder it had no time to mention Sharon's order last week to assassinate Hamas military leader Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, whose death triggered these revenge attacks, or the five Palestinian children killed by an Israeli bomb in Gaza.
If the world wants to turn the heat up on Arafat, it must heap blazing coals on Sharon, whose insistence on peace with occupation is the cause of all the violence.
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