11 - 17 April 2002
Issue No.581
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 11 - 17 April 2002 Issue No.581 |
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Martyrs or victims
Suicide attacks induce shudders among Israel's Western supporters, especially President Bush, for they are the only effective answer to the tanks, fighter planes and missiles which Israel uses calmly to destroy homes and slaughter their inhabitants. The only condition for Israel's withdrawal and an end to its brutal operations -- parroted absurdly by President Bush -- is that Arafat should put an end to the bombings.
It is nonsense to claim that the suicide attack in Netanya provoked Sharon to initiate the current process of extermination, causing massacres unprecedented since Balkans and, before that, World War II. Sharon has used violence against civilians throughout his career.
This career starts with the massacre he masterminded in the Jordanian village of Qibya in 1953, killing 69 civilians and destroying the entire village. The Sabra and Shatila massacres followed. More recently, Sharon ordered his troops to shoot demonstrators after his "visit" to Al-Aqsa, thus giving rise to the 2001 Intifada. Then came military operations against Palestinian civilians, which broke the cease-fire decisively.
America has been cheerleader and onlooker in turns; how, then, can it condemn a teenager's decision to sacrifice his or her life in the hope of exacting revenge -- a pathetic response to Israel's indiscriminate savagery, but surely the only one possible?
Those who blame suicide bombers for the death of civilian women and children refuse to admit that they do not spring from a vacuum, but constitute a response to Israel's unprecedented brutality against civilians. When Israel sets out to do damage, it destroys not a café or a pizza parlour but dozens of villages. Yet the protection of Israeli civilians, 72 per cent of whom support Sharon, is the only thing that concerns Bush and the US media. Hundreds of Palestinian women, children and elderly people have no food or medicine, yet America simply does not care.
For political reasons and under American pressure to participate in the "war on terrorism," some Islamic authorities have tried to deny those who undertake suicide missions in Israel the status of martyrs. They are wrong, by political and religious standards alike. Then again, someone who sacrifices his life in defence of his land and honour needs no seal of approval, whoever may be handing them out.
When American aircraft bombed dozens of Afghan villages, killing over 3,000 innocent villagers, nobody questioned the legitimacy of US policy. Nor do the religious authorities bother to declare Palestinian victims martyrs when Israeli tanks besiege Palestinian villages and shower them with bombs and missiles.
Suicide attacks in response to Israel's use of atrocious violence may well be the Palestinians' only means of defence, given the Arab regimes' reluctance to act, international indifference and America's explicit support of Sharon. The US president has called on Sharon to stop military operations and withdraw, giving him a week's grace period. Powell was said to be on his way to the region, not to fix what American policy has destroyed but to allow Israel to implement its plan with the least possible losses. Yet Sharon has refused Bush's request until Israel completes its military operations. The massacres of civilians will continue.
No doubt Sharon, who capitalised on the "war on terrorism," will not abandon his plans for a Greater Israel. He will annex more and more Palestinian land, as he has in his most recent killing spree. Even if Powell brings an end to Israeli military operations, therefore, he will not eliminate their political repercussions.
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