Butcher at the helm

The international humanitarian organisation Christian Aid this week released a report detailing the plight of the Palestinian people. The statistics are shocking. Eighty per cent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are living on less than $2 a day. The Palestinian economy is being systematically destroyed and the social fabric fast disintegrating. The report points out that the impoverishment of the Palestinian people will have dire consequences beyond Israel's borders, and singles out the Israeli occupation as the chief cause.

The results of the Israeli elections come as no big surprise: Likud's triumph was widely anticipated. Still, the Arab world will find it difficult to conceal its deep disappointment. Israeli Arabs, Palestinians, indeed all Arabs, are braced for the worst.

The Israeli electorate, it would appear, is in no mood to negotiate with the Palestinians. Labour support has shrunk to an all time low, and the Israeli left humbled.

Sharon, re-elected as Israel's prime minister, is a man whose name is inextricably intertwined with the 1982 massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. These, though, are not the only massacres he masterminded. In 1953 Sharon was in command of the notorious Unit 101 that butchered innocent Palestinian civilians in the West Bank village of Qibya.

Sharon does not bother to hide his abhorrence for negotiated settlements with the Palestinians. And with his history of brutality, his penchant for force, there are no indications that he will ever change his mind.

It is against this grim backdrop that United States President George Bush delivered his State of the Union address. To Arab ears it sounded more like an exercise in rabble-rousing. Sharon is working on his "final solution" for the Palestinians. And the US -- with its double standards -- is conveniently facilitating his job.