In the kill zone

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat might be next on the Israeli hit list, reports Khaled Amayreh

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Palestinians march during a demonstration in support of President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank village of Yatta near Hebron on Monday. Arafat has seen an outpouring of support after receiving a veiled death threat from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

After successfully assassinating Hamas's top two leaders, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin on 22 March and Abdul-Aziz Al-Rantisi on 17 April, Israel is ostensibly contemplating murdering Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in a newspaper interview that his pledge not to kill Arafat, which he had made to the administration of US President George W Bush, was no longer standing. A day later, a close aide to Sharon told Israeli state- controlled radio that Arafat's days were numbered.

The gruesome threat sent shudders through the Palestinian Authority. Arafat, departing from his usual rhetorical overindulgence, said he was taking the assassination threats seriously. "I realise that Sharon and his gang are capable of doing anything," Arafat told foreign diplomats. "But, in any case, I tell you the Palestinian mountain will not be shaken," he told hundreds of supporters who came to his battered headquarters to demonstrate their loyalty to him.

Palestinian officials appealed to the international community, especially the US, to prevent Israel from murdering the Palestinian leader. "The United States is the only side that could prevent the implementation of these criminal threats," said Arafat's advisor Nabil Abu Rudeina. "We therefore call on the American administration to act immediately to restrain Sharon."

Similarly, a number of Arab leaders, including Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, dispatched "urgent messages" to the Bush Administration, urging it to place pressure on Israel. Eventually, the Bush administration, in a rare public rebuke, called on Israel to stick to its erstwhile pledge not to kill Arafat, at least at this time.

Seeking to avoid a public discord with the Bush administration, some Israeli officials sought to mitigate the urgency of the assassination threats against Arafat. One Israeli official declared that there were no "immediate plans" to kill Arafat at this time. It is not certain if Sharon takes the American opposition to murdering Arafat seriously or seriously enough.

Sharon realises that Bush needs him as much as -- if not more -- than he needs the American president, given the upcoming American presidential election campaign and the perceived pivotal significance of the Jewish vote, financial contributions and media influence in the American election. Indeed, it was amply clear that the "generous assurances" Bush gave Sharon during the latter's visit to Washington on 14 April, including endorsing Israel's position on such cardinal issues as Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Palestinian refugees' right of return, were meant, at least in part, to further endear Bush to Jewish voters, and media, as well as to staunchly pro-Israeli Christian fundamentalists.

This is at least the prevailing impression in Israel, especially among Israeli officials.

Sharon, for his part, seems to calculate that by wreaking death and havoc on Palestinians he will be able to appease and outmanoeuvre his far right-wing critics who oppose his unilateral plan to withdraw from most of the Gaza Strip. Some Israeli commentators argued that recent threats to kill Arafat, along with the assassinations of Yassin and Rantisi, were meant to convince Sharon's sceptical critics on the far right to support his plan.

However, it seems that while Sharon may have succeeded in wining over some fluctuating party members, he has failed to win the backing of thousands of religious Zionists, including key cabinet ministers, who have a deep commitment to the concept of a "Greater Israel" which includes not only Israel proper, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but also parts of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon as well. To these zealots, who also make up a sizable chunk of the Likud Party's membership, giving up any part of "Eretz Yisrael" represents ideological and religious treachery.

This week, Israeli Cabinet Minister Tsibi Livni, publicly saluted the fanatic settlers of Kfar Dorom in southern Gaza, saying they embodied "the enduring vigor" of Zionism and suggesting that Sharon was betraying them. Another Likud activist has actually called Sharon a "Nazi", arguing that the Israeli premier was doing to the Jews what German Nazis did to them several decades ago.

"Sharon is not only an enemy, he is the most dangerous enemy of Israel," wrote Likud activist and journalist Ohad Kamin. In a fiery article published on a right-wing Israeli Web site by the name of "Jewish Leadership," Kamin called Sharon a modern barbarian for betraying the ideals of the Jewish people and the Greater Land of Israel: "The common thread of our enemies is that only force speaks to them. From their viewpoint -- and this includes Sharon -- whatever is said by an armed man is more just than what is said by an unarmed man. For the modern barbarians, power is justice."

Keamin's remarks sent shock waves through the party whose officials continued to bless Sharon's threats against Arafat, with one Likud leader calling Kamin a "sick mind". Nonetheless, it is difficult to predict the outcome of the 2 May referendum within the Likud Party on Sharon's disengagement plan. It is clear, however, that Sharon is brazenly trying his best to mollify opponents and sceptics by spilling as much Palestinian blood as possible. Indeed, since the assassination of Ahmed Yassin on 22 March, the Israeli occupation army has killed over 70 Palestinians, the bulk of whom were innocent civilians, including a number of children and minors.

Much of the bloodletting has taken place in the Gaza Strip, especially in its northern part, where the Israeli occupation army carried out an extended rampage of terror in Beit lahya and Beit Hanun, killing as many as 22 Palestinians late last week. Likewise, violent and bloody incursions by the Israeli army took place this week in Nablus, Tulkarm, Jenin, Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah, resulting in as many as eight deaths, including at least three youngsters.

Further, Israeli soldiers have resumed the practice of using Palestinian children and boys as human shields in their rampageous operations in Palestinian population centers. Last week, a Palestinian boy, 13-year-old Mohamed Bedwan, underwent what was probably the most nightmarish experience of his life. According to eyewitnesses, the young boy was snatched at gunpoint by Israeli border police as he was watching older boys hurl stones at Israeli soldiers guarding bulldozers near the village of Biddu, west of Ramallah. A terrified Mohamed ended up on the bonnet of an Israeli jeep, with one of his arms tied to a wire mesh screen that blocks the windshield from incoming stones. The boy's father was furious.

"He was a shield for them," said Said Bedwan, a 34-year-old labourer, of his son's experience. "When I saw him on the hood of the jeep, my whole mind went crazy. It's a picture you can't even imagine. He was shivering from fear."

The picture was published widely in the Palestinian press and even some Israeli newspapers. However, so far, no American newspaper has picked up the image.

Initially, the Israeli army denied the incident, saying: "We don't do things like this," and "We are a democratic state." However, when the picture was finally published, the army switched to damage-limitation mode, claiming that "it is not the policy of the Israeli Defense Forces to expose civilians to physical damage."

One Israeli activist who witnessed the entire incident intimated to Al- Ahram Weekly that police authorities would now reprove the perpetrators of this "criminal act" not for savaging the little boy, but for failing to make sure that no cameramen had taken a picture of the incident.