The right to resist

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Ariel Sharon has resumed his arm-twisting, this time against the newly elected PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Hours before Abbas was sworn in a resistance operation targeted Israeli soldiers in the occupied territories. Sharon seized on the incident to lash out against Abbas, declare a boycott against his government, clamp down blockades on Gaza and Palestinian cities in the West Bank and another wave of violence against Palestinian civilians.

Resistance operations that target Israeli civilians or that are mounted inside Israel proper should be condemned. But operations that target occupied forces or settlements in the occupied territories fall into a different category. They can be criticised on tactical but not moral grounds. Such acts of resistance are the internationally sanctioned right of an occupied people. As such they call for neither a Palestinian apology, though many PA officials raced to offer one, nor do they justify Sharon's severing contacts with the PA.

The haste with which Washington, European and Arab capitals condemned the attack suggests that they believe Abbas's sole purpose is to prevent operations against Israeli military targets in the occupied territories. They expect him to arrest Palestinian militants, to disarm and dismantle the resistance infrastructure and to halt all incitement against Israel in the PA media, as though the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has already been resolved, agreements signed and a date set for the declaration of a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 boundaries with its capital in Jerusalem.

Yet 2005 had hardly begun when Israel asked Washington for $180 million to finance electronic surveillance equipment for crossing points in the separating wall. To usher in the new year Israel confiscated 2,200 dunums of West Bank land for settlement expansion, declared that it would raze 3,000 homes in Rafah in order to dig a ditch to separate it from the Egyptian border, and continued to send its tanks and bulldozers into Palestinian cities and villages.

The congratulations and promises for support Abbas received from world leaders following his election will not help his efforts to reach a political settlement with Israel.

Washington and other international parties' message to both Sharon and Abbas must be that only justice can furnish a sound and lasting foundation for peace. The opportunity is at hand to achieve peace through a two-state solution. This will be the test of the intentions of the Sharon government. If it fails to take the hand extended to it we will know that peace is not on its agenda.