What effect the suicide bombing in the Israeli town of Kfar Saba yesterday will have on Ariel Sharon is already foreseeable. The Israeli leader pulled out of a piece of Gaza last week but not before sending a message to the Palestinians: Let that be a lesson to you. The Palestinians can expect to be taught another lesson by their occupiers soon.
One lesson drawn from the incursion into Palestinian-controlled territory is that a leopard cannot change his spots. Obviously Sharon cannot change his, nor does he really care to. Responsible for some of the worst disasters in the Arab-Israeli conflict, it appears he is not yet through.
Last week, he authorized Israeli fighter aircraft to deliberately target Syrian Army positions in Lebanon for the first time since the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The action was a delayed reprisal for the killing of an Israeli soldier by Hezbollah fighters in the Israeli-occupied Shebaa region on the Lebanese border. A day later, following Palestinian mortar attacks on an Israeli town, Sharon ordered Israeli tanks and bulldozers to plow one kilometer into Palestinian-controlled territory in northern Gaza. This was accompanied by Israeli air and sea rocket attacks on Palestinian Authority security and civilian installations. Regional war? It has long been feared that the Palestinian uprising would widen into a regional confrontation. Sharon may or not be itching for one. The most obvious scenario is a strike against Syrian forces in Lebanon, which could develop into a full-scale war with Syria. The strike against the Syrian radar station seems to point in that direction.
Reoccupation of the self-rule territories? It’s already happening. The Israelis always manage to find a pretext for a defensive war. Sharon’s brief stopover was brief but initially there was no sign this partial reoccupation was anything other than permanent. Only a strong US rebuke prevented the Israelis from entrenching themselves. US state secretary made sure to blame the Palestinians for provoking the hostilities, but his denunciation of the Israeli response, though, was stronger. It was excessive and disproportionate, he said, before calling on the Israeli government to respect its commitments to withdraw from Gaza according to terms of agreements signed by Israel and the Palestinians. The message reached home. Within hours of Powell’s statement the army was pulling out.
For one of the few times since he took office, Bush took the Middle East conflagration seriously. Prior to his response to the Israeli move in Gaza, Bush’s electoral promise to show more humility in international-relations had emerged only in his administration’s disengagement from the Middle East peace process and the violence.
Following Powell’s criticism, the Israelis stated that they pay very close attention to what is said in Washington. In an apparent bow to the US censure, Sharon’s Cabinet ruled out future large-scale operations into Palestinian-run areas. But it has not forsaken lower key alternatives.
Israel moved into Gaza again over the weekend, attacking a Palestinian police post. This, despite the fact that PA officials arrested several people for firing mortars from populated areas.
And despite a strong desire as expressed by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to return to peace talks and to get them going as quickly as possible. An offer by Arafat for a joint public statement with Sharon, perhaps even on television, calling for an end to the violence, was snubbed by Sharon. For the moment, Sharon is fighting a war of intimidation. He believes that through a combination of brutal repression and reckless raising of the military stakes in the region, he will be able to quell the uprising and force the Palestinians back to the negotiating table on his terms. That has so far not occurred.
But he has also totally shifted the terms of the battle. The Palestinians are no longer fighting to regain more occupied territory, but want to avoid losing the territory they had already won.
