The missile attack in Nablus, targeting leaders of the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, was not, as some have suggested, a declaration of war. Israel does not have to declare war anew; it has been at war all along with the people it had dispossessed — and also with all those who had failed to hail its ethnic cleansing, evictions and house demolitions as the brave struggle of the “only democracy in the region” to survive. Even when cooing peace from the podiums of Madrid to Oslo to the White House, Israel was continuing the war that its terrorists had started in British-mandated Palestine to drive out its inhabitants. The “peace process” for Israel was a war to legitimize its occupation and to take control of the region’s economy through “normalization.”
The message that the missiles slammed home to the world, the Arab segment of it in particular, is that the rules of the game have changed. With Ariel Sharon, a candidate for the accused box in the war crime tribunal, in the driving seat, Israel is no longer prepared for the tortuous process of negotiations. That is not the prime minister’s style. Sabra and Shatila were his hour of glory - and he knows no other way to more glory.
The new rule of engagement is cold-blooded murder openly carried out, targeting all those who dare to object to the occupation of their land. No Israeli believes that the murder would scare Palestinians into submission. Hemi Shalev, a columnist in Israel’s Maariv newspaper, gives us an insight into the Israeli perception of what the result would be: “The policy of murder by the Israeli Army renders the Palestinian man in the street more radical, forces an escalation upon Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, builds support for Hamas, and recruits dozens of candidates to be martyrs to the cause.”
All those consequences, and more, will be there. But Israel is confident that it can deal with them. It feels that the worse it can expect are a few expressions of horror from world capitals, with exhortations to both the sides to “exercise restraint”. The “horror”, Israel knows, will mean nothing — in its case. The deliberate killing of civilians by a government is a crime that today’s world refuses to condone; it would invite sanctions and punishments, and “rogue” labels. But not if that government is Israel’s — because the ones it is killing are “terrorists”.
The terrorists, of course, are the Hamas and other resistance organizations. It is acceptable to kill them. Israel says so. Almost every other day, the White House and Capitol Hill go into a race to earn applause for being the toughest on them.
And they do it with our, Arab’s, blessings - not of all Arabs, but of some of us. We deliberately overlooked the truth of history that nowhere in the world, including occupied Europe, was resistance free of violence, that resisting occupation was not terrorism, but a legitimate use of force sanctioned by international law and conventions. We, barring a few exceptions like the Kingdom, treated them as untouchables by refusing them permission to come to our lands. We actively participated in conferences that were convened with the specific agenda of outlawing Palestinian resistance movements. And now we have Israel using our approval as a license to “liquidate” them with missiles. There is a lesson here for all of us.
