Israel’s postponement of its troop withdrawal from Bethlehem and Beit Jala means Ariel Sharon is deliberately demanding more than what the Palestinians can deliver. By his refusal not to budge, insisting his army stays in place until and unless Yasser Arafat extradites the killers of Rahavam Zeevi, dismantles Hamas and Jihad and end all shooting and violence, Sharon has set the bar so high that Palestinians cannot get over it.
Not that the Palestinians haven’t been trying. Palestinian officials have condemned Zeevi’s killing and have arrested more than 30 members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which claimed responsibility for the killing. The Palestinian Authority has also outlawed the PFLP’s military branch.
But Sharon has sought to squeeze every last drop of political advantage from Zeevi’s assassination, beginning with military measures which were part of a scheme that have no bearing on the specific situation but with significant political consequences. This gradual reoccupation of Palestinian areas is aimed at expanding the occupation from the mere 18 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that is currently under the control of the Palestinian Authority. The acts of retaliation and revenge that pass in the Israeli government as solutions to the problem are if anything responsible for even more retaliatory acts by the Palestinians and the Israeli reconquests are the real reason why the region is teetering on the abyss of more violence and death.
Sharon has been obsessed with recent international efforts, to him unwelcome pressure, to bring him to the negotiating table. Sharon raised the ire of the US, brushing off a US demand that his troops withdraw, and that no further incursions should be made, in defiance of unusually strong language from Washington to pullout. That forced the US to take the rare step of joining in a UN Security Council statement critical of Israel. The statement, while not a resolution, was the next best thing to one, for it expressed the council’s genuine sentiments. Sharon has also come under pressure from the Labor Party, a key coalition partner, which is considering pulling out of his government if the offensive against the PA continued. Labor set down conditions for its continuation in the government: no permanent reoccupation of Palestinian Authority areas, no toppling of the PA and no ousting of Yasser Arafat.
The 10-day occupation of Palestinian areas began with the assassination of Zeevi, the first Palestinian killing of an Israeli political figure in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. On the other hand, Israel has deliberately targeted Palestinian political figures for decades. Israel has been assassinating Palestinian leaders and militants — 60 to date, three of them dead within 12 hours of the Zeevi slaying — for the past several months, and should not have been surprised that its illegal methods would sooner or later prompt Palestinian retaliation in kind. Palestinian lives are not cheaper than Israeli ones. Why should one set of killings be acceptable and others not? That is a question neither Israel nor its supporters have easy answers to. Then they do reply, it is of the type seen recently. More than 40 Palestinians have been killed during the past week and six of their towns reoccupied.
There is an intent to destroy all things — Oslo, including the Palestinian leadership. As a consequence the violence goes on, with Israel’s occupation the more deadly and the vastly more destructive. It will not stop unless there is a real withdrawal from Palestinian land and lives and real hope of political salvation on the horizon. Only new Israeli thinking will help revive a peace process which could actually produce peace, not simply more process. Put in his place by the US and abandoned by his core constituents, Sharon could simply await the next Palestinian retaliation and then proceed with another reconquest. First, though, he must extradite his troops from where they have been recently planted.
