No longer is there any talk of a Middle East cease-fire. Every new dawn marks a new cycle of death and retribution. Over the weekend, Israel dynamited the Voice of Palestine radio station. While the attack was ostensibly in retaliation for the ballroom assault a day earlier, the destruction of the station was meant to silence the media so that the world would not know what an occupying power did for a living. In a similar vein, Israel has refused to renew the press credentials of Arab correspondents as it maintains a siege of the occupied territories, invades Palestinian towns and villages and kills routinely.
But it would be extremely difficult for Israel to hide what has been taking place. Its recent brutal and systematic destruction of Palestinian houses and the rendering of over 600 families homeless cannot be hidden, for it was, as described in the Israel’s Haaretz, a shameful chapter in Israel’s history, an act of undisguised ruthlessness and devoid of humanitarian and diplomatic logic. Nor can it conceal the latest targeted assassination, this one of Fatah activist Raid Al Karmi.
At one time, Ariel Sharon said he would resume contacts with the Palestinians when they arrested the people involved in the alleged weapons shipment aboard the Karine-A. It means that there might not ever be contacts because the Israeli claims of Palestinian culpability do not hold water. Sharon pledged to start peace negotiations if seven days of calm passed. There was a recent three-week lull after more than 15 months of fighting, which Israeli observers themselves admitted was a period suitable enough to meet Sharon’s demands.
Yet, no talks began. Instead, it was the spiral of violence that started. An Israeli government, whose goal is to perpetuate the occupation and to prevent, at all costs, the emergence of a viable Palestinian state, will never be at a loss to find new provocations and humiliations.
While Sharon is an obstacle to progress, strong engagement by the Bush administration can help. The United States remains the only possible source of restraint on Sharon, despite its support for the most hard-line government in Israeli history. At first reluctant, especially in his presidency’s early months, to get more closely involved in the conflict, Bush regained some credit with Arabs by talking of a Palestinian state. But he again lost credibility after giving Sharon the green light to retaliate in whichever manner he liked for anti-Israeli attacks.
Unfortunately, Bush is adopting Sharon’s view that Arafat is to blame for the impasse when it is Sharon who is abandoning any serious attempt that there might still be to launch negotiations and forge a political settlement. All Sharon has to do is provoke an incident — he practically wills Palestinian attacks on Israel — or simply say, with US backing, that he is unsatisfied with this or that Palestinian effort, and Washington begins preaching to the Palestinians while remaining totally silent on the occupation.
Sharon insists his chief goal is peace and that it would be the last thing he would like to do in political life before going back to the farm and ride the horses. He may, or may not, take that ride.
At the moment, however, he is taking the world for a ride.
