SATURDAY BROUGHT TO a close the bloodiest week of violence in the 17 month-old Palestinian uprising, and a different approach to the conflict by two key players. After vowing never to begin peace negotiations while under fire, Ariel Sharon now says the cease-fire talks may begin. And after saying he would not send envoy Anthony Zinni back to the region as long as the violence continued, President Bush, too, changed his mind; Zinni is readying for a new mission. While these cannot be considered sea changes, they do suggest that at least the fighting has not, as some believe, pushed all chances of diplomacy to the sidelines.
As the fighting reached new levels of ferocity, Washington weighed in with some of its toughest criticism yet against Sharon. Declaring war on the Palestinians, as US Secretary of State Colin Powell put it, and believing that the problem can be solved by how many Palestinians Sharon can kill is leading nowhere. Sharon, the secretary of state added, has to take a hard look at his policies to see if they are working. Needless to say, they are not.
No amount of Israeli military pressure will end the Palestinian uprising against the occupation of territory which is theirs and which one day will be their independent state. As long as the occupation continues, Palestinians will employ armed resistance because there is a consensus shared by most factions and sections of Palestinian society that Israel’s ongoing onslaught against their lives, lands and property must be met in kind.
Amid this changing scenario, the question is: Is Bush’s turnaround genuine? The US president said he was “deeply concerned about the tragic loss of life”. Over the past three months, Washington’s focus has been almost exclusively on pressuring Yasser Arafat to act on attacks against Israelis. Everyone is now tired of the refrain, “he is not doing enough”. But this failed to stop the violence as did the daily appeals by State Department spokesmen to exercise restraint. For the simple reason that all this was addressed to the wrong (or wronged) party. With the violence, in fact, escalating by the hour, Zinni is being sent back to the region. And by now everybody in the region knows when the “loss of life” becomes “tragic” to Americans.
Two previous missions by Zinni ended in failure and Bush warned that there was no assurance of success this time around. If Zinni does indeed come against another brick wall, it would again be in the form of Sharon. While various parties are trying desperately to put together viable initiatives for peace, Sharon is pursuing a different tack altogether, vowing to strike relentlessly until the Palestinians beg for a truce. This strategy to hit and hit hard has led many Israelis to question their army’s actions in the territories and many are growing aware of the failure of Sharon’s policies. The Israeli economy is in a terrible state, the tourism industry is collapsing, money that should be spent on education, health and social services is instead feeding an insatiable military budget and the Israeli public is growing pessimistic. An opinion poll in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth showed that 53 percent of Israelis had no confidence in their prime minister, echoing findings in a survey in the Maariv daily a week ago.
Sharon may continue his savage policies for some time though the military blockade on Arafat is to be lifted. But he knows that he can’t break the backbone of the Palestinian resistance whatever he does. He also knows the Israeli public is becoming disillusioned with a policy that delivers neither peace nor security. In a way, dropping of ‘seven days of quiet’ condition and Zinni’s return are indirect admissions of a policy failure — one in Tel Aviv and the other in Washington.
