Ariel Sharon says that Israel is at war. It is a war in which he seeks to confuse onlookers as to his objectives. He claims to be fighting terrorism, but his real target is the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people themselves. In his eyes, all of them are terrorists because they are standing in the way of achieving his megalomaniacal dream.
The unrelenting onslaught against them looks, every passing day, more like the racist strategy of five decades ago to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian land of its inhabitants, by terrorizing them into fleeing. The Israelis now want to push Yasser Arafat into exile: but he is not the only one they want out. If Sharon has his way, thousands upon thousands will be forced out: Deir Yassin all over again.
But Sharon’s deception is not working. Not only in Arab and Muslims countries but throughout the world there is a growing realization that this war is entirely of his making; that the suicide bombers and the massive Israeli military onslaught against the Palestinian people are his own personal contributions to the stability of the Middle East and the security of Israel. His alone. If there is any crumb of satisfaction to be drawn from the crisis, it is the fact that, for the first time that Israel has been at war, governments and people the world over hold it — and its fanatical prime minister above all — responsible.
Worldwide, people have put two and two together, and understand why the region faces one of its worst crisis ever. They see that there has never been such mass fury in the occupied territories as now — not during the prime ministerships of Sharon’s immediate predecessors, not even during the height of the first intifada. They see Sharon’s evident contempt for the Palestinians, his support for yet more settlements, his unremitting determination not to budge an inch from the occupied territories. They see the way in which he has sabotaged every effort to bring about a peace deal. Seeing it all, they realize why the region is in the present crisis. There is horror at the bombs that kill Israeli civilians. But there is also an understanding that they are not the cause of the present crisis; they are the result of Sharon’s militant intransigence.
And now they see the Lebanese border as the latest front, and fear how the conflict will escalate. The Europeans — not exactly noted in the past for impartiality when the Middle East was plunged into war — have described his “offer” of exile to Arafat as a “joke”. They see the Israelis as the greater impediment to peace and say they must withdraw from the occupied areas.
The tragedy is that the longer Sharon is allowed to continue with his rejectionist policies, the more suicide bombers there will be. Desperate and without the sophisticated weaponry that the Israelis have, the Palestinians have discovered in their martyrs an ultimate weapon that the Israelis cannot defeat. They will go on using it, not just because there is nothing else to use, but also because the more the Israelis attack, the longer the queue of would-be bombers grows.
For the Arabs, the issue now is how to garner and use the unprecedented level of sympathy that exists for the Palestinians worldwide. Crown Prince Abdullah’s peace initiative was one.
