It would indeed be welcome news if Israel does not roll into Gaza the way it did the West Bank. Reports suggest that Israel appears to have scaled down its plans for a major military push into the strip to avenge the Rishon Letzion bomb attack by Palestinian resistance fighters last Tuesday which killed 17 people.
Still, Israeli tanks are moving, the reserves have been called up and troops are poised at the Gaza border. Palestinians have steeled themselves for an assault and are bracing for Ariel Sharon’s phase two of his ongoing war against them.
The reports say Sharon was backing down from an all-out offensive because of US pressure. But that must be disputed given how many times Sharon waved off President Bush’s request for Israeli troops to abandon the West Bank siege. By the time Sharon eventually brought the campaign to a halt, the damage had been done, the American-Israeli relationship was no worse for wear and Sharon had emerged, in Bush’s words, "a man of peace."
Not only did Sharon get away with the West Bank onslaught with barely a slap on the wrist, but also escaped international retribution by stopping dead in its tracks a UN fact-finding mission to Jenin where, on all accounts, a massacre of Palestinians took place.
Thus the news that Sharon has whittled down plans for a Gaza raid should be taken with a grain of salt. Because from Sharon’s perspective, Operation Defensive Shield phase one was a resounding success — and what better breeds success than more of the same? It was successful because it re-established Israel’s untrammeled military rule throughout the West Bank and subsequently allowed the Israeli Army to besiege and invade Palestinian towns and villages at will, unencumbered by distractions like entering and breaking into Palestinian self-rule areas. A recent poll shows that Israeli public support for Sharon had hit a new high for the year because of his West Bank military offensive which also includes the Jenin massacres, and Sharon no doubt is thinking how high his star can go with a similar showing in Gaza which would be a rerun of phase one: A conquest of Palestinian cities, a siege on their lives and the destruction of their national institutions, encompassing this time Gaza, the base of what remains of the Palestinian Authority. All crowned by praise from the White House for the "man of the peace".
Then it would be on to what Sharon offered in the US last week, "a serious plan, maybe the most serious", for peace in the Middle East. The long-term interim plan proposes setting up Israeli security buffer zones in the West Bank and keeping in place Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas. In this plan for peace there are no talks over a final peace deal in the near future or the institution of a timetable for peace negotiations. Rather, Sharon claimed he would like to work out his deal with the Palestinians at the proposed regional peace conference in the summer — providing Yasser Arafat is banned from attending.
While in Washington, the premier also said that while Israel and the US shared a strong friendship, Israel was prepared to depend on itself to safeguard its own interests. That will not be necessary. In a show of unquestioned loyalty, the Congress last week passed two resolutions, with clear majorities, affirming its solidarity with Israel. Bush joined in, saying the relationship with Israel was unique and that the US "would not allow it to be crushed."
As for what Sharon plans to do with Arafat, a question which could be extrapolated to include Gaza, Bush was extremely accommodating. "I’m never going to tell my friend the prime minister what to do. He is a democratically-elected official."
These comments do not necessarily mean Bush has given Sharon a green light for Gaza. But Sharon knows, as do we in the Arab world, that all American lights will ultimately turn out to be green.
