ANYONE WHO BELIEVES that Ariel Sharon was genuinely unhappy, when the central committee of his hawkish Likud party voted decisively against the creation of an independent Palestinian state, does not understand the Israelis.
Their core tactic has always been masterful prevarication. Time and again, it has seemed that they were prepared to embrace change and grant justice and dignity to the Palestinians. Then something happens to throw the entire process back into the melting pot.
Even the Oslo accord can be seen as part of this adroitly managed process. Seemingly far-reaching concessions can be made, but upon conditions which at first seemed marginal. Yet those conditions can suddenly be brought to the fore, to render all the main heads of agreement inoperable and meaningless.
The international face of Israeli politics, whether of the supposedly conciliatory Labor Party or of the avowedly right-wing Likud, has always been a magically-hinged Janus face. While on one side, it appears to be nodding emphatically in agreement, on the other side it is shaking vigorously in disagreement.
The demonic genius of Israeli diplomacy is that time and again, when it seems that the harsh realities of Zionist ambitions, which underpin everything that has happened in Palestine for more than 60 years, are about to be exposed for the rest of the world to see, the Israel government has contrived to seize the moral and political high ground.
With the stolid and misinformed support of successive US administrations, Israel has presented itself as a victim of aggression while it has always been the aggressor. A terrorist government has managed by its terror to provoke Palestinians to reply with the only means at their disposal. Their fight back has however been characterized successfully by Sharon and his thuggish government, as terror.
Ariel Sharon may have managed to keep a straight face when his White House meeting with President George W. Bush, was interupted by news of yet another Palestinian attack. However on the aeroplane home, after he had so dramatically broken off his US visit, Sharon must have been rubbing his hands with glee and smiling. Once more Israel had provoked an outrage from the Palestinians, which would in its turn be used to justify Israel’s outrages upon this luckless people.
With chilling cleverness, Sharon has been able to produce mealy-mouthed justification for the physical destruction of the Palestinian Authority and its administrative infrastructure, the humiliation of its leadership and the seizure of hundreds of individuals fighting for their honor and land. Yet had the British been half so brutal, when they were combatting Zionist terrorists during their internationally-mandated rule of Palestine, the volume of opinion around the world, not least in the United States, would have been raised to a deafening level by Zionist lobbyists.
Now however, the same powerful lobbies are using their immense financial and political clout to smother the protests of anyone of influence in the US political system. A similar campaign is under way in European capitals, where the rise of neo-Nazi parties is being used as a lever to edge governments away from any sympathy with the plight of the Palestinians. The truth is that the obscenity of Nazi horrors have been used time and again to shame and bully world opinion into siding with Israel so that it can continue to commit crimes and horrors worse than those of Nazis.
It is a frightening thought that Israel needs to inspire anti-Semitism, to encourage neo-Nazi bigots, to sustain itself. Maybe Zionist leaders fear that if ever, for the first time in its history, their maverick state finds itself living at peace with its neighbors, it will start to fall apart. With no more conflict, the massive flows of US aid and Zionist dollars will dwindle and Israel will implode upon itself. A state that has been sustained by conflict will die of peace.
