Before readers rush either to sympathize or condemn those responsible for the Taba Hilton bombing and the attack on two other Egyptian resorts much used by Israeli tourists, certain facts need to be spelled out.
Yes, this was an act of terrorism and we all agree that terrorism is evil, that it must stop, that it is not going to bring about the peace that both Palestinians and Israelis yearn for.
But who is ultimately responsible for this latest barbarity?
The answer is Israel. What we see is violence begetting violence. Israel’s relentless war of terror, murder and oppression against the Palestinians has produced this inevitable bloody response — although whether it was Palestinians who were behind it or a group linked to Al-Qaeda, it is too early to say.
What can be said is that those responsible know that this is terrorism. They have chosen this twisted path, even though they understand the awful irony that every suicide bomb simply pushes a hysterical Israeli public further into the Sharon camp — a public which, in more reflective and quieter times, can see his policies have brought them no peace, no security, but instead more death, more violence. But blind emotion has taken over. They have seen ordinary innocent Palestinians — men, women, children — slaughtered by an Israeli juggernaut that appears unstoppable. They have seen Israeli tanks flattening homes and towns. In the last week alone 80 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been killed by the Israelis, many of them just ordinary people going about their ordinary lives. And on the wider horizon, they see no one doing anything about it. Yes, there are words of sympathy, even words of outrage, at Israeli violence in Gaza. But never any action. Rather, they see Washington vetoing resolutions at the UN condemning the Israelis. They see the Europeans wringing their hands in sorrow one minute and sitting on them the next. They see Arab governments immobile. They have seen evil in action and foolishly imagine that only by further evil can it be defeated.
It is Israel that has sown the violence and now reaps the bitter harvest. It imagined that Sharon’s illegal wall would protect it from suicide bombers. But Taba shows that nowhere in the world will Israelis be safe. Yesterday, Israeli tourists headed home from all over Egypt — and we must not forget that the Egyptian tourist industry, which had only just begun to get over the 1997 massacre of tourists in Luxor, is bound to suffer as a result. But no one is so naive as to imagine that the terrorists will stop with Egypt. They tried it in Mombassa two years ago. They will try it again. The lesson of Taba is that the Israelis will be targeted anywhere and everywhere. What sort of life is that? What sort of state is it that offers its people nothing but a ghetto from which they dare not move? The wall Sharon is building is going to be as much a prison wall for them as it is a barrier for the Palestinians.
For the rest of us, the world is going to be a far more dangerous place — and the Israelis are going to find themselves blamed and hated for it.
