SO, the Israelis claim that their soldiers may have made a mistake in shooting dead five Palestinian policemen on Monday. How magnanimous of them to say so — although it is telling that there is no sense of regret, only an aggressive statement from the head of the Israeli Army, Gen. Shaul Mofaz, that the Israelis are not afraid to admit their mistakes. Such arrogance! Frankly the admission sounds anything but the truth. As we pointed out a couple of days ago, Ariel Sharon’s policy is to keep the Palestinians sufficiently angry so as to kill off any chance of peace talks in which the pressure would be on him to make concessions. Killing the five policemen fits in seamlessly with that policy. But he does not want the situation to blow up out of his control. On Tuesday, it just looked as if it might. The combination of the police killings, making the highest Palestinian death toll since the intifada restarted last September, and of the Day of Naqba — the Day of Catastrophe — commemorating the creation of the Israeli state 53 years ago, with its own additional killings, made for an inevitable explosion of fury.
To pour scorn on the Israeli admission that the killings could have been a mistake may sound like a cynical response; but not only does it look like a calculated response to Tuesday’s unexpectedly massive outpouring of Palestinian fury, it is how the Israelis regularly play this sort of situation: shoot first and then say it might have been a mistake if the temperature rises too high.
Not that Sharon could care less what the Palestinians think, or the Arabs. He does not even care what the world thinks. But he does care what America thinks — and the US was feeling just little nervous about the level of Palestinian unrest in the wake of the unprecedented outburst of the Day of Naqba.
Note, by the way, the use of the conditional tense by Gen. Mofaz of the killings: Israeli soldiers “could have been in the wrong” in killing the five policemen, he told a parliamentary committee. Such weasel words ooze insincerity like pus. The intention is clear: to absolve the Israeli military of any suspicion of wrongdoing without the slightest intention of an apology. The Israelis can say to Washington (without, of course, making amends): “But we said it was a mistake”. The Americans can repeat this misleading mantra to everyone else as if it absolves the Israelis; and both can then pretend to be astounded that the Palestinians are still bitter. It is so transparently devious and deceitful. No one, though, is taken in by this twisted language and logic, least of all the Palestinians.
What is surprising, however, is the way Tuesday’s Catastrophe Day gained so much more attention and emphasis than in previous years. The international media was very obviously more focused. The answer lies in the Palestinians themselves. They are definitely more motivated in their demands and grievances. The murder of the five policemen reinforced their sense of grievance. What recreated it and has given them such motivation is the combination of Israel’s broken promises, its military onslaught against them, Sharon’s open malevolence and the realization that they alone are masters of their destiny, that if they are to be free they have to lead the struggle themselves.
In years past they looked to outside salvation and bowed to decisions made in Baghdad, in Damascus, in Cairo. Now they look to themselves; and although their power may seem all the weaker for being so limited to just a small section of the Arab world, it is all the more powerful because every Palestinian, man woman and child, is personally drawn through experience of oppression into the struggle to rid themselves of Israel’s occupying forces and establish their own state. Thanks to Israeli intransigence and above all to Sharon’s policies, they are motivated in a way that has not been seen for years. That is why this year’s Catastrophe Day proved such a powerful display of passionate opposition to Israeli rule.
