It is not difficult to comprehend the thinking behind yesterday’s killing of Israel’s tourism minister. Oppressed beyond endurance, cheated and consistently lied to by the Israelis about the peace process, goaded by the most militant of Israeli governments ever, seeing their prominent men assassinated, the Palestinians are in despair — and desperation drives men to strange acts.
But assassination rarely, if ever, produces anything for the good though it has been used throughout history as a tool by many a state — to the point of farce, as in early American attempts to dispose of Fidel Castro. In virtually all cases, however, it has invariably polarized views and inflamed passions. It does not bring peace or justice.
The last assassination of an Israeli politician, that of Prime Minister Yizthak Rabin in 1995, started the destruction of the peace process; that of Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi is likely to exacerbate it. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon clearly intends to use it as the latest excuse to keep the peace process stalled, just as Washington piles on the pressure to breath life into it. His “fury” at the killing of a man whose anti-Arab bigotry made even Sharon’s pale in comparison was all too predictable. So too was his accusation that Yasser Arafat is to blame. Few, beyond the confines of right-wing Israeli opinion, listen any longer to such ranting. Not even they are so blinkered as to accept his view that this killing is Israel’s equivalent of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
But Sharon can be guaranteed to use it as an excuse not to speak to Arafat, even though he has just made himself the chief Israeli negotiator in talks with the Palestinians. And if the pressure from the White House to talk and to concede becomes too great, the assassinated hard-line minister’s National Union Party can be relied upon to come to his aid by threatening to pull down the coalition if he agrees to the creation of a Palestinian state. The death of Zeevi is not going to bring peace any closer. It merely sates a Palestinian thirst for revenge, and in the process creates a fresh Israeli one.
If the Palestinians need to reflect on that, so do the Israelis — even more so. They started this deadly cycle of violence by deliberately deciding to assassinate Palestinian leaders and officials. The killing of Zeevi is claimed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as a direct response to the assassination of its leader Abu Ali Mustafa by Israeli forces in August. In the circumstances, the Israelis have no grounds whatsoever for complaint if assassination begets counterassassination. Apart from the PFLP leader, they have assassinated dozens of Palestinians this year.
Their action was based on the brutal law of an eye for an eye. It was Gandhi who pointed out the utter folly of such a notion: those who practice it are likely to end up blind. The consequences of their bloody campaign ought now to be crystal clear to the Israelis. They are there for all too see: assassination creates assassination; violence more violence. But Gandhi’s warning goes unheeded. The moment they elected Sharon to power, the Israelis closed both their eyes and their ears to logic. And now, through intransigence, oppression and their policy of murder, they have driven too many Palestinians blind as well.
