President Bush's attempts to build support among Arabs for his declared war on terrorism may or may not eventually fall victim to Israel's ongoing acts of aggression in the Palestinian autonomous zones. But surely his initiative for peace in the region has already taken the plunge.
Israeli tanks (read, American-supplied tanks) began to invade Palestinian towns soon after the PFLP, a relatively small group that is part of the coalition of national forces fighting Israeli occupation, took credit for the well-planned assassination on Oct. 17 of Cabinet minister Rehavan Zeevi, a man not known for attending sensitivity sessions in his day, who is on record as calling Arabs "lice" and advocating the expulsion of all three million Palestinians from the occupied territories.
The PFLP, which said in a statement that, in effect, the idea of tit-for-tat can work both ways, had earlier promised to avenge the killing, by a missile fired from an Israeli helicopter gunship into his office on Aug. 17, of its top leader, Mostapha Zibri. Zionist officials in Palestine have carried out, since the outset of the intifada over a year ago, the murder of approximately 80 Palestinian leaders in this manner, calling it fatuously "selective assassination." Well, two can play at this game.
But by invading and occupying those Palestinian towns last week, that resulted in the death of 18 people, including a 12-year child in her classroom, the prime minister of the Israeli entity may have had less revenge on his mind than a well-thought out strategy to achieve three primary goals.
The first goal is to undermine the legitimacy of the PA authority and its leader by portraying them as "terrorists." By making the impossible demand that the Palestinians hand over those responsible for Zeevi's assassination - a demand that the PA, given the immense popular pressure in the West Bank and Gaza against handing over Palestinian suspects to Israeli "justice," could not meet - Sharon plans to make it appear to the US and other nations that "Yasser Arafat has no intention of cracking down on terrorists."
Then, by taking the war into the Palestinian heartland, Ariel Sharon will be creating conditions far from conducive to peace negotiations, which is just what he and his hawkish government would like to see. Ever since the American administration called two weeks ago for a cease-fire to be followed by peace talks, and President Bush supported the idea of a "Palestinian state" (the British prime minister went one better by identifying it as a "viable state") the prospect of Palestinian independence was more than Israel's government could tolerate.
What Sharon and his cohorts have in mind, and would like to see put on the negotiating table, is the return to the Palestinians of no more than 40 percent of the occupied territories, roughly what they partially or fully control, as the projected state.
And finally, his third leg in the tripod of Sharon's strategy is to impose deadlines and issue ultimatums that he knows will not and cannot be met by the Palestinians. With that he then can turn around and self-righteously claim that he has tried and failed. There is no one to negotiate with, given an impasse like that. And the peace process will have to go on hold.
There is no question about the fact that Israelis were given a taste of their own medicine when Zeevi was knocked off in that daring operation, with two shots in the face, at a Jerusalem hotel. If the Israeli public had been getting more and more aggressive in previous months (according to public polls), the Zeevi operation pushed them over the edge.
"Most Israelis," reported the New York Times' James Bennet from Jerusalem last Sunday, "are convinced that Arafat is an enemy to be met with violence, not negotiations. Palestinians are equally certain that Sharon's mission is, as one mainstream Palestinian newspaper put it, total war."
To be sure, Palestinian fighters were not idle as they exchanged fire with those Israeli tanks that forced their into Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Jenin, Ramallah and other West Bank cities. By the beginning of the week, it looked like Israel was poised for a total re-occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, having penetrated or surrounded virtually every major urban center in the occupied territories.
And the language used by both sides was that of war, albeit the language of an arrogant occupier and that of a victim determined to resist him. Sharon said last Thursday: "Arafat has seven days to impose absolute quiet in the Palestinian territories. If not we'll go to war against him." He was later quoted in the Israeli press as saying: "As far as I'm concerned, the era of Arafat is over."
Not to be outdone, information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo responded: "This ultimatum is Israeli blackmail." and in Jordan, Leila Khaled, the veteran PFLP spokeswoman (her British jailers remember her from 1972 as an unrepentant militant who had hijacked an Israeli plane, landing it in their capital, that year) said her group would try to assassinate more Israeli politicians with blood on their hands, "with Sharon at the top of the list."
All of which is not probably what the American administration would like to see taking place at this time in our region.
If only Zionists would come to their senses and realize that this is the wrong time in history, and the wrong place in the world, to be subjugating another people to their will.
