The killing of four Israeli settlers by Palestinian gunmen who infiltrated the Jewish settlement of Adora on Saturday strongly suggests that Ariel Sharon’s four-week-old military operation that swept through the cities and refugee camps across the West Bank has not yielded the expected results.
Israel has called the mission, which used everything from warplanes to bulldozers, a success beyond all expectations. But the Adora raid showed that as long as occupation continues any number of people or groups can mount any type of attacks. Second, Yasser Arafat besieged and holed up as he is in his Ramallah compound, could not have ordered the attack nor is he in a position to stop it had he known about it in advance. And perhaps most important, the destruction and death from the Israeli attacks have produced a new group of people seeking revenge and ready to die in the effort.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Cabinet has approved a proposal supposedly from President Bush that could end the standoff at Arafat’s compound. The plan involves US or British forces acting as guards for the Palestinians whom Israel wants to stand trial for the killing of Israel’s tourism minister.
Welcome as the news is that Arafat’s ordeal is about to end, this latest Israeli-US move raises some disturbing questions.
The Palestinian military court has already convicted and sentenced the Palestinians referred to as the Zeevi four. Under the Oslo accords the Palestinians have the authority to put the men on trial and are not required to extradite them to Israel.
True, Sharon and most of his government never accepted Oslo. Those who did, like Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, have been more zealous supporters of everything Sharon did against the spirit of Oslo than many of the prime minister’s Likud foot soldiers. To the extent the difference between the Likud and Labor is that between Tweedldum and Tweedldee.
Although Sharon was opposed to Oslo, the US was not. Still Washington did not raise any objections to the virtual imprisonment of Arafat. Neither did Labor. They did something worse. Let us not forget that the military which swept through the Jenin refugee camp and indulged in an orgy of murder and destruction is under a Labor minister. Let us also not forget the foreign minister who tries to market Sharon abroad also belongs to the Labor party. This means the Labor is as anxious as Likud to avoid a full impartial inquiry into what happened in Jenin.
So the sweet reasonableness on Ramallah should be seen as part of the Jenin diplomacy. President Bush has already welcomed “the constructive and helpful decision by the government of Israel to enable Chairman Arafat to travel freely, to accept international monitors with respect to ... prisoners now in Chairman Arafat’s compound and to withdraw Israeli forces from Ramallah,” the White House said in a statement.
Israel’s attempt seems to be to impose so many conditions on the UN’s Jenin mission that it becomes an exercise in futility. White House can be expected to come up with all sorts of arguments buttressing the Israeli case in its attempt to scuttle the Jenin probe. Maybe the White House statement about the lifting of Ramallah siege is the first salvo.
