Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei’s denunciation of suicide bombings as “morally wrong” and an “obstacle to peace” is a brave declaration that should have met with an equally clear repudiation of violence by the Israeli side. Instead, the reply from Qorei’s Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon was that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah could become targets for assassination as well.
Such policies and objectives have nothing to do with a quest for peace. This approach to the conflict will never result in a settlement. Still, Sharon believes in, above all else, violence. Only displays of might can satisfy him and his supporters.
The assassination of Sheikh Yassin was never intended by its perpetrators as a means to ending violence. Sharon, along with everybody else, knows full well it can only help generate more bloodshed. Despite Qorei’s assessment — that suicide attacks, besides being morally wrong, “harm our national struggle, create tension with the world community, destroy our economy and give a cover for the Israeli government to pursue settlement plans and build the expansion and annexation wall” — there is little doubt that there will be more suicide attacks and consequently more targeted killings by Israel.
Sharon has tried to link the assassination with two factors, the first an implicit one. He does not want a Hamas-led Gaza Strip to emerge after Israel’s planned withdrawal from the area. Israeli leaders have been quick to deny that the assassination is in any way related to a pullout, but once Sharon quits Gaza he will no longer have control over it. Hence he believes it crucial that before he breaks away from Gaza, that he break the back of the Palestinian resistance, and kill as many activists as possible, so that they do not come back to haunt him.
Sharon’s other reason for the murder is linked to what he considers terrorism. He had dubbed Yassin and other Palestinian activists legitimate targets in Israel’s campaign to “root out terrorists.” The criterion by which Yassin was chosen thus apparently applies to Arafat as well. Sharon has described the Palestinian leader as a terrorist and has systematically refused to deal directly with him. The prime minister has also warned that anybody who kills a Jew or an Israeli is now on his hit list.
Actually, Sharon has killed far more Palestinian civilians than Palestinians have killed Israelis. But the issue is not about which is more or less brutal. The point is that the conflict is between those who occupy and those who are occupied. And those who live under occupation cannot possibly be considered terrorists, no matter how reprehensible their actions.
