Volume 17, No 17, March 2002


Back To Reflections Home Page
 
  • What Cause?...........................................................................................By Nisar Sarwar
  • Theories.......................................................................................................By R. A. Chan
  • Middle East....................................................................................................By G. Usher
  • Sharon’s Israel............................................................................................By Sagittarius
  • Offshore Refuge........................................................................................By D. Gonzeles
  • The Password Was Mandalay................................By Lieutenant Colonel James Warner Bellah
Sharon

Sharon's Israel

By Sagittarius

To Israelis the 17-month-old intifada has suddenly seemed to have become an interminable war. The economy is suffering and support for Sharon's policies has ebbed.
A poll by Israel's largest Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth revealed

more than 60 per cent of Israelis unhappy with his policies while just 38 per cent would give him a pass grade for his handling of the intifada. This compared with an approval rating of 77 per cent last July.
In a year, Sharon's tactics - the "closure" of Palestinian areas, increasingly violent reprisal raids against Palestinian cities, and pre-emptive 'targeted killings' of suspected terrorists - have done nothing but escalate the crisis.
Indeed Sharon has accelerated that process since December. He has kept Yasser Arafat under siege in his Ramallah headquarters, giving free rein to the Palestinian hard-liners - although it is now being suggested by Sharon's advisers that Arafat may be released following the Palestinian arrest of three men for the murder of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi.
In January he suggested the de facto separation of large parts of Jerusalem with checkpoints, video cameras and border police to protect Israeli-occupied land from suicide bombers. Sharon is proposing buffer zones to section off Palestinian areas from Israel, a plan condemned by Arab states as "apartheid".
It is all a long way from his election campaign when Sharon suggested that the Palestinians could only ever make a real peace with a strong man such as himself, a claim that persuaded the centre ground of the Israeli electorate. Suddenly Sharon's policies-seem confused and ineffectual. Palestinian attacks have become more bold and more successful.
There is a suspicion that he has no coherent strategy, save to try to hammer the Palestinians into submission. But most observers agree that it is the Palestinians, with their long experience of hardship, poverty and disappointment who are better at absorbing punishment
Yasir Arafat than Israeli society, which is seeing its new found prosperity and sense of confidence collapse.
Sharon hopes that he could deal with Arafat's successor, or successors. There are suspicions that what Sharon intends is the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority into separately governed pockets, locally administered and closed off from Israel, and without a strong 'presidential' figure.
Time To Act
 By R. C. Gross
The 16-month war of attrition between Israel and the Palestinians _ a tit-for-tatting that is tick-tocking its way toward certain catastrophe - is as senseless, as wasteful and as futile as the dying on both sides. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian will give in unless forced from the outside. History written in a lot of spilled blood has proved that.
For the majority of Palestinians, Israel is the Goliath hungering for their land, hunkering over it with tanks and planes armed with missiles followed by those with bulldozers who would plant settlements and pave roads. Resistance to Israeli power, whether from boys hurling stones or young men blowing themselves up with nail bombs strapped around their waists, is the key to the door to Palestinian statehood.
For the majority of Israelis, the Palestinians are not righteous young Davids, but cheating scoundrels who want to push the Jews into the sea and reclaim all that was British-ruled Palestine before Israeli statehood in 1948. Resistance to Palestinian claims with armed might is the key to living within secure borders. But neither key is opening locks, because of the tactics of both sides.
Not only is there no Palestinian state, but the Israelis have been reoccupying territory from which they withdrew under the 1993 Oslo, Norway, peace accords. Not only are Israelis unsafe within their fortress-like settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but they are not even secure within Israel's recognized boundaries.
Today, Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat have too much bitter history between them to make peace. Although they have met, they have never shaken hands. Sharon has tried to check Arafat in Ramallah. But it is not a checkmate. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict moved to a feared higher level in recent days.
It is going to take more than the determined, honourable but quixotic efforts by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and intermittent trips to the region by former Marine Corps Gen Anthony Zinni to win agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. Rather, it is going to take a bold step, a new major initiative led by the US. The two sides must be separated until an overall peace agreement that includes Al Quds is achieved. It will take UN troops, such as those who have been in nearby Cyprus since 1964.


Tell a Friend

Comments

Articles Of Previous Issues

Previous-----------Next Article

Back To REFLECTIONS Home Page