America must see that Sharon is the problem
The Middle East conflict cannot be resolved while the
Israelis are led by a man who sees military force as the
only instrument of policy.
Observer Worldview
Avi Shlaim
Sunday April 14, 2002
The Observer
When running for Prime Minister in February of last year, Ariel
Sharon, Israel's ferocious hawk, tried to reinvent himself as a
man of peace. Against the background of the al-Aqsa intifada,
which he had helped to trigger by his provocative visit to Haram
al-Sharif (Temple Mount), he ran on a ticket of peace with
security. In his first year in power, Sharon has achieved neither
peace nor security but only a steady escalation of the violence.
In the last two weeks Sharon has revealed himself once again
as a man wedded to military force as the only instrument of
policy.
The 74 year-old Israeli leader has been at the sharp end of
confrontation with the Arabs for most of his life. The hallmarks of
his career are mendacity, the most savage brutality towards
Arab civilians, and a persistent preference for force over
diplomacy to solve political problems. These features found their
clearest expression in the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 which
Sharon masterminded as defence minister in Menachem Begin's
Likud government.
The war that Sharon is currently waging on the West Bank,
fraudulently named 'Operation Defensive Shield', is in some
ways a replay of his war in Lebanon. It is directed against the
Palestinian people; it stems from the same stereotypes that the
Palestinians are terrorists; it is based on the same denial of
Palestinian national rights; it employs the same strategy of
savage and overwhelming military force; and it displays the
same callous disregard for international opinion, international
law, the UN, and the norms of civilised behaviour. Even the
principal personalities are the same: today, as in 1982, Ariel
Sharon confronts Yasser Arafat.
The invasion of Lebanon was not a defensive war but a war of
deception. Sharon obtained cabinet approval for a limited military
operation against the PLO forces in southern Lebanon. From the
beginning, however, he planned a much bigger operation to serve
broader geostrategic aims. The principal objective of Sharon's
war was to destroy the PLO as a military and political
organisation, to break the backbone of Palestinian nationalism,
to spread despair and despondency among the inhabitants of
the West Bank, and to pave the way to its absorption into
Greater Israel. A second objective was to give Israel's Maronite
allies a leg-up to power, and then compel them to sign a peace
treaty with Israel. A third objective was to expel the Syrian army
from Lebanon and to make Israel the dominant power in the
Levant.
Under Sharon's devious direction, an operation that was
supposedly undertaken in self-defence developed into a
merciless siege of Beirut and culminated in a horrendous
massacre in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila
which led to the REMOVAL OF SHARON from the ministry of defence.
In his crude but relentless propaganda war, Sharon tries to
portray Arafat as the master terrorist who orchestrates the
violence against Israel and secretly encourages suicide
bombings by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs
Brigade. To be sure, Arafat is not above using violence. Nor has
he done as much as he could to curb the activities of the Islamic
militants. Yet Arafat is the leader who persuaded his movement
to abandon armed struggle and adopt the political path in the
struggle for independence. By signing the Oslo Accord in 1993,
and clinching it with a hesitant handshake, he and Yitzhak
Rabin undertook to resolve the outstanding differences between
their two nations by peaceful means. Until the assassination of
Rabin two years later, Arafat proved himself an effective partner
on the road to peace. The subsequent decline of the Oslo peace
process was caused more by Israeli territorial expansionism
than by Palestinian terrorism. Israeli settlements on the West
Bank, which Sharon's government continues to expand, are the
root of the problem.
Ever the opportunist, Sharon was quick to jump on the
bandwagon of America's 'war against terror' in the aftermath of
11 September. Under this banner, Sharon has embarked on a
sinister attempt to destroy the infrastructure of a future
Palestinian state. His real agenda is to subvert what remains of
the Oslo accords, to smash the Palestinians into the ground,
and to extinguish hope for independence and statehood. To add
insult to injury, he wants to remove Yasser Arafat, the
democratically elected leader and symbol of the Palestinian
revolution, and to replace him with a collaborationist regime
which would serve as a sub-contractor charged with upholding
Israeli security.
What Sharon is unable or unwilling to comprehend is that
security cannot be achieved by purely military means. The only
hope of security for both communities lies in a return to the
political track, something that the champion of violent solutions
has always avoided. Consequently, Sharon's second war, like
his first, is doomed to failure. If the history of this conflict
teaches anything, it is that violence breeds more violence.
Many people who do not necessarily support Sharon's brutal
methods nevertheless have sympathy for Israel's predicament.
They point out that the suicide bombs against innocent Israeli
civilians pre-dated the incursion of Israeli tanks into West Bank
towns and villages. Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank
and Gaza, however, goes back to 1967 and constitutes the
underlying cause of Palestinian frustration, hatred, and despair
of which the suicide bombs are only the cruelest manifestation.
They say that Hamas and Islamic Jihad deny altogether Israel's
right to exist. These are, however, the extremist fringes. The
savage treatment meted out by Sharon to the Palestinians is
self-defeating precisely because it undermines moderates and
strengthens extremists.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the current crisis is
America's complicity in the Israeli onslaught. One might have
expected George Bush Jr. to resume the even-handed policy of
his father towards Arabs and Israelis. Instead, he has reverted to
a blatantly pro-Israeli policy reminiscent of the Reagan years.
Although America is a signatory to the Oslo Accord, Bush has
abandoned the Palestinian side.
Sharon is holding Arafat hostage in his headquarters in
Ramallah, depriving him of food, water, medicines and telephone
lines. The only concession that the American President has
managed to extract from the truculent Israeli Prime Minister is a
promise not to kill the Palestinian leader. The Israelis have
destroyed much of Arafat's police force and security services,
leaving him with a mobile phone. Under these conditions the
embattled Palestinian leader does not have the means to
prevent suicide attacks even if he had the will to do so.
In an apparent reversal of American policy a week ago,
President Bush called on Sharon to pull out his troops from the
Palestinian towns and villages. Sharon insisted they would stay
as long as necessary to accomplish their mission of uprooting
the infrastructure of terror. Secretary of State Colin Powell was
dispatched to the region to broker a ceasefire and restore the
political track. He is unlikely to get far with Sharon unless he
backs up his words with the threat to cut economic and military
aid to Israel. The death toll in 'Operation Defensive Shield' is
more than 200 Palestinians and 60 Israelis. How many more
lives will have to be sacrificed before the Americans understand
that General Sharon is part of the problem, not the solution?
· Avi Shlaim is a professor of International Relations at Oxford
and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000)
guardian.co.uk |
