The Real Aim
The real aim of “Operation Defensive Shield” was
not to “destroy the infrastructure of terrorism”.
This was merely a good slogan for uniting the
people of Israel, who are angry and afraid after the
suicide bombings. It is also a good political device,
allowing Sharon to ride on the bandwagon of President
Busch’s “war against international terrorism”. Under
the umbrella of “destroying the infrastructure of
terrorism” one can do practically anything.
If Sharon had really intended to “destroy the
infrastructure of terrorism”, he would have acted very
differently. He would have given the Palestinian
masses hope of achieving their national freedom in the
near future. He would have fortified the position of
Yasser Arafat, the only effective partner for peace. He
would have strengthened the Palestinian security
forces and radically improved economic conditions in
the Palestinian territories.
But destroying the infrastructure of terrorism is not
Ariel Sharon’s aim. His program is far more radical: to
break the backbone of the Palestinian people, crush
their governmental institutions, turn the people into
human wreckage that can be dealt with as he wishes.
This may entail shutting them up in several enclaves or
even driving them out of the country altogether.
As Sharon sees it, this would be finishing off the job
started in 1948: to establish the real Israel, from the
Mediterranean to the Jordan river; a state inhabited
solely by Jews. It was no accident that he openly
supported Slobodan Milosevic, the inventor of “ethnic
cleansing”.
When I wrote this a year ago, it sounded like
malicious slander. Sharon was still pictured as a man
determined to fight terrorism, not as a person using the
fight against terrorism as a means to achieve quite
different aims.
No more.
Four days ago I was in Ramallah. I sneaked into the
town (Israelis are forbidden by the military commander
from entering the Palestinian territories) in order to see
it for myself. I visited the Palestinian ministries. A
shocking sight, indeed.
Take, for example, the Palestinian Ministry of
Education. It is housed in an imposing building,
probably going back to British times, a mixture of neo-
Classic European and oriental styles. In front of it there
was a rose garden – “was”, because a tank has
crisscrossed it, for no apparent reason, leaving only
one purple rosebush in all its glory. Just so. To teach
them a lesson.
On the upper floor, where the archives and
computers were housed, the destruction was total. The
computers were taken apart and thrown on the floor,
the safe blown open, the papers strewn around, the
drawers empty, the telephones crushed . Some of it
was just plain vandalism. The money in the safe was
stolen, the furniture upturned, the papers dispersed.
But when one looked closer, the real aim of the
operation became clear. All the hard disks were taken
from the computers, all the important files taken away.
Only empty shells remained. All the important contents
of the ministry were taken: the lists of pupils,
examination results, lists of teachers, the whole
logistics of the Palestinian school system.
The Ministry if Health suffered the same fate. The
hard disks that contained all the information, state of
diseases, medical tests, lists of doctors and nurses,
the logistics of the hospitals had been taken.
Even the people most critical of the Palestinian
Authority admitted that these two ministries –
Education and Health – had been functioning well.
They have been utterly destroyed.
This happened to virtually all the Palestinian
government offices. Gone is the information pertaining
to land registration and housing, taxes and
government expenditure, car tests and drivers’
licenses, everything necessary for administrating a
modern society.
The lists of terrorists were not hidden in the land
registration books, the inventory of bombs was not
tucked away among the list of kindergarten teachers.
The real aim is obvious: to destroy not only the
Palestinian Authority, but Palestinian society itself:
to push it back with one stroke from the stage of a
modern state-in-the-making to the primitive society of
Turkish times.
This is true for the civil society, and even more so
for the security system. The headquarters of the
security services were destroyed, files burned,
computers crushed, the information concerning armed
underground organizations and all other details
pertaining to the war against terrorism were
obliterated. There is no better evidence of the aims of
this operation: not war on terrorism, but destruction of
organized Palestinian society.
By the way, on that day I passed, with a group of
Israeli peace activists, through the center of Ramallah
– from the mass-grave in the hospital parking lot to the
besieged headquarters of Yasser Arafat. We carried
Hebrew posters and encountered much sympathy and
not a single sign of hostility. Even at this time, the
Palestinians know the difference between the Israeli
peace camp and those who are responsible for this brutal
attack. Here, perhaps, lies the only glimmer of hope.
Uri Avnery
salam-shalom.net |
