Ariel Sharon is like one of those sleight-of-hand
tricksters you see on the pavements of European
cities. They mix three cards before your eyes, ask you
to pick on of them, turn them upside down and ask you
to guess which one is the card you have chosen. You
are absolutely sure that you know where the card is –
and you are wrong. Always.
How does the man do it? Elementary, dear Watson:
he keeps up an incessant prattle and diverts your
attention for the fraction of a second – and at this
moment he changes the layout of the cards.
Therefore, never (but never!) pay attention to what
Sharon says. The sole object of all his utterances is to
divert your attention. One has to watch his hands and
not avert one’s eyes from them for a second.
If Sharon had been a contemporary of Voltaire, one
could have thought that the great French philosopher
meant him when he said: “Men use thought only to
justify their wrong-doings, and words only to conceal
their thoughts.”
This has not changed since Ben-Gurion, the first
patron of Sharon’s career, wrote in his diary that
Sharon is a habitual liar. But the word “liar” is out of
place. The sleight-of-hand artist on the pavement is not
a liar. He uses words as an instrument of his craft, the
way a soldier uses smoke bombs.
For three months Sharon prattled about his strong
desire to set up a National Unity Government, in which
the Labor Party would serve as a cornerstone. This is
necessary, he repeated again and again, in order to
allow him to set out on the road to peace. This slogan
was the centerpiece of his election campaign. Many
voted for him in order to have him as the head of a
government in which Labor would be a major
component. (Many others voted for the Shinui party,
which also promised a “secular” government headed
by Sharon and Labor.)
Now everybody can see that Sharon’s promises
were nothing but a smoke-screen. At the end, Sharon
has created exactly the government he intended to set
up right from the beginning: a government of the
radical right that will do the things the words were
designed to hide. At most he was ready to imprison the
Labor party in this government, shackled hand and
foot, to act as a fig-leaf.
Amram Mitzna has to be commended for refusing to
fall into this trap. When Sharon tried to divert his
attention by his prattle about peace, Mitzna demanded
that he put his words in writing and sign them. Sharon
threw him out.
If there had been a competition for the nomination
of the four most extreme anti-Palestinian chauvinists in
Israel, the winners would surely have been Ariel
Sharon, Effy Eytam, Avigdor Liberman and Tommy
Lapid. And here they are, wonder of wonders, by sheer
accident, the four senior partners in the new
government. (Other candidates for the title would have
been Benny Eilon, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Olmert,
Tsachi Hanegbi and Uzi Landau, all of them ministers
in the new government.)
The story does not end with the launching of the
government. It is only starting. Witness his speech in
the Knesset, introducing his new government to the
Knesset. He concluded with a touching personal
confession: entering the 76th year of his life (it was the
day after his birthday), he has no greater desire than to
bring tranquility and peace to our people. When Sharon
speaks about peace, it is time to run for cover.
Now, when the cards lie again on the pavement with
their faces up, all the commentators in Israel and the
world realize that their guesses were wrong again.
Because this is the most rightwing, the most
nationalistic, the most extreme, the most war-like
government Israel has ever had. If someone would set
up a government consisting of the French Jean-Marie
Le Pen, the Austrian Joerg Haider, the Russian
Jirinowsky and the Dutch Fortuyn in Europe, it would
have looked like a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals
compared to this one. The Europeans can only incite,
but Sharon and his partners can act.
This is a government of the settlers. The most
prominent representative of the settlers, General Effy
Eytam, a man so extreme that even the army could not
stand him, got the ministry that is the most important
for the settlers: housing. He will build thousands of
new homes in the settlements. Sharon will neither
“freeze” the settlements nor dismantle them. Quite to
the contrary, the settlement campaign will get new
impetus.
Some people compare the settlers to the “tail
wagging the dog”, they believe that this small minority
imposes its will on the government. That is an utterly
false way of judging reality. In the Sharon era, the
government views the settlers as its shock troops. The
settlements are the most important weapon in the war
against the Palestinian people.
Also wrong are those who believe that Sharon has
no vision. He certainly has one. And what a vision it is!
He does indeed want to enter history as the man who
realized the dream of generations. But this is not the
dream of peace, about which he prattles day and night.
Peace interests him as last year’s snow. He strives for
an aim that seems to him vastly more important: to
fulfil the aim of Zionism as he understands it: to create
a Jewish state that will comprise (at least) all the land
between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river, and if
possible without Arabs.
When one understands the aim, the composition of
the new government is eminently reasonable. It is
custom-made. Sharon at the helm. The army in the
hands of Shaul Mofaz, the most brutal Arab-fighter of
them all. The police in charge of Tsachi Hanegby, a
rowdy whose career began with pogroms against Arab
students at the university. Eytam building housing
units in the settlements. Liberman, himself a settler,
responsible for the roads. The treasury, that must
finance all this, in the hands of Netanyahu.
In his maiden speech, Mitzna asked of Sharon to
stop comparing himself to de Gaulle. For decades,
Sharon has encouraged commentators at home and
abroad to spread the legend that at any moment this
tough, battle-scared general will turn out to be the
Israeli edition of the great Frenchman who ceded all of
Algeria to the “terrorists”, while evacuating a million
French settlers.
Sharon – a de Gaulle? Stop listening to the prattle.
Just look at his hands!
Uri Avnery
1.3.03
gush-shalom.org |
