TEL AVIV -- The disgusting and terrible cycle of bloodshed, the endless sequence of
retaliation upon retaliation and revenge upon revenge, cannot be ended
without ending the occupation.
Today the inhabitants of Netanya are paying the price of ongoing occupation,
the price of maintaining and extending settlments in occupied territory, a
heavy and painful price.
In the elections, just a few months ago, Ariel Sharon promised his voters to
make peace. A peace by force, peace of occupation, peace with settlements
and without concessions. It did not take long for this promise to become
exposed as fraud. Quite evidently, Sharon and his cabinet have no
real solutions to offer, nothing but the ever-mounting use of force which
characterized Ariel Sharon's entire military and political career since the
1950's, and which already had disastrous consequences in the past.
Following this morning's horrendous suicide bombing, in which six Israeli
civilians got killed, Sharon with his Laborite allies Peres and Ben-Eliezer
resorted to a not less horrendous state exhibition of brute force - the first-
ever use of Israeli Air Force fighter planes (American-made F-16) against
Palestinian cities.
The F-16 is an enormously powerful weapon, especially in comparison with the
Palestinians' puny arsenal - but with little accuracy. As the military
commentator on the Israeli TV (Channel-I) remarked tonight, most of the twelve
Palestinians so far known to have been killed tonight were simple low-paid
prison guards at the Nablus prison, which was heavily bombed. That bombing was
apparently ordered with the aim of killing a Hamas leader reportedly
incarcerated in that prison, which the inaccurate overkill failed to achieve
and which is in any case a highly questionable approach (to say the least).
There is no reason whatsoever to assume that use of such methods would in any
way prevent further suicide attacks. On the contrary, historical precedent -
Israel's own and that of other countries - as well a simple common sense would
suggest that it can only lead to further inflammation of an already highly-
charged atmosphere.
Had the Sharon-Peres Government seriously desired to put an end to violence
and break the cycle of bloodshed, an excellent diplomatic means was at hand in
the past weeks - the Mitchell Report, the result of months of intensive work
by a respectable international panel headed by a well-known former US
senator. The Mitchell recommendations would require the Palestinian
Authority to declare and effectively enforce a cease fire, while the Government
of Israel would accept and implement a reciprocal obligation to put a complete
halt to the extention of settlements in the Occupied Territories. The
Palestinians expressed complete agreement to the deal; Sharon and his fellows
are opposed.
The linkage between cessation of violence and cessation of settlement is an
obvious and indispensable one. Settlement creation and extention is itself an
extremely violent process, involving military bureaucrats arbitarily declaring
a certain parcel of Palestinian land to be "state land"; large military forces
enforcing the decree, fencing off the land and excluding the former owners;
and finally a group of settlers, composed of Jews only, coming to take up
possession and set up an armed community in the enclave behind the barbed
wires. In some places this process is accompanied by protests of the
dispossessed, put down by force; in other places, the anger and frustration
generated burst out in other, seemingly unconnected places.
There can be no "end to violence" while such settlement practices continue; the
fact that Oslo contained no provision to stop them was a major reason why - in
spite of high expectations - the process deteriorated into the present gloomy
situation. However, for Sharon to agree to a total settlement freeze seems out
of the question. He was, more than any other Israeli politician, intimately
involved over decades in the creation and extention of settlements. The
settlers are the core of his political power base. Therefore, Sharon sent
Peres, to try and water down the Mitchell Report, and get settlement extention
legitimized under the old guise of "natural growth" (it had served to double
the settler population from 100,000 to 200,000 in just seven years, 1993-2000,
which is a phenomenal "natural growth" indeed).
The escalation which the last week, and especially the last twenty-four hours
produced may have finally derailed the entire diplomatic initiative centered on
the Mitchell Report. And in any case, there is little reason to assume the
Sharon-Peres Government is willing or able to take the steps needed for a
cease-fire - much less for a lasting peace. Eventually this government's lack
of any solution to cardinal problems will lead to its collapse. But for the
time being, Israelis and more so Palestinians pay with their lives.
[Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to
several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late
1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of
years.
Israel "aided Hamas directly - the Israelis wanted to use it as a
counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)," said Tony
Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies. . . .
According to ICT papers, Hamas was legally registered in Israel in 1978 by
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the movement's spiritual leader, as an Islamic Association
by the name Al-Mujamma al Islami, which widened its base of supporters and
sympathizers by religious propaganda and social work.--Richard Sale, "Analysis:
Hamas history tied to Israel," United Press International, June 18, 2002]
Francisco Gil-White, "Doesn't Israel Fund
Hamas? No. This is an unfounded allegation made by the CIA," Emperor's
Clothes, May 25, 2003]
[Hamas was used to distribute needed food, and other life sustaining supplies to
the Palestinian people because Israel had created a humanitarian crisis in the
occupied territories. How that amounts to a CIA conspiracy against Israel is
anyone's guess, but the simple truth is that the mosques and other internal
Palestinian organizations were used to provide those services because neither
Israel, nor the UN could.--Anisa Abd el Fattah, "Hamas
was used to distribute needed food," January 26, 2005]
Copyright © 2001 Gush Shalom