WHAT SHARON WANTS

Printed on Tuesday, October 15, 2002 ( print.php?sid=781print.php?sid=781)

By John Chuckman

YellowTimes.org Columnist (Canada)

(YellowTimes.org) – What was the point of the Israeli army reducing Mr. Arafat's compound to ruins, firing shells that came within the smallest margin of killing him? Everyone outside the hermetically-sealed thought-environment of Israel and Washington recognizes Mr. Arafat is no more responsible for the violence of Hamas or Hizbullah than Mr. Bush is responsible for a disturbed gunman now terrorizing America's capital city.

Of course, the question is rhetorical. The reason for the destruction is clear. Mr. Sharon has always exhibited personal animus against Mr. Arafat. He never mentions his name without the rhetorical equivalent of pronouncing a curse. The acts of Hamas or Hizbullah gave Mr. Sharon the excuse to humiliate and frighten him, hoping to destroy him as a political force and push him into exile. There cannot be the slightest doubt Sharon would prefer assassinating Arafat, as he has assassinated so many dozens of others opposing him, but even the unthinking Mr. Bush recognizes the immense strategic blunder of doing that.

With Arafat gone, Sharon could start the last thirty-five years over again. That mystical, nebulous mechanism called the "peace process" could start again - decades of stalling and quibbling, ignoring every United Nations' resolution while Israel relentlessly inches eastward, absorbing the homes and farms of others - the search for peace through slow-motion ethnic cleansing.

Not that the creation of settlements has ever stopped while Mr. Sharon destroyed both the Oslo Accords, that landmark diplomatic achievement he always held in contempt, and much of the West Bank and Gaza. It would be just so much easier to continue with an opponent who does not have the ear of the world's statesmen and who has not done everything politically possible to reach a reasonable settlement. It is so much easier to curse Arafat, broadcast his weaknesses, and ignore the fundamental claims he represents.

Mr. Arafat has not been one of the world's shining statesmen. Nor has his administration in Palestine been marked by the most enlightened practices. But he is, unquestionably, dedicated to peace. He does, despite ups and downs, represent some of the most important interests of his people, and he has shown remarkable courage and tenacity; Sharon's efforts to remove him have only showcased these qualities before the entire world.

A lot of people in the United States still do not understand that it has always been the policy of extreme parties like Mr. Sharon's Likud to annex what they call Judaea and Samaria - that is, what is left of Palestine, home to a couple of million Arabic people. Even at the time of the original Camp David Accords, the late Mr. Begin kept muttering those names, Judaea and Samaria, into President Carter's ear.

A reader recently wrote me about a television documentary on Palestine. He mentioned a settler (who, like all the settlers, is a newcomer who has pushed out residents from places they have lived for centuries) being asked about the Palestinians. Her answer was they should all leave and go where they belong.

Go where they belong? According to this belligerent view, they belong on the other side of the Jordan River, or, indeed, anywhere but in their own homes and on their own farms in the West Bank. I can only wonder whether a person holding such views has ever given a moment's thought to the reality of shoving two million people out of their homes and into small, poor countries that are not remotely-equipped to deal with massive migration?

The largest internal migration in American history, and perhaps the largest in world history not associated with war, was the great black migration of tenant farmers from the rural South to industrial jobs in the North during the mid-twentieth century. It involved about 6.5 million people over several decades. This vast movement of people generated tremendous social difficulties that remain unsettled in the world's richest country, a land that is many, many times the size of any of Israel's Arab neighbors.

So how could anyone reasonably expect such a solution in the Middle East? The answer is that reason has nothing to do with it. Israelis with these views simply want the Arabs gone. If you don't hear echoes of Milosevic, you aren't listening. Until Mr. Bush, this idea had been little advertised or promoted in North America. Now, it has received some publicity, perhaps offered as "trial balloons."

Mr. Rumsfeld - in one of his most regrettably Hitler-like expressions since insisting that Taliban prisoners, after their surrender at Kunduz, should be shot or walled away for good - recently spoke of the spoils belonging to the victor in the Middle East.

That redoubtable American ally, General Dostum, of course, took Rumsfeld at his word about the prisoners. Hundreds of them, after being hideously suffocated, lie in mass graves. One can't help asking whether American generals are now to apply Mr. Rumsfeld's spoils-principle to Iraqi oil fields?

Another Republican moral giant, Mr. Dick Armey - not known for charity towards the less fortunate of any society, even his own - recently chimed in that pushing two-million or so people out of the West Bank would be acceptable to him. Hell, what's a couple of million Arab lives, right?

And now, the Rev. Jerry Falwell - fundamentalist politico and hate-entrepreneur, a man whose tailored suits are bought with the proceeds of a relentless hate campaign against a former President, a former First Lady, and all gay people - has added his scholarly opinion that the prophet Muhammad himself was a terrorist. One can almost hear the unspoken link, so why would his followers deserve to live in the Holy Land?

These public statements provide an excellent measure of the moral tone set by Mr. Bush's administration. America's long, on-and-off romance with fascism has been stoked back to a warm glow (for background, see my earlier article, "Flirting with Fascism"). A president with any conscience should have loudly condemned these statements. Instead, hate speech is tolerated.

Well, Mr. Sharon is now building a wall, a truly massive undertaking. Authoritarian personalities and movements always seem to like walls. This one will be a grand re-creation of the Berlin Wall, complete with a strip of no-man's land, good portions of it at the expense of Palestinian farmers.

This may be what Sharon had in mind when he made statements months ago, contradicting every act and breath of his adult life, that he supported a Palestinian state. One can only imagine what he had in mind with those words, something surely bordering on the nightmares of the gulag. The wall is likely part of his vision. A rump-state, walled off from all natural connections with its neighbor, with every movement in or out controlled, is certain to fail. It would be a state in a bottle. The idea represents a freshening up of the late General Dayan's thinking when he said, years ago, that the Palestinians would be made so miserable, they would choose to leave.

John Chuckman encourages your comments: jchuckman@YellowTimes.org

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The struggle in the Middle East is about a fifty-year effort by the Arabs to destroy the Jewish state, and the refusal of the Arab states in general and the Palestinian Arabs in particular to accept Israel's existence. If the Arabs were willing to live peacefully as Israel's neighbors, there would be no occupied territories and there would be a Palestinian state.

The Arabs claim that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are the obstacle to peace. But there are Arab settlements in Israel. They are actually one million Arabs living in Israel who have more civil rights than the Arabs living in any other Middle Eastern state. So why should Jewish settlements be a problem for the Arabs? The reason is that the Arabs will not tolerate a Jewish presence in their states or anywhere in the Middle East. This is the source of the Middle East problem - Islam's war against the infidels; the Arabs' hatred of Jews. The Middle East conflict is not about Israel's occupation of the territories; it is about the refusal of the Arabs to make peace with Israel, which is an expression of their desire to destroy the Jewish state.

The Palestine Liberation Organization was created in 1964, sixteen years after the establishment of Israel and the first Arab aggression. The Palestine liberation movement was created at a time the West Bank was not under Israeli control but was part of Jordan. The Palestine liberation movement was not created so that the Palestinians could achieve self-determination in Jordan, which comprises 90% of the original Palestine Mandate and which is a majority Palestinian state. The goal of Palestinian liberation, inscribed in its original charter, was the "liquidation of the Zionist presence." In the words of its leaders, it was to "push the Jews into the sea."

Arafat a man dedicated to Peace???

Jeez She-Mex...you are sooo full of shit that I bet...I just bet that your eyes are brown...

...they are, aren't they?

...friggen bootlicker...

I've hit a nerve with KPC. Truth hurts. Truth is Arafat is an anti-Semitic terrorist who wishes to destroy the only democracy in the middle east -- and the Left loves him for it.

The situation in the middle east is far from simple. To even begin to grasp what is going on requires a trip back in time to 1948. Prior to 1948 there were many jews living peacefully in what we now referr to as palestine/isreal. However a group of extremeist european's some of who were jewish know as the zionist gained huge popular support for their cause of reoccupying the biblical jewish homeland following the holocaust (which was both perfectly legal and was largly administered by high ranking jews at the behest of german taskmasters). The zionist with the help of the then infantile UN created a resolution to give themselves a narrow strip of land 8 miles inland from the coast of present day isreal. When the zionist arrived with migrating jews displaced from the great war the arabs who strongly contested the plan to settle the jews in what was their land by right took arms up against what they saw as an zionist invasion of their turf. The zionist at first were content to have their small peice of land but with their arab neighbors so violently opposing thier occupation of palestinian land they naturally had to take up arms themselves to defend the land they essentially stole with the aid of the UN, USA and britian. In the ensuing conflict the zionist with superior western weaponry pushed the arabs back and claimed most of present day isreal with the excpetion of the west bank and the gaza strip, which they later took as spoils in their following wars with their arab neighbors. So from day 1 basically the zionist used force of arms to gain land through conquest. Is it any surprise that the palestinian people are upset with the lot history has given them, to be kicked off their ancestral home by a bunch of militant invaders, but the history of the US is very similar,, just exchange the zionist with the pilgrims and other european settlers and the indians with the palestianians and you can clearly see what is going on in isreal.

Goodguy 'n' Badguys...Cowboys 'n' Indians...Cops 'n' Robbers...all very simple...to a simpleton.

I ain't your "Dear", and you couldn't hit a single nerve of mine if you licked my asshole, which, by the way your tounge is shoved up Bush's idiot ass, you are probably very experienced at.

...but you are welcome to try...