The Hero of Sabra-Shatila massacres is a known killing machine. Still the US supports this terrorist, fascist. Why? Does he fulfill their Mid East foreign policy?
**Background/Sharon, victim of his own bulldozers **
By Bradley Burston, Ha’aretz Correspondent
In the continuing Greek tragedy of the Israel-Arab conflict, with Ariel Sharon the prisoner of his own preferred instrument of policy, the bulldozer, could a perceived victory by the Palestinians mean a triumph for Arab proponents of a sharp turn away from violence?
As the dust cleared Monday over Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters, the often-warring ministers of Sharon’s patchwork government seemed in rare consensus over an even rarer conclusion: that they had made a serious mistake.
And in a contentious nation wherein the traditional formula “Two Jews, three opinions” often proves to be an underestimate, there was remarkable unanimity that, for once, the government was right.
Across the political spectrum, in blistering headlines and acid commentary, Israeli media took the Sharon government to task for sending in mammoth bulldozers to carve up Arafat’s Muqata headquarters compound and besiege the Palestinian leader for 10 days, only to have the outwardly fiercely independent cabinet called off like an obedient canine by the whistle of Washington.
Under pressure to respond earlier this month to the first suicide bombings in six weeks, Sharon had staked prime ministerial prestige to a vow to hold the armor-anchored siege in place until dozens of fugitives holed up with Arafat gave themselves up.
A portion of that prestige was now in tatters, as the government had responded with unusually abrupt dispatch to a White House signal that the Bush administration would brook no back-burner conflict that could disrupt plans for a U.S. offensive against Saddam Hussein.
Rubbing salt firmly into the government’s fresh wounds were Israeli newspaper photos in brilliant color of Arafat triumphantly celebrating his latest return from a political grave - the upshot of sudden outpourings of Palestinian sympathy for a beleaguered leader - and of one of the men on Israel’s most-wanted lists casually lighting up a Marlboro after stepping out of his Muqata confinement.
The fugitive, Mahmoud Damra, commander of Arafat’s Force 17 Presidential Guard in the Ramallah area, is said to be wanted for the ambush gunshot murders of at least 11 Israelis. Under other circumstances, he might well have been the subject of an assassination. Instead, he was shot only by photographers as he exited Arafat’s cramped nerve center.
“Israel folds, the fugitives flee,” screamed a black-bordered headline in Ma’ariv daily.
By Monday, as Sharon held talks in far-off Moscow with Russian leaders, cabinet ministers engaged in public soul-searching the likes of which Israel has seldom experienced.
Acknowledging the surreal scene of a curfew-bound Ramallah turning the Muqata within minutes into a carnival scene and a place of pilgrimage, a somewhat chastened Education Minister Limor Livnat allowed “It is not at all a pleasant thing, having to see Arafat make his famous V [for Victory] gesture.”
After security officials and the cabinet badly misjudged the situation, and Washington had demanded the siege be halted, Livnat said, “the prime minister, along with the defense minister and others, came to the cabinet and recommended [that the operation be ended], and this too was accepted unanimously. Was this good? No.”
Cabinet Minister Natan Sharansky said that government officials had failed to take into account how Washington would react to the operation as a possible hindrance to a future U.S. onslught in Iraq.
“We did not assess the situation correctly, when we made the decision two weeks ago, the extent to which America had already begun the countdown to an attack on Iraq, that just during those days America would enter into confrontations with the UN and Europe, and would be unable to tolerate one more confrontation,” Sharansky told Israel Radio. “We certainly had should have taken this into consideration two weeks ago.”
Sharansky said that prior to taking the decision to besiege Arafat, “There were no hints from Washington” as to its negative reaction to the operation. “At the same time, there is no question that the decision was taken in undue haste, and that this was the result.”
But in an uprising which has been fought as much over saving face as holding land, could the fact of Israel’s humilation help Palestinians turn the tide against the violence of their own struggle?
“The period since the siege began has been full of mass demonstrations, not only here but also in the surrounding Arab world, also coinciding with the second anniversary of the Palestinian uprising, and this made a great impression on the Palestinian people,” notes Ha’aretz commentator Danny Rubinstein.
Rubinstein says that there have voices since the Intifada began urging a turn away from the individual attacks of militants, and toward popular actions at the grass-roots level. “The whole element of suicide bombings and the like is the work of individuals and not the masses,” he says.
Palestinians, led by leftists, have come forward to assert that suicide bombings and other armed attacks have done much more to harm the Palestinian cause than to advance it. Lately, Arafat’s longtime deputy Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has come forward publicly to lobby against the use of arms and in favor of public protest using peaceful means.
Still, the movement has yet to catch hold, and it remains an open question whether it will. “The direction of mass action has been around throughout, but it just doesn’t seem to go, apparently,” Rubinstein remarks.