The Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, is likening the situation that Israel finds itself in with that in the United States – an innocent victim of terrorist attacks. In Israel’s case, it is the President of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, rather than Afghanistan’s Taliban, who is harbouring the terrorists, under the Sharon view of the world. It gives him the right to attack Mr Arafat and Palestinian strongholds in the West Bank and Gaza, just as the United States has attacked Afghanistan.
The argument may wash with the Jewish lobby in the United States, but not with many others outside the US. Surely, not even President George Bush would fall for this one, though there have been signs of it with his failure to urge restraint on Israel’s part.
The analogy simply breaks down. Even on the strongest anti-US view, the attack on New York and Washington were at the worst a response to US policy positions, not a response to some direct US military action. The appalling Palestinian suicide bomb attacks in Israel were a response to equally appalling Israel extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinians; killings of demonstrators, including children; frequent invasion and closing down of Palestinian towns and cities and the frequent destruction of Palestinian property.
This is a cycle of violence, not a case of Palestinian “”terrorism” and Israeli “”self-defence”. On Israel’s part it is aimed at forcing the Palestinians to accept a peace settlement on Israel’s terms, which means continued occupation of large parts of Palestinian land that it has occupied since 1967.
Israel is going the wrong way about achieving peace.
In the past few days it has attacked Palestinian Authority offices and other accoutrements of Mr Arafat’s power: his helicopters and security forces. The policy is misguided. Without the very things Israel is destroying, how can Mr Arafat do what Israel suggests he do: control the suicide bombers of the radical elements among Palestinians. And the more Israel attacks Palestinian strongholds the more likely the militarily far weaker Palestinians resort to the one effective weapon they have to which Israel has little defence: the suicide bomb.
If there is any link between the Israel-Palestinian situation and the US war against terror, it is not the one suggested by Mr Sharon. To the contrary. The more Israel applies violence to Palestinians the more frustration, fury and anguish are generated in Arab and Muslim nations which breeds fertile grounds for recruitment by terrorist organisations like Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.
Far from encouraging, or turning a blind eye, to Israel’s new approach, the US should be doing all in its power to get Israel to exercise restraint, break the cycle of violence and take greater action in promoting what Mr Bush himself has said is the ultimate objective of US policy – a Palestinian state. Only a viable Palestinian state and Israeli withdrawal from lands occupied since 1967 can achieve that.
If Israel imagines that by removing Mr Arafat and the infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority created by the 1993 Oslo accords they will be able to deal with a series of weakened and isolated Palestinian pockets, it is deluding itself. If what remains of Oslo and Mr Arafat go, Israel may as well get used to an indefinite state of tension and violence engendered by the fury and frustration of people whose land has been occupied and whose hope for self-determination and a decent economic future seem hopeless.
Horrific and as unjustified as the suicide bombings are, a violent response will not end them. Mr Sharon must attempt to revive a cycle of peace, not a cycle of violence.