The German government’s decision to now sell missiles to Israel and Schroeder’s justification that Germany has a "historic and moral duty" to do so undoes all that. It wipes out any admiration and raises questions as to whether the Iraq policy was anything more than a cheap electoral ploy.

The fact that the missiles in question are defensive rather than offensive and supposedly to help Israel withstand Scud missile attacks from Iraq makes no difference. It is not Israel that needs defending, it is the Palestinians. They are the ones who should be offered the means to protect themselves from daily attack. Israel is the aggressor. Under Ariel Sharon, it has embraced military force, terrorizing the Palestinians as never before. That is not merely an Arab view or a Muslim view; it is the view of most of the world; even Americans, even Germans agree. Thus, to offer the aggressor the means to defend itself at this particular juncture, when it is being so vicious, so vile to Palestinians who cannot defend themselves is repugnant. It is profoundly unjust, profoundly immoral.

Germans have an understandable guilt complex about the Jews because of the Holocaust, a guilt which the Israelis have exploited to the full. Arabs have understood that and not greatly challenged it, in part because it is recognized that the problem is something the Germans have to sort out for themselves, but even more so because it has not had any significant material bearing on the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis or between Israel and neighboring Arab states. It is the US that arms and sustains Israel, not Germany.

That is not to say that Arabs have not hoped that Germans might at last be able to put their past to rest and see for what they are, through unstained glasses, the gross injustices perpetrated by the Israelis on the Palestinians. Many in this part of the world imagined that moment to have arrived when Schroeder broke with the US over Iraq, although the accusations of anti-Semitism against Jurgen Mollemann, deputy leader of the centrist Free Democrats, over anti-Sharon remarks made by him and his forced resignation indicated that very little has in fact changed.

That is now proved with Schroeder’s sale. The additional fact that Israel already possesses Patriot missiles — as does Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Taiwan, Greece and, in the near future, Egypt — only makes matters worse. Clearly the Israelis are in a position to withstand attack from Iraqi Scuds. If not, the US would have already supplied them with extra Patriots. That means that this sale of six patriots is primarily diplomatic rather than practical — a deliberate gesture of support from Schroeder at a time when Germany is being pilloried in the Israeli and American press for being soft on Saddam. To please the Israelis (and the US with whom he is trying to rebuild bridges) the German chancellor is busy waving the Israeli flag and spouting forth about morality for all the world to see and hear. It is abhorrent.

Jordan Times, 11/28/02

Such chilling and absurd urgings coming from none other than a Palestinian living in Israel is certainly not new. In the early 1990s for example, the ultra-orthodox religious party Shas reaped hefty support in Arab villages simply because they paid people off. Domestically, a “shekel-for-diplomacy” policy helped right-wing parties like Shas and the Likud secure, to a certain extent, a share of what some had identified as the “most important voting bloc” in Israel, given that the Jewish vote has traditionally been evenly divided between the extreme-right and the centre-left. Internationally, it helps prop up US support for Israel. The very suggestion that Palestinians are voting for a non-Arab Israeli party other than Labour or Meretz is by itself proof that even those who advocate territorial expansion of Israel are working towards some kind of reconciliation with the Arab minority living within the green line.

This is not to deny the increasing animosity between Israel's Jewish majority and Arab minority. Feelings of hatred were on display two years ago when thirteen Arab Israelis were brutally shot dead by police during a wave of riots north of the country. The attack on Arab villagers in October 2000 was masterminded by no other than Labour's prime minister-elect Ehud Barak. A former army chief of staff, Barak gained a reputation for being an able and trusted leader that would perhaps follow in Rabin's footsteps. But trying to win an elections campaign is one thing, implementing promises is another.

Barak “offered” his voters all what they didn't want; namely failure to deliver peace with the Palestinians and the Syrians. Compounding his diplomatic woes, Barak simultaneously managed to anger Arab Israelis. Angry over the killing of 13 of their sons at the start of Al Aqsa Intifada and also let down by the government's neglect of their needs, Israel's Arab minority whose 12.3 per cent of the electorate backed Barak overwhelmingly in 1999, abstained from voting in the special 2001 elections for prime minister. As revolting Arab Israelis found the Likud's Ariel Sharon Barrak's only alternative, they wanted to punish the Labour Party leader for allowing police officers to use live ammunition against unarmed civilians.

The lessons of the past are all too obvious. If anything, the shooting incidents in October of 2000 are just one of many other examples of institutionalised racial segregation and discrimination against the non-Jewish community living in Israel. And ironically enough, the most dire threat Arabs living in Israel have ever faced came from the one party they had voted for. Israel's Labour party, once considered a natural choice for Arabs on election-day, can now be held equally liable for refusing to treat the Palestinians as a national minority.

But this is not the point. Worse still is the way some Arabs living in Israel are handling the situation. As often as they have been “disappointed” by Israel's inability to keep its promises, some Arabs living within the Jewish state find it hard to say no to some extra cash. But then again, who said they are disappointed? Most Arab Israeli households have, in reality, grown steadily better off during the past five and half decades. Moreover, with a comprehensive social security system, even the most impoverished Arabs in Israel have prospered.

To some extent, therefore, Arab Israelis are trapped. On the socio-economic level, they are certainly better off and more importantly perhaps better placed than most other Arabs living next door. Ethically, however, it is hard to find good reasons why Arab Israelis could subscribe to Zionist-Israeli values (supporting the Likud), given all what has happened over the past 54 years. If and when they do, it is because financial considerations hijack any sense of nationalistic loyalty and Palestinian identity. At the root of such bizarre and anti-patriotic behaviour seems to be a deliberate Israeli policy of annihilation of Arabs for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons (Jews) over a minority, such as that pursued by South Africa before the end of its apartheid regime.

Just how dangerous an assertive Palestinian identity from within may seem to the Israeli government could be made clearer by looking at the education curriculum for the Arab minority. Israel not only forced Islamic-style education for Arabs down to a minimum level, it centrally controlled what and how Arab Israelis are taught Middle Eastern history while laying greater emphasis on the teaching of the Hebrew language and the Jewish literature.

Undoubtedly, these tactics worked well in the past; the result, a handful of generations were brought up to believe they were nothing without Israel. Disillusioned with what Israel has “offered” them, not only in terms of economic well-being but also in terms of openness to the outside world and artificial democracy, some Arab citizens sadly came to believe that Israel gave them a bit of everything. But then again, what “seems” to be everything in their eyes, might look overly suppressive to outsiders.

Fifty-four years of unprecedented Israeli propaganda have brought a number of Arab Israelis to the point where losing thousands of lives and acres of land does not trouble their conscience as long as the cash keeps coming in. It is little wonder then that the Arab population of Israel has until recently opted out of any involvement in its country's affairs. Paraphrasing the words of Nehru, “Would an Arab Israeli prefer to be fried in butter or margarine?”; even though the end result using either recipe is equally disastrous, it is not a zero-sum game. Rather, it is a matter of making the best of what is there even if it means surrendering their own Palestinian identity.

Against the insidious wiles of previous Labour leaders, the straight-talking Amram Mitzna, the region's best hope of toppling Sharon and ending the violence, brings with him fresh belief that the peace process is not over yet. But for Mitzna to be effective, he must be elected prime minister of Israel; otherwise, he will flounder in opposition for the next four years. For him to win the next elections, Israel's Arab minority needs to take a stand. No more talk of Shas or the Likud. Mitzna should be given a chance; Israel's Labour party should be given its last chance.

The writer is an independent economist based in Amman.

Jordan Times, 11/28/02

Thousands of dunums of land have been confiscated, trees uprooted and fields bulldozed. On a daily basis farmers are handed documents in Hebrew declaring their fields to be the property of the state of Israel. Sharon's government justifies this enterprise by arguing that Israel has a right to protect its citizens from Palestinian bombers and shooters. Thus, the wall is sanctified as a security measure.

Of course, it is nothing of the sort. The wall — like settlements, outposts and military camps — is a device for grabbing land and establishing irreversible facts on the ground, so that Israel can argue that it is not right or practical to withdraw from territory where such an infrastructure has been laid down at great expense. The wall is being used as a means to annex illegal Israeli settlements along and east of the Green Line — which the Israelis call the “seam line”, suggesting a stitching together of Israel “proper” and the occupied territory rather than separation. To achieve their aims, the Israelis intend to seize not only Palestinian land but also fragment the West Bank, isolate Palestinian population centres and prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state.

The wall serves Israel's long-term objective of rendering life for the Palestinians so difficult that they will eventually cross the Jordan River into Jordan and transform the Kingdom into the “Palestinian state”. Once the wall has been completed and Israel's eastern and western security zones formally solidified, there will be three Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank, as there are in Gaza. These Israeli-contained enclaves will be based on Nablus, Ramallah and Hebron and will have little contact with each other. Palestinians who stay on will serve as menial labourers in Israel. They will have no choice because there will be no other jobs for them to do. Most farmers will lose their land to the settlements, manufacturing will take place in “border” enclaves where Palestinians work for Israeli firms, trade will be in the hands of the Israelis.

Palestinians and Israelis in the peace camp have dubbed this horrendous edifice the “apartheid wall” because it will impose on the Israeli and Palestinian peoples the sort of “separation” that was obtained in South Africa before white minority rule ended. The economic and social effects of “apartheid” in Palestine will be as devastating as the impact of Afrikaner apartheid.

The first phase of the wall which is going up in the northern West Bank is due to stretch 115 kilometres long, three times as long as the Berlin wall. The eight-metre-tall wall is twice the height of the Berlin wall. On either side of the reinforced concrete structure studded with observation towers there will be strips of carefully swept sand monitored by security patrols and electronic fences. The wall will, therefore, look very much like the Israeli construction along the Jordan River and the UN-delineated “Blue Line” which marks the border between Lebanon and Israel. However, unlike the security fence which runs along these two borders, the wall does not follow the Green Line, but dips deep into the West Bank.

In the north, at least 15 Palestinian villages will be trapped between the wall and Israel and the wall will divide another 15 Palestinian villages from their agricultural land in much the same way that the Lebanese village of Shebaa was cut off from its land by Israel in 1967. The village of Jayyous will lose not only its farmland but also a reservoir constructed by the American Near East Refugee Aid. The city of Qalqilya, home to 33,000 Palestinians, will be surrounded by the wall with access provided only by a narrow neck of land which can be closed off by a gate. There are to be a certain number of other “gates” in the wall through which Palestinians employed in Israel can travel to their jobs but farmers will have no easy access to their land on the Israeli side. Palestinian environmentalists are studying the adverse impacts of this massive wall on the movements of wild animals, the flow of water and other natural processes.

The most sinister aspect of the wall is the way it is being handled by the current Israeli government. It is the personal project of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. It is being executed by ruse and stealth as was Sharon's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. On the public relations front, he has given the impression that he is building the “separation” or “Green Line” wall demanded by some elements of the Labour party. Their aim is to effect by separation Israel's withdrawal from most of the West Bank. This is not Sharon's goal. He is using the wall to expand Israel's land holdings in the West Bank, protect Jewish colonies and build Greater Israel.

On the ground, while sections of the wall go up in the north, army engineers have been preparing the route of the wall in and around Jerusalem, in Bethlehem and in the Hebron area. Sharon has decided to use the wall to annex Jerusalem Rachel's Tomb which is located in Bethlehem. This involves encircling and enclaving a number of Palestinian homes. There is talk of constructing a “sleeve”, a narrow walled passage, from the Kiryat Arba settlement to the Jewish enclave in the heart of Hebron. These and other configurations allowing Israel to secure settlements and strategic ground mean that the wall will not run along the Green Line for 350 kilometres from north to south but will become a wavy line of concrete which could be two or three times that length.

This means that the cost of the wall will be many times the $220 million the Israelis have budgeted for the project. Since the Israeli economy is in the doldrums and defence expenditure is rising due to the Palestinian Intifada, Israel has applied to Washington for both an increase in military assistance and loan guarantees and financial grants to aid the country's ailing economy. If the US decides to give Israel the funds it demands, Washington will be accused by the Palestinians of providing the finance to build this terrible wall.

How would I know how much a camel costs? I have never bought one and why should I be expected to know? Although the camel once played a very important role in our culture, comparable to the role horses played in the US or cows played in Switzerland, does anyone ever ask an American the cost of horse or a Swiss about the cost of a cow?

Evidently, the camel is still considered the symbol of our culture in the West and surprisingly, even to high ranking officials who comfortably apply this symbol to the Middle East. Many have little knowledge about the Middle East and some are plainly ignorant, even though they are given titles such "expert" before they even visit the region. All Saudis are seen as desert dwellers who are accustomed to camel riding and living in tents. While some may indeed possess this as part of their heritage and should be proud of it, many others do not. The Kingdom is nearly as large as Europe with a similar wide variety in terms of climate, natural environment and lifestyles of the inhabitants.

The counselor seemed puzzled when I did not take warmly to the "camel question." She apparently assumed this was something all Arabs know about — but it was the importance she attached to the question rather than the question itself which was not welcome.

Many Westerners are unable to understand — or refuse for one reason or another to understand — that the majority of Saudis live in cities. The West too often regards Arab culture as inferior to its own and not worth studying. I replied to the counselor as clearly as a I could that I regarded the question as reflecting a "knowledge gap" that needed to be filled: "Many Saudis have never ridden on a camel or even seen one up close, at least the younger generation. We are very much an Internet, malls and mobile phone society. Yes, the camel was once important but the same people who once kept camels and rode them now drive cars, shop in supermarkets, have satellite televisions and live normally among skyscrapers and motorways. Camels are hardly the symbol of the Kingdom for Saudis, so why should they be featured on the covers of books on the Middle East by Westerners and misguide them?"

I told the counselor the following story: "I was once visiting a school in the UK when one of the teachers was giving a lesson about Arab culture. I was in a classroom with about 25 students who were looking at the board on which was written ‘Arabs live in tents’. I was introduced to the teacher and very politely and tactfully tried to correct that idea. I am happy to say that for all of us — teacher as well as students — the result was a positive and accurate discussion about the Middle East. The students expressed their interest and they admitted to their prejudices about us. They were eager to ask me questions and listened to my answers with genuine interest." I simply wonder how many lessons such as "Arabs live in tents" are taught every year in Western schools?

The counselor immediately understood that such questions were not the way to build meaningful relationships between our peoples and cultures. Unless of course, she was taken to the desert to experience part of our heritage in which camels played an important part.

Pakistan now has a parliament and a prime minister but it is far from being a democracy. General Pervez Musharraf still wields powers that he gave himself through the Legal Framework Order (LFO), which overrides the country's constitution in several respects.

The intelligence-military complex, often referred to as 'the establishment', retains its ability to run the show behind the scenes. In fact, the 'election' of Zafarullah Jamali by the barest of majorities was facilitated by the establishment's machinations.

Jamali owes his appointment to the defection of 10 parliamentarians from Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), six of whom have been rewarded with Cabinet positions, rather than genuine support among members of the National Assembly.

Although the establishment and its apologists always speak from a fictitious moral pedestal, they see nothing wrong in engineering defections from political parties within days of a general election.

The new set-up, if it can be called that, has got off to a poor start. It is clearly a house of cards that can be brought down by any number of factors. First among these are the contradictions of pretending to be a democracy without really being one.

To establish the credibility of the new parliament, Musharraf must allow it a degree of freedom. But the exercise of this freedom by independent-minded MPs could result in debates that the general wishes to sweep under the carpet.

The country's constitutional scheme itself is far from clear. The LFO supercedes the constitution but the constitution has been partially restored. Most MPs consider themselves subject to the unadulterated 1973 constitution, while Musharraf does not want to subject the constitutional amendments decreed by him to a vote by the elected assembly.

In insisting that the amendments are a fait accompli, Musharraf has gone one step farther than General Zia-ul-Haq, who had negotiated and secured parliamentary approval of similarly decreed constitutional amendments.

Musharraf's reasoning is that parliament can overturn the amendments by a two-thirds majority if it so desires. But that fails to explain the legal sanction behind the amendments. He is putting his own judgement above that of the elected institution he says he wants to see evolve as a sovereign body. A clash between 'the King' and parliament is thus inevitable.

Arguments to the effect that opponents of the constitutional amendments should seek redress from the judiciary are hardly very convincing. The present Supreme Court is itself a creature of General Musharraf's Provisional Constitution Order (PCO). While its authority may not be in doubt, its legitimacy is subject to the same type of questions that relate to Musharraf's presidency and his status as lawmaker.

Musharraf's dilemma is that restraining parliament in its early days would make the institution seem less than sovereign, which would reduce his claims of having restored democracy to a greater farce than it already seems. The new prime minister, Jamali, also faces a similar dilemma.

If he toes the general's line too closely, he runs the risk of not being taken seriously. If, however, he starts asserting himself and backs demands for parliamentary sovereignty, he could be sent packing sooner than he has bargained for.

The coalition that has been cobbled together for Jamali owes its loyalty to the establishment rather than to the prime minister. And he will soon have to wrest control of the Pakistan Muslim League-QA (PML-QA) from its kingmakers, in addition to keeping down the other prime minister wannabes who are part of the ruling group.

Having the barest of majorities in the national assembly, Jamali will be at the mercy of individual members of his coalition, each one among them able to threaten the government with collapse.

The opposition, on the other hand, starts with tremendous advantage. The Islamic Mutta-hida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) will control the provincial government in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), enabling it to dispense some patronage while remaining the opposition at the centre. Ideological cohesion and the prospect of further political gains in the future will make it difficult for the establishment to divide the MMA.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed, a leading light of the MMA, is already most outspoken over constitutional issues. The PPP, on the other hand, remains a significant force in Sindh and can challenge the intelligence-military complex's domination of Pakistan's politics by raising issues the GHQ simply does not want discussed.

The perks of Pakistan's military elite are coming under fire even in the international media. Once the PPP has been pushed to the wall by an establishment that refuses to let it form a government even in Sindh, it can fight back as an anti-establishment party.

Indeed, there are many that think Benazir Bhutto's only mistake in the past has been her willingness to accommodate the establishment's concerns and not pursuing a radical agenda. She and her party are at their best when in confrontation mode. The end of all hope of a reasoned settlement with Pakistan's invisible masters could radicalise Bhutto's stance and pave the way for revived left wing politics.

In its effort to keep the PPP out, the Musharraf regime is trying to revive the fortunes of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) led by Altaf Hussain. From the MQM's point of view, it would be a blessing to be declared patriotic once again after having been painted as anti-Pakistan for several years. But while the MQM will not be averse to the perks of power and renewed respectability, its political support base remains deeply anti-establishment.

The MMA's electoral showing in MQM strongholds of Karachi and Hyderabad has reinforced the rivalry between the Islamic parties and the MQM. This rivalry could come to a head again, once MQM reverts to its past pattern of exclusionary politics and violence. The better way of dealing with the MQM would have been to allow its political leaders and other political parties in the province to negotiate coalition arrangements themselves.

The role of behind-the-scenes fixers will only make the establishment the subject of constant political blackmail, forcing the establishment to spin new webs in the process of dealing with the old ones.

The artificial optimism of Musharraf and his team notwithstanding, Pakistan's problems have multiplied rather than diminished under the ad-hoc arrangement of the last three years.

Improvements in the fiscal economy have not benefited the ordinary Pakistani, who continues to face the prospect of unemployment, poverty and lawlessness. By all accounts, more Pakistanis (between 34 to 39 per cent of the population) live below the poverty line today than they did three years ago.

The country's role as a frontline state in the global war against terrorism is leading to closer scrutiny of Pakistan's regional and international role. Investment and economic growth are at a standstill. These are certainly not times in which secretive decision-making and political covert operations can inspire the nation or win it friends around the world.

Pakistan needs predictability that can only be attained through return to rule of law, not by the whimsical system of governance that has spawned 125 decrees (ordinances) by Musharraf since the beginning of 2002 alone.

But the general and his colleagues seem unwilling to recognise their actions as part of the country's problems. Jamali should try to persuade his mentors of the deadly effects of their political interventions. If he does that, he would earn a place in history much more significant than as Pakistan's 16th prime minister.

The writer is visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC. He served as adviser to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto and as Pakistan's ambassador to Sri Lanka.

There’s growing debate in the Arab press about the right strategy for the Palestinians to follow as Israel heads for early elections and the region braces for an American war on Iraq.
It has been fueled by Yasser Arafat’s No. 2 in the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas (better known as Abu Mazen), who made headlines earlier in the week with a speech in Gaza calling for an end to the intifada against the Israeli occupation and arguing that the uprising started in September 2000 has been an unmitigated disaster for the Palestinians.
Abdelbari Atwan, publisher and editor in chief of the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds al-Arabi, challenges Abu Mazen’s views.
Seeing his remarks as a pointer to the future intentions of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Atwan pens a point-by-point rebuttal of Abu Mazen’s assertions.
Addressing representatives of the popular committees of Gaza Strip refugee camps, Abu Mazen strongly defended the 1993 Oslo Accords with Israel that he helped negotiate. He said the intifada has destroyed everything the Palestinians had built in the Occupied Territories since and before Oslo, impoverished them and destroyed their economy, while failing to halt Israeli settlement expansion or bring down hard-line Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He added that if the Palestinian Authority had engaged Sharon in negotiations, he would have fallen within months, as he would have had nothing to offer.
Atwan accuses Abu Mazen of failing to acknowledge that the uprising erupted in the first place as a reaction to the Palestinian Authority’s own shortcomings: its failure at the negotiating table to get the withdrawal clauses of the Oslo agreements implemented in a meaningful sense, and its rampant corruption.
Abu Mazen opposed the intifada from the outset, he says, and is now trying to claim that he only turned against it when it fell for Israel’s provocations and became “militarized.” But even in the early weeks of the uprising, when it was still a peaceful mass protest movement, it faced savage Israeli repression, and it was that which prompted people ­ including PA policemen and members of the security forces ­ to take up arms in defense of their compatriots, he writes.
Turning to the substance of Abu Mazen’s verdict on the intifada, Atwan says that while it may indeed have failed to unseat Sharon, it did manage to bring down Israel’s national unity government, cause a shake-up in its Labor Party, plunge its domestic politics into crisis, and deal a body blow to its economy.
And although the uprising did not lead to a cessation of the Jewish settlement drive, seven years of negotiations and endless PA concessions to Israel were not more successful on that front. During that time, the settlements mushroomed, yet thanks to the intifada, Israelis have been moving out not only of the settlements, but also out of Tel Aviv because of fears for their safety, Atwan says. The new Labor Party leader is now proposing the evacuation of all the Gaza Strip settlements and most of those in the West Bank, “and we do not think that it is the skill of the Palestinian negotiators that led to this courageous program, but rather the militarization of the uprising,” he remarks.
As for the claim that the intifada has pauperized the Palestinians, the truth is that the sharp deterioration in their economic conditions began as a direct result of the conclusion of the Oslo agreements and the advent of the PA, Atwan argues. And although the intifada has indeed deterred investors, the main impediment to attracting both foreign and local investment into Palestine has been the PA’s own corruption and abuses.
Atwan also slams Abu Mazen’s defense of the Oslo Accords, particularly his claim that they ended the Palestinians’ long exile and gave them a homeland to which they can return. He complains that this only applies to a minute proportion of the Palestinian diaspora, mainly PA staffers, while the vast majority of refugees remain destitute and forgotten.
“We respect Mr. Abu Mazen’s opinion and assessments, but believe that the different times that lie ahead require a new political and negotiating approach that knows how to make proper use of the intifada’s achievements in the service of the Palestinian people,” Atwan writes. “We must avoid repeating the mistakes we made when we failed to build on the achievements of the first (1987-1991) intifada, which led us into fatal errors for which we are still paying a heavy price.”
In the Lebanese daily An-Nahar, Jihad al-Zein writes that Abu Mazen’s indictment of the intifada “reflects a point of view that is extremely damaging at this particular political juncture in the conflict.”
Abu Mazen’s verdict is at best premature, Zein says. If Israel re-elects Sharon and the Likud in January, Abu Mazen would indeed be able to make the case that by taking up arms against the occupation the Palestinians have strengthened him. But if he fails and the Labor Party wins the elections, the conclusion that such a development would invite is that armed Palestinian resistance has “reduced Sharon’s security plan to tatters.”
The latter outcome is not far-fetched, Zein reasons.
“There are signs now that armed operations against civilians in Israel (which we along with many others have long urged should be directed against settlers and the Israeli Army within the West Bank and Gaza) are having a different effect from what they used to. In the past, whenever there was a Palestinian attack on civilians, the Israeli right wing would score additional points in Israeli society, as Abu Mazen indicated. But now they appear to have started producing a different reaction. Whenever there is a Palestinian suicide bombing, Israelis increasingly question the security pledges made to them by Sharon and sense that his military crackdown on the Palestinians is not producing results,” he says.
Moreover, the conflict has reached a point where reversing the “militarization of the intifada” is no longer an option, as it would merely mean squandering all the sacrifices the Palestinians have made over the past two-and-a-half years, Zein says.
For one can no longer speak of an “unholy alliance” between the “extremists on both sides” against the peace camps, as was the case at the time of the 1996 elections in Israel. Now, the Palestinian moderates and extremists, and their respective external sponsors, are united against the extremism of the Likud, and in effect on the same side as Israel’s Labor Party.
Syria’s position is also “more complicated” than it was in 1996, when its aim was merely to defer a peace deal which it considered inadequate. As a result of changed international conditions after Sept. 11 and the major Iraq-related threats it faces, Syria is now firmly part of the peace camp and in favor of reviving the political process.
And while the US administration of President George W. Bush firmly supports and defends Sharon, the Americans’ “objective interest” in seeing the Arab-Israeli conflict settled clashes with the Likud’s vision of a political settlement.
“Accordingly, efforts to reduce Sharon’s security plan to tatters should be intensified in the period between now and the (Jan. 28) elections,” Zein reasons.
In Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, Kuwaiti columnist Ahmad al-Rabei says that while a case can be made for either continuing or halting the intifada, the most important thing is for the Palestinians to choose one course or the other and unite behind it.
One school of thought holds that Palestinian attacks within the 1967 “Green Line” ­ chiefly suicide bombings ­ should be frozen as part of a collective political decision by all factions, he writes.
The argument is that when Israeli noncombatants feel targeted, that bolsters the Israeli right wing and enables it to justify its hard-line policies in the name of self-defense. If acts of Palestinian resistance were directed exclusively against soldiers and settlers in the Occupied Territories, however, Sharon would be cornered, the conflict would be seen as being purely about illegal occupation and colonization, sympathy for the Palestinians would grow, and the Israeli peace camp would be strengthened.
The opposing viewpoint holds that any cessation of Palestinian suicide attacks would merely be seen by Sharon as a sign of weakness, and he would continue throttling the Palestinians regardless. The only thing that will make Israelis want to end the occupation is if they feel that they have all become insecure because of it, even inside the Green Line.
According to Rabei, the debate on this issue held between representatives of Fatah and Hamas is of crucial importance to the Palestinians’ future, and should be allowed to run its course. “The Palestinians can make their choice, but they must unite behind it,” he says.
In the Jordanian daily Ad-Dustour, Tewfik Abu Bakr lashes out at the suicide bombers and urges the Palestinians to act “decisively” to try to ensure that the “peace camp” wins power in Israel.
He concedes that it would be wrong for the PA to do any deal with Sharon that “restores calm,” as that would enable him to claim that his hard-line policies have been vindicated. But Abu Bakr suggests that the PA should seek an agreement with the Labor Party that quietens things on the ground in the weeks before the polls and enables it to present the Israeli electorate with a detailed peace program.
Abu Bakr notes that while the opinion polls give the Israeli right wing the ascendancy, they also indicate that many Israelis are ready for peace. Even among Likud voters, there is a degree of support for dismantling settlements.
“The equation is clear: So long as they are cut down in pools of blood on the buses and in the streets, they will opt for whoever uses the maximum military force, until such time as there is a genuine promise of peace, at which point the picture changes completely,” he writes.
Palestinian extremists understand this, he says. Their suicide bombings helped get both Benjamin Netanyahu and Sharon elected to power, which in turn meant halting the peace process. That was their goal, and their behavior was consistent with it. But it was, and remains, “inexplicable” for the PLO to indulge them, Abu Bakr argues.
“The continuation of armed operations now, especially the killing of civilians, is not an impulsive matter,” he says. It serves the cause of the Likud, and if it wins power, the Palestinian extremists will have “achieved their goal of blocking a peace settlement, preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state, and bringing down the PA, which they imagine they will inherit after it dissolves and disappears from the face of the earth.”
In the Jordanian daily Al-Rai, Mahmoud Rimawi emphasizes the importance of the dovish turn that Israel’s Labor Party has taken.
Its withdrawal from Sharon’s national unity government and its election of a new pro-peace leader in the person of Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna are key developments, even if they are dismissed as irrelevant by some Arab commentators who “overlook politics in the name of glorifying the intifada.”
Their claim that there is “no difference” between the Likud and Labor and that they are “two sides of the same coin” is unproven, he says. “It was Labor which withdrew from South Lebanon, concluded peace agreements with Jordan and Palestine, and withdrew from West Bank and Gaza Strip cities,” he points out. And while one section of the party jumped into bed with the Likud, it has now reconsidered its position and reverted to espousing peace and negotiations and reviving the stalled political process.
Rimawi concedes that it would be naive to expect a Labor government in Israel to restore the Palestinians’ rights in full. But things would only get worse if the Likud were to retain power, subject the West Bank and Gaza Strip to more bloodbaths, turn them into “another Grozny,” and “give free rein to the racist, bloodthirsty and expansionist instincts of the Israeli right.”
Palestinians and other Arabs need to act with steadfastness and resolve, despite the gravity of the conditions facing them, Rimawi writes.
That means mobilizing as much international support as possible, “dealing positively with the amended road map plan devised by the international ‘Quartet,’ and also interacting dynamically with the changes taking place in Israeli political life, to enable the peace program to regain its stature and influence among the public, and its impact on the course of developments.”
That, says Rimawi, is the lesson that the events of the past two-and-a-half years have taught us, and it is also consistent with the fundamental aims of the intifada.
Its essential purpose was to persuade “the other side” to concede the Palestinians’ rights rather than “let brute force be the judge,” he says. “Turning one’s back to reality is tantamount to evasion, perhaps borne of despair, however much one employs resounding rhetoric to cover up this stance.”