Sharon and the myth of the peace-makers

 By Ramzy Baroud

Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, although affiliated with terrorism in his early years, then with bloody wars in later years, was made a peace-maker when he struck a deal with former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, virtually ending hostilities between the two countries, while sidelining the Palestinian question altogether.

Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, another Israeli Nobel Peace Prize recipient, signed the Oslo agreements of 1993. Interestingly, both Israelis and Palestinians see this as an infamous document. Rabin's own violent history was almost completely scrapped the moment he signed his name, endorsing the agreement on the White House lawn.

Ehud Barak, also relatively young and still vibrant, was spared by history from any blame. After all, the retired general and former prime minister's name shall also be synonymous to the term “generous offer,” allegedly offered to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat at Camp David in July 2000. Although Barak's offer largely failed to address the important topics regarded by Palestinians as fundamental, he remains a “peace-maker.”

The signing of a document resolves nothing for Palestinians; their own reading of history taught them that much.

On the one hand, Begin's association with the ethnic cleansing of over a million Palestinians and a list of bloody massacres, from Palestine to Lebanon, were greater witnesses to Begin's true merit than the signing at Camp David. The late 1970s agreement, like Oslo and Camp David 2, satisfied little of the Palestinians' long-held aspirations for freedom, the right of return and a sovereign homeland.

Rabin is also remembered by thousands of Palestinian men and by their families. The former Israeli defence minister was the one who initiated the “broken bones” policy during the first Palestinian uprising, which started in 1987. Such a legacy was overlooked after his signing of the Oslo accords and following his assassination by an Israeli terrorist. But the cheers that followed the historic signing of Oslo on the White House lawn could never be loud enough to cover the screams of thousands of men and children whose hands and legs were broken because the Israeli economy couldn't handle their uprising and quest for freedom.

There is history, and there is Palestinian history. The first refers to how Israel or pro-Israeli pundits wish to see history written, joined by the collective efforts of the media. The second refers to how Palestinians choose to remember their own plight and those who contributed to their misery.

Palestinians are not selective in their memory, as it may seem, and are indeed forgiving. After all, the day Oslo was signed, Palestinians marched in every town, village and refugee camp. In Gaza, they carried olive branches and handed them to Israeli soldiers, while the soldiers were in the process of subjecting the Palestinians to a brutal occupation.

History can be of great value if depicted accurately. Such remembrance is due now more than at any time in the past, for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has uttered a word which some have already described as “historic”. Sharon referred to the Israeli occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories as “occupation”, during the debate that preceded the approval of the roadmap peace initiative, late May. For a right-wing extremist, we are told, such a word was taboo, and might signal a fundamental shift in the Israeli government's policies towards the Palestinians.

I still cannot see clearly how Sharon's admission will change the political discourse governing the Middle East's most durable conflict. What seems clear to me, however, is the fact that Israeli leaders, whether “peace-makers” or “right wing extremists”, have excelled in manipulating certain terminology to fit their own political agenda. But without associating any tangible meaning, this terminology becomes irrelevant.

Various Israeli leaders spoke openly about a Palestinian state, while actively slicing up the potential state into Bantustans, separated by fortified settlements and barbed wire. Israeli officials are actively using the term “peace”, but considering the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed demonstrates the lack of substance to such an assertion.

Sharon's first day in office was one when he spoke of a Palestinian state, but if we recall these statements, such a state fails to include more than 42 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza, it is a state crowded with illegal Jewish settlements, bypass roads, Israeli military zones, without its refugees, without Jerusalem and without real territorial integrity.

Chances are that Sharon's words were simply a political manoeuvre, rather than a genuine change of heart. By uttering the word “occupation,” Sharon might have enlisted himself in the category of “peace-makers.”

On the “historic” day when Sharon used the word “occupation,” Israeli tanks attacked the West Bank town of Tulkarem and killed a Palestinian boy. Two children were also wounded in the Israeli attack, one 7 and the other 9. Sharon's word made no difference to the families of the children killed and wounded, and most likely to millions of Palestinians who still regard him as a violent leader who holds no respect for their long-denied rights.

Looking back at their experiences with Begin, Rabin, Barak and Sharon himself, Palestinians already know: expressions of peace that are soaked in blood just don't count.

The writer is the editor-in-chief of the Palestine Chronicle, and the editor of the anthology `Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion'. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.