SHARON REPLIES TO "PEACE PLAN" WITH MASSIVE ASSAULT
By Richard Becker
At midnight on Feb. 27, [2002] Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave his response to the widely promoted "peace plan" floated by Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah. At that hour, Israeli tanks, helicopter gun-ships and infantry troops launched a massive assault on the Balata Palestinian refugee camp outside Nablus in the West Bank.
Simultaneously, the Israeli army launched a similar attack on another West Bank camp outside the city of Jenin. Resistance was fierce in both camps, despite the fact that the Palestinian defenders were overwhelmingly outgunned. The defenders had no antitank or anti-aircraft weaponry.
Over the next two days at least 30 Palestinians were killed and more than 200 wounded; hundreds of families lost their homes. Most of the dead and wounded were children and other noncombatants. Densely populated and impoverished, Balata is a tiny piece of land that is home to 20,000 people.
The scale of the attacks on the Balata and Jenin camps was unprecedented in the 17 months since the Palestinian Intifada--uprising--began. Balata had been shelled every night for two weeks prior to the Feb. 27 invasion.
The use of armor and air power and the heavy casualties inflicted caused the U.S. government to issue mild statements of "concern." Bush administration spokes persons urged the Israelis to show "restraint," the first time that even such modest cautions had been dispatched from Washington to Tel Aviv in many months.
Two days after the Israeli assault, on March 2, an 18-year- old Palestinian detonated a bomb he was wearing on a crowded street in Jerusalem. Ten people died, including the Palestinian youth, and scores were wounded.
The suicide bomber, Mohammed Daraghma, a member of the Al- Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, was later shown on video reading a statement recorded just before he died: "Let me tell that dog Sharon that I will strike and I will avenge my families in the Balata refugee camp and Jenin refugee camp on behalf of all the martyrs in Palestine."
The U.S. responded by calling the Jerusalem bombing a "terrorist outrage," re-emphasizing Washington's double standard when it comes to Israeli and Palestinian lives.
The next day, a lone Palestinian fighter fatally shot seven Israeli soldiers and three armed Israeli settlers at a checkpoint near Ramallah. Five others were wounded. The Palestinian escaped.
On March 4, Israeli helicopters and tanks fired missiles and shells at Palestinian towns and cities across the West Bank and Gaza. One missile killed two women and three children driving in a car near Ramallah.
A tank shell fired at a very well-marked Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance killed the head of Emergency Services in Jenin, Dr. Khalil Suleiman, and wounded two others inside. Altogether, 17 Palestinians died at the hands of Israelis on Mar. 4.
No talk of a "terrorist outrage" from Washington regarding these killings. No surprise--after all, the U.S. supplied the implements of death.
DROWNING THE 'PEACE PLAN' IN BLOOD
The question must be asked: Why would Israel's leaders choose this moment, when a new "peace" initiative was picking up steam, to launch an attack of unprecedented brutality on the Palestinian civilian population?
The answer is no mystery, except it seems, to the U.S. corporate media: Sharon's aim is clearly to drown the initiative in a river of Palestinian and Israeli blood.
It's no revelation that Sharon cares nothing about killing Palestinians. Sharon's entire career has been built on dealing death and destruction to Arab people--from the Qibya massacre of 1953, to the 1967 war, to the infamous Sabra and Shatila refugee camp bloodbath in 1982. And this is to name only the best-known chapters.
But it's only when Israelis are killed that the mass media in the U.S. and Israel start to talk about the peace process being "derailed."
Sharon's invasion was an attempt to kill two birds with one stone. The refugee camps are well known to be, as one Palestinian spokesperson put it, "pillars" of the Palestinian struggle. Destroying the resistance organizations inside the camps would be a major achievement for Israel. This, however, is unlikely without razing them to the ground, a step that would have a very high political cost.
The Israeli leadership knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that invading Balata and Jenin would bring a strong Palestinian response. One of those killed early in the assault on Balata was a military leader of Hamas-Islamic Resistance Movement. This was another of more than 100 targeted assassinations of Palestinian leaders in the past 17 months.
Sharon and the other Israeli leaders know from long experience that they cannot launch massive assaults against civilian centers, or carry out assassinations of Palestinian leaders and activists, without expecting a response. Assassinations of Hamas leaders have usually been answered by bombings in Israeli cities.
In 1996, the Israeli secret service killed Hamas military leader Yehya Ayash. Hamas responded by detonating four bombs, which killed more than 80 Israelis. The aftermath of the Ayash assassination was the major factor in the election of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister of Israel in May 1996.
On Nov. 19, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell made a major speech calling for restarting negotiations between the Palestinian Authority, Israel and the U.S., and announced that he was dispatching Gen. Anthony Zinni to the region. Just before Zinni arrived, Israeli intelligence assassinated Ayash's successor, Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, and also detonated a bomb that killed five young boys playing in the street in Gaza.
Just after Zinni's arrival, bombings claimed by Hamas killed 25 Israelis in Haifa and Jerusalem. Zinni's mission was, in effect, DOA--dead on arrival.
THE POWELL-ABDULLAH INITIATIVE
Crown Prince Abdullah's "new" peace initiative has been much ballyhooed in the world media over the past three weeks. But, in reality, it's neither new nor exclusively--or even primarily--Abdullah's doing.
Abdullah's plan basically calls for Israeli to withdraw from the West Bank, Gaza and Syria's occupied Golan Heights in exchange for the Arab countries' recognition of Israel and a normalization of relations. Various parties and governments have floated the plan, in its essentials, for the past three decades.
It is really less a "plan" than a framework, with the all- important details left to be determined. Many Palestinians reject it because, among other shortcomings, it does not address the right of return for the 4 million to 5 million Palestinians expelled in 1948 and 1967 and their descendants.
The way in which the Abdullah initiative surfaced explains why it has gotten so much attention now. The New York Times published an interview with the crown prince on Feb. 16. The interview in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, was conducted by reporter and columnist Thomas Friedman, who is widely seen internationally as a stalking horse for the ideas of Secretary of State Powell.
A year ago, Friedman traveled to the United Arab Emirates to float Powell's plan for implementing so-called "smart sanctions" against Iraq.
The growing international attention and support for this old- wine-in-a-new-bottle made it clear that the initiative had support far exceeding that of the Saudi royal family. Last week, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and European Union leader Javier Solana both expressed their support.
As inadequate as the Saudi initiative is from the perspective of many Palestinians, it is seen as highly dangerous by the Sharon leadership.
Since the early 1950s when he was chief henchman for Israeli Army Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan, Sharon has been dedicated to annexing all of historic Palestine and more to create a larger Israeli state, a "Greater Israel," as it was referred to in earlier times.
Since those early days of the Israeli state, when leaders like David Ben-Gurion, Dayan and Shimon Peres plotted a new war against Egypt, the formula has changed little: Act in a extremely aggressive and expansionist way, but attempt to put the onus of responsibility for war on the Arabs. The public relations battle over world--and especially U.S.-- opinion was considered vital, especially for a state that was dependent on vast amounts of outside assistance to survive.
Sharon's tried-and-tested method of dealing with recent negotiation initiatives is to carry out extreme provocations against the Palestinians. These provocations by themselves cause little furor in Washington. However, when the Palestinians retaliate, the cry goes up in Washington against the Palestinians and the negotiations are iced.
Sharon and his government--of whom many hope that the outcome of the current struggle will be a new expulsion, or "transfer," of millions of Palestinians--want to defeat any and all initiatives that would result in Israel giving up any territory to the Palestinians.
The Sharon government's unbroken pattern of provocation and extreme repression, and its support and backing by Washington, must be exposed and opposed. The heroic struggle of the Palestinian people deserves and needs the support of all progressive people around the world.
posted: 3/10/02
International Action Center
39 West 14th Street, Room 206
New York, NY 10011
email: mailto:iacenter@action-mail.org
En Espanol: iac-cai@action-mail.org
Web: http://www.iacenter.org
Support Mumia Abu-Jamal: http://www.millions4mumia.org/
phone: 212 633-6646
fax: 212 633-2889
Make a donation to the IAC and its projects
The International Action Center
Home ActionAlerts Press
Share this page with a friend