-
- by Ray Hanania
-
- Ariel Sharon's election as Israel's
prime minister closes the door to a peace accord, destroys the
current process of negotiations and puts the Arab World at the
crossroads.
-
- Once again, when the hard choices
for peace have had to be made, it was Israel that has rejected
peace and opted for what many Israelis see as the fruits of
military confrontation and an atmosphere of violence and war.
-
- Israelis, who are good at managing the
media, have convinced the world they want peace. The problem is,
they just don't believe they have to pay anything for it. And, to be
honest, the election of Ariel Sharon as their new leader in the face
of the struggling peace process, puts special emphasis on the view
that the Israelis are just downright mean.
-
- Of course, Israel can live with the
current situation. Although some Israelis are dying, they are not
dying nearly as fast as the Palestinians who are the victims of an
intentionally brutal policy of occupation intended to disengage
them from their land, land that Israelis covet and intend to
"own."
-
- But the Arab World cannot. In fact,
the election of Ariel Sharon puts an Israeli knife in the moderate
Arab position that a just and fair peace is attainable, and taunts
the Arab World to knock the chip off the Israeli shoulder.
-
- How would Israel react if the tables
were turned? And, would the United States be any different?
-
- One need only examine the official
Israeli and American policies toward Austria during the leadership
of Kurt Waldheim, who was alleged but never charged or convicted
with serving as having played a significant role in developing and
implementing Nazi policies. Waldheim served as a Nazi soldier and
disputed charges he was involved in the Nazi campaign to eradicate
Judaism.
-
- Waldheim's election was met with
righteous indignation from Israelis and the United States, and
during his term in office, both countries refused to maintain any
diplomatic ties.
-
- So why should the Arab countries,
especially Jordan and Egypt, be any different? Why should they
continue to honor the now worthless peace accords they signed with
Israel?
-
- Without question, Egypt and Jordan
have a moral responsibility to suspend their peace agreements with
Israel in protest, eject any and all Israeli officials and
representatives from their countries, and reunite with Arab
leaders who can counter Israel's actions with a tough stand of
their own.
-
- Sharon is better known as the
butcher of Beirut, and is largely held responsible for Israeli
policies which allowed right-wing Lebanese militias to enter two
Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatilla, in the 1980s, where
they massacred thousands of unarmed civilian refugees.
-
- He has openly called for the murder
of Yasir Arafat, the leader of the Palestinians and up until now a
partner with Israeli in the difficult peace negotiation process.
He has openly called for increased Jewish settlements in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip and the annexation and de-Arabization of
Jerusalem. Keep in mind that these Jewish settlements are
settlements set up exclusively for Jews and prohibit Christians
and Muslims from living in them, and they are often built on lands
owned by Arabs who are evicted by forced, or whose land is simply
stolen by military force.
-
- Sharon is often compared to Menachem
Begin, the former terrorist who brought violence, kidnapping and
terrorism to the Middle East during his vicious campaign against
the British and Arabs during the Palestine Mandate in the 1930s
and 1940s. Begin became an Israeli Prime Minister, the founder of
the Likud Party which Sharon now leads.
-
- Israeli apologists, especially in
the American and Western media where they flourish unchallenged
and unrestrained, continue to argue that it was Begin who first
brought the concept of peace to the Middle East. They note that it
will take someone tough like Ariel Sharon to reach a real peace
with the Palestinians, rather than a weak leader like Ehud Barak,
whom he defeated Tuesday.
-
- But the facts are often blurred in
this pro-Israeli media frenzy. History is rewritten, even though
it is often already distorted by the anti-Arab press in the West.
The real fact is that it was Egypt's Anwar Sadat who naively
believed that Menachem Begin's word could be trusted.
-
- Sadat signed an incomplete peace
accord with Israel that was to have served as the foundation for a
regional peace. It was never intended by Sadat or his successors as
the final peace between Egypt and Israel.
-
- Yet Begin was cunning. He quickly
abandoned the Egyptian-Israeli peace provisions that called for
talks to begin with the Palestinians. It was only until Yitzhak
Rabin came to power and agreed to talk with the Palestinians, at
American prodding, that serious peace talks with the Palestinians
had begun.
-
- Ariel Sharon will not bring peace to
Israel. He will bring war. Sharon's selfish policies were most
evident during his fateful visit to the Haram Al Ash-Sharaf in
September, surrounded by 3,000 heavily armed Israeli soldiers, to
declare that the Arabs have no right to this religious site, which
is one of the holiest religious sites to Muslims around the world.
-
- In a sense, Sharon's election is an
inadvertently compassionate form of euthanasia to the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and an injection of reality to
the rest of the Arab World.
-
- His election elevates the role of
the Arab rejectionists, who have refused to the point of ideology
and religious belief to accept any compromise with Israel, and
have made moderate Arabs like Arafat and others who accepted
compromise as the only alternative, as enemies, too.
-
- The peace process is dead in the
Middle East. Moderation has been murdered. And extremism reigns
supreme.
-
- I don't blame the Israelis for being
greedy. They want our land. They know the Arabs are disunited. They
know the Arabs love to scream and yell and dance in their own
emotional hallucinations. In the end, the Israelis will achieve
their goal of erasing the Palestinian presence in what's left of
Palestine and the Arabs will sit around and complain.
-
- Israeli policy has always been just
the opposite of Palestinian and Arab policy: They would take every
inch to get the mile, while the Arabs and Palestinians have demand
everything to get nothing.
-
- So let's sit back and turn the
leadership now to those in our community who have been dying to
get here. Let them demand Israel's destruction. Let's see how far
they get.
(Ray Hanania is a
Palestinian American writer based in Chicago and a regular contributor
to MMN. His columns are archived
on the web at www.hanania.com)
-
- Source:
-
-
- by the same author:
-
-
