As the heroes of the Palestinian intifadah are flown to Cyprus in the first leg of their journey to an uncertain future and an equally obvious fate, reports reaching us indicate that Zionist troops have not evacuated Bethlehem.
Though the timing of the siege on the Church of Nativity by the Israeli Defense Force has been heralded as a breakthrough by the United States and the European Union, this view is not unanimous and the Palestinians certainly do not share America’s optimism.
Millions of Palestinians in the Diaspora as well as in the Occupied Territories have yet again witnessed the pathetic conduct of the leader of the free world, which allows the Zionist state to get away with bloody aggressions one after the other.
It is no surprise therefore, that they would regard the Bush administration as complicit in the criminal acts perpetrated by Sharon’s fascist army. They justifiably ask whether the international community has different standards whereby Israel is permitted to commit the most heinous crimes against innocent civilians reminiscent of the stone age.
Indeed it boggles the mind to even consider that any occupying force in this day and age could with impunity not only lay siege on Christianity’s most sacred institution, but also bombard and bulldoze homes, schools, mosques and hospitals, and everything else living or not.
Yet this is the saga of present day Israel led by one of the world’s most notorious war criminals: Ariel Sharon.
It is a tale of a racist colonial experiment initiated unashamedly at the end of the nineteenth century to displace and dismember a settled population and replace them exclusively with Jews. The subsequent pogroms unleashed against the Palestinians continue to this day.
Every action undertaken by successive Zionist leaders from the pioneering days of Herzl to the present, has been designed to manipulate world opinion and influential powers to entrench Israel as a rampart of the west in the midst of uncivilized barbarians.
While this arrogance of power coupled with sophisticated economic and political blackmail relentlessly thunders along, Israel’s vulnerability is beginning to manifest at all levels. Most Israelis are aware that “Arik, the King of Israel” is playing their final game aimed at annihilating the Palestinians and he is far from winning despite unleashing his awesome weapons of mass destruction.
The soft-underbelly of the Zionist expansionist dream – settlements in strategic parts of Occupied Territories – are grudgingly being acknowledged as insecure and an enormous liability! The insecurity is not from a lack of capability on the part of the IDF; it is the consequence of pursuing a barbaric idea at the cost of the security of the indigenous population.
Palestinians have declared that they will continue to challenge the legitimacy of Israel and will not abandon their most potent weapon of martyrdom operations.
(Mr. Iqbal Jasarat is Chairman of the Media Review Network, which is an advocacy group based in Pretoria, South Africa.)
