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Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes
News & Letters, June 2001
Sharon brings conflict to boiling point
On June 1, as we were going to press, a suicide bomber from the Islamic
fundamentalist Hamas movement killed 20 Israeli youths outside a disco in
Tel Aviv. This terrorist attack stunned and horrified almost all Israelis
and many on the Palestinian side as well. Even before this particular
outrage, leading Islamic clerics in Egypt and Saudi Arabia had strongly
condemned such attacks on innocent civilians as un-Islamic.
Hamas said that its attack was in response to how, on May 18, in a type of
escalation unthinkable only weeks ago, General Ariel Sharon, the Israeli
Prime Minister, used U.S.-supplied F-16 jet fighters to attack Nablus and
Ramallah on the West Bank. These air attacks killed eleven and wounded many
more.
Sharon, the butcher of Beirut, ordered the May 18 attacks on Palestinian
police stations in retaliation for a terrorist attack the same day in which
a lone Islamic fundamentalist had blown himself up at an Israeli shopping
center, killing himself and five Israelis. It did not seem to matter to
Sharon that there were no connections between the Nablus and Ramallah
police and the suicide bombing.
On May 19, Arab League foreign ministers voted to sever all political
contacts with Israel. This included Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab
countries that have signed peace treaties with Israel. The Israeli press
was unanimously scathing in its coverage of Sharon's use of jet planes and
even the U.S. government issued a mild rebuke.
These horrific actions have helped to raise the number of deaths since
September to over 500, most of them Palestinian. Less remarked upon are the
daily privations of the Israeli occupation, which severely limit
Palestinian self-rule even in the territories they supposedly control. The
frequent lockdowns and curfews routinely bar students from attending
classes, workers from going to their jobs, and those in need from obtaining
medical care.
As the Israeli women's peace group Bat Shalom reported on May 16: "Nawal
Issa Ahmad gave birth at an Israeli checkpoint southeast of Bethlehem near
Um Al-Salumeh village after Israeli soldiers repeatedly refused to let her
cross the checkpoint in order to go to the hospital. Ignoring her tears and
pain the Israeli soldiers did not let her pass the checkpoint imposed at
the village's entrance."
Inside Israel, some on the right call openly for a type of "ethnic
cleansing" that would drive Palestinians across the border into Jordan.
Others, like Rabbi Ovadia Yossef, spiritual leader of Shas, a rapidly
growing Jewish fundamentalist party, state openly that the "Arabs" should
be "annihilated."
On the Arab side, the low point was reached by Bachar Assad, Syria's new
leader, who in the presence of a silent Pope John Paul II called for joint
action by Christians and Muslims against the Jews, who, he claimed
"assassinate all of the principles of all of the religions, in the same way
that they betrayed Jesus and tried to kill the Prophet Mohammad" (LE MONDE
5/9/01).
On the Palestinian side, few voices have condemned Assad, none of them
officials of the Palestinian Authority. One exception is the writer Edward
Said, better known for his denial of any difference between politicians
like Sharon and those favoring compromise with the Palestinians, like the
martyred Yitzhak Rabin. Recently, however, Said has begun to speak out
against the rise of fundamentalism and anti-Semitism on the Arab side. In a
May 23 statement circulated by the Open Tent Discussion Group
, Said wrote:
"I would have thought that better than denouncing Israel from top to bottom
it would have been a smarter thing to cooperate with sectors inside the
country who stand for civil and human rights, who oppose the settlement
policy, who are ready to take a stand on military occupation, who believe
in coexistence and equality, who are disgusted with official repression of
the Palestinians.... I would also have thought that it is the better part
of honesty to have dissociated oneself from the crude anti-Semitic attacks
such as those emanating from Damascus recently: what do these do except
display to the world a mind-set that is both sectarian and viciously
stupid?"
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