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Column: Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes
Israeli rampage
On Oct. 18, commandos from the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP), a leftist group known in the past for its airplane
hijackings, assassinated Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi in revenge
for Israel's having assassinated PFLP leader, Mustapha Zubari, in August.
As so often in the past, this attack by extremists came at the very moment
when a ceasefire was beginning to take hold, as both Britain and the U.S.
pressured Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Only three days earlier, top Palestinian leader Sari Nusseibeh had reached
out dramatically to progressive Israelis in a speech at Hebrew University.
Nusseibeh did so by criticizing Palestinian demands for the return of all
refugees since 1948 to Israel proper rather than the Palestinian
territories.
Zeevi was a repulsive figure, who had called openly for the expulsion of
all Palestinians to Jordan. He had just announced that he was withdrawing
from the cabinet due to the ceasefire. In the aftermath of Zeevi's
assassination, Palestinian Authority President Yasir Arafat arrested some
PFLP leaders and also banned the group. Sharon demanded that Arafat turn
these and other men over to him for prosecution. He then launched Israel's
biggest military operation since 1993, going into Bethlehem for the first
time, as well as other towns on the West Bank. By Oct. 25, Sharon's forces
had killed over 30 Palestinians, including a teenager leaving church in
Bethlehem while carrying his four-year-old cousin. He also defied U.S.
calls to end his offensive.
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