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NEWS & LETTERS, February-March 2006Our Life and Times by Kevin A. BarrySharon and PalestineAs Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s debilitating stroke seemed to end his political career, the consequences of his policies continued to boil over. Known throughout the world as the "butcher of Beirut" for his role in the 1982 massacre of over 800 Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, Sharon also sparked the Second Intfifada with a provocative visit in 2000 to the Al Aksa Mosque, Jerusalem’s most important Muslim religious site. Since coming to power in 2001, Sharon has used unprecedented levels of force to crush the Palestinian uprising. These have included targeted assassinations, one of which killed Sheik Ahmad Yassin, the leader of Hamas, in 2004. Far from weakening the fundamentalist and anti-Semitic Hamas movement, this assassination had the opposite effect. Today Hamas support stands as high as 40% in some polls of Palestinian voters. This upsurge is due also to corruption, authoritarianism, and disarray within the more secular Fatah movement, hitherto dominant in the Palestinian territories. The U.S. government and media are praising Sharon as a peacemaker because he evacuated the Gaza Strip last year. While this was certainly more than a token concession, the Israeli leadership thinks it can keep control of Jerusalem, while walling up the Palestinians in Gaza and parts of the West Bank, as a de facto peace settlement. This is a grand illusion, just as much as is the Palestinian leadership’s talk of a right of return of all refugees to Israel proper. |
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