Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
A year and a half ago, liberal Israelis warned that if Ariel Sharon were elected, horror would overtake them and the Palestinians. They were right
Apr 18, 2002 | As the situation in Israel and the occupied territories descends into ever deeper circles of hell, some Israelis can cling to the threadbare satisfaction of knowing that they predicted it. For many liberals here, the collapse of the Oslo peace process, the smashing of the Palestinian Authority, the rise of terrorist attacks and the total militarization of the conflict were all preordained when Ariel Sharon was elected prime minister 15 months ago.
For months, increasing violence has threatened to explode in Israel and the territories. In late March, it finally did. For the last three weeks Israel has been engaged in the largest military operation in the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War. After the "Seder massacre," a suicide bombing in the seaside city of Netanya that killed 29 Israelis, Sharon launched a furious offensive against the Palestinians. Tanks and armored cars smashed into a half-dozen West Bank cities, with helicopter gunships hovering overhead, pounding into submission densely inhabited Palestinian neighborhoods, including the historic casbah in the biblical city of Nablus. Thousands of Israeli reservists have been called up to man the guns, and the word "war" is used more and more often as a matter of course to describe the campaign's staggering death toll and reach.
The heart of the devastation is at the Jenin refugee camp, where the number of dead buried beneath tons of rubble is unknown and a bitter and momentous controversy about what happened there is raging. Palestinians charge that a massacre took place, with hundreds killed; the Israelis deny their army did anything wrong and put the number of Palestinian dead in the dozens. Human rights groups and British and European officials, fearing that atrocities took place in Jenin (from which journalists were banned until a few days ago), have called for an international investigation. Chris Patten, external relations commissioner for the European Union, warned that if Israel did not accept a U.N. investigation, its reputation would suffer "colossal damage."
Blasted Jenin is quiet now, but the Israeli army and Palestinian gunmen are still engaged in two tense standoffs, one in Bethlehem around the Church of the Nativity, the other in Ramallah at Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's West Bank headquarters, where Israelis charge that those responsible for the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister are holed up. And Israeli soldiers are still arresting and processing hundreds of fighting-age Palestinian men -- including on Monday afternoon Marwan Barghouti, the West Bank head of the Fatah political party affiliated with Arafat, a big fish Israel says is responsible for ordering terrorist attacks on Israelis. The fighting in the occupied territories has largely subsided, though shooting flared up again Wednesday at the Church of the Nativity.
The intensifying crisis led the Bush administration to belatedly get involved, sending Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region. But as many predicted, Powell departed the region Wednesday with almost nothing to show for his trip. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon continues to bluntly rebuff vacillating U.S. calls for an end to the invasion, while Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who has been confined to his devastated headquarters in Ramallah for weeks, refused to call for a cease-fire until Israeli forces withdraw from the occupied territories. A final meeting between Powell and Arafat on Wednesday produced no breakthrough; indeed, after Powell left, angry Palestinians asserted that his intervention had achieved nothing. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saab Erekat said, "The situation on the ground is that Secretary Powell leaves the situation much worse than he came."
As the world waits for the next development -- which painful experience indicates will probably be a dreadful one -- a question arises. How did the Israeli-Palestinian situation deteriorate so far so fast? How did the so-called Al-Aqsa Intifada, which began after Ariel Sharon, accompanied by hundreds of policemen, made a controversial visit to set foot on the esplanade of the most contested holy real estate in the world in September 2000, move from riotous stone-throwing to full-fledged war?
The violence had an escalatory dynamic from the start: Israeli police brutality and the rage following the first Palestinian funerals produced increasingly violent riots. Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers traded bullets. Israel's policy of knocking off wanted Palestinian militants (and innocent bystanders) angered Palestinians who vowed revenge. And Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians whetted Israel's appetite for drastic military action. These are the "cycles of violence" that diplomats have urged, over and over again, both parties to break.
But for left-wing Israelis who campaigned against Sharon's election as prime minister in February 2001, the terrible events of the last year have come as no surprise. In fact, they predicted them with uncanny accuracy -- and lay responsibility for them directly at the feet of Ariel Sharon.
The left-leaning Ha'aretz, Israel's most prestigious newspaper, reminded its readers last week of the advertisement run by Labor on television 15 months ago. The clip, which predicted in graphic detail what would happen if Sharon were elected, forecast the reinvasion of Palestinian territories, hundreds of deaths, the deterioration of Israel's relations with Jordan and Egypt and a massive call-up of reservists. In a publicity gimmick that was much criticized at the time, mock call-up cards were also sent to reservists to stress the danger inherent in choosing Sharon, a man known for his ruthlessness and checkered military past, as leader of the Jewish nation. The admen "should be congratulated on their prescience," wrote Aviv Lavie in Ha'aretz.
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