Battling against great odds

No one can deny the magnificent courage of the Palestinian youth who faced the Israeli army with slingshots and catapults... And then there was the man who lit the spark, Mr. Ariel Sharon, the one Israeli the Arabs have cause to hate. KESAVA MENON on the violence in West Asia.

IRAN CALLED a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. Iraq asked the Arab states to its west to provide passage so that its armoured columns could punish Israel. An Arab businessman in the United Arab Emirates issued a tender for fifty truck-loads of one cubic inch sized Suwan rocks (a particularly hard variety) and 500,000 sling-shots to be transported overland through Jordan for delivery to the Palestinian youth confronting Israel's armed might. Of all the responses from an enraged Muslim world that of the UAE businessman was the one that really encapsulated the spirit of what happened in the Palestinian territories and Israel for a week beginning September 28.

Whatever might be one's views on the Arab-Israeli conflict, no one can deny the magnificent courage of the Palestinian youth who faced the Israeli security forces with sling-shots and catapults for the most part. Those displays of courage also produced much tragedy since over 70 people were killed and over a thousand injured - the vast majority of them Palestinians or Israeli Arabs - in the seven days of conflict. That international opinion swung the Palestinian way was one small recompense. A more important one perhaps was that the Palestinians' perception of the true nature of their relationship with Israel was imprinted on the world's consciousness.

There was one proximate cause for the onset of the confrontation but that can be taken up later. What was undeniable was that the Palestinian youth would not have repeatedly mounted reckless charges against a fully armed Israeli army if there had not been years of rage bottled up inside them. A diet of daily harassment, constant humiliation and to an extant even the denial of their humanity by the Israelis could not have produced in the Palestinians anything other than the willingness to risk everything once the flash-point arrived.

And then there was the man who lit the spark. If there is one Israeli that the Arabs have cause to hate from the core of their being it is Mr. Ariel Sharon, a man who has had Arab blood on his hands for 50 years and acts as if he did not mind if he had to dip them in gore for years to come. In an interview to CNN, Mr. Sharon was to claim that he, as a man who had fought in all of Israel's wars, knew the value of peace. What he did not mention was that those years of warfare also included episodes in which he was present or in the vicinity when Arabs were massacred out of the line of direct military conflict. (There is no evidence that he was directly involved though all episodes occurred when he was in the area in a commanding capacity).

Mr. Sharon was the man who set up in the early 1950s the notorious Unit 101 tasked to carry out reprisal raids against Palestinian guerrilla bases outside Israel's border. This unit is known to have carried out at least one massacre of innocent civilians, women and children, in what was subsequently categorised as a `mistake'``. Quite recently, the bodies of Egyptians taken prisoner and then killed out of hand during the Suez conflict of 1956 were exhumed. Mr. Sharon led the Israeli armoured drive to the Canal in the course of which these prisoners were taken. Then in 1982 when as Defence Minister he committed the Israeli army to the invasion of Lebanon the massacres at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps took place. The massacres of these Palestinian refugees were actually carried out by Lebanese Christian forces allied with Israel but a subsequent official enquiry held Mr. Sharon indirectly responsible.

This was the man who decided to visit the Temple Mount/Al Aqsa complex at the precise moment in history when the question of future control over this site is the one on which the prospects of West Asian peace hinges. It is also a question that arouses much trepidation and concern in Arab minds since the loss of control of the site to Israel will carve a huge dent in their national identity. Mr. Sharon was to say that he paid his visit, along with other hardliners from his Likud party, only to show that Jews must always have the right to visit their holiest site. He, however, inadvertently confirmed the strong suspicion that he had an ulterior motive when he said that the Palestinian reaction to his visit showed that the complex would remain open to people of all faiths only when it was under Israeli control. Therefore he knew that his visit would provoke reaction of the kind it eventually did and his purpose was to prove a political point.

There were apparently even baser political goals that Mr. Sharon was seeking to gain. Just before he announced his visit to the site, Israel's Attorney-General had ruled out the trial of the former Likud Prime Minister, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu, on embezzlement charges. Mr. Netanyahu is now free to resume his political career and once he does his first target will be Mr. Sharon who is almost certain to lose the leadership of the Likud. Mr. Sharon had to establish his credentials as the true upholder of Jewish interests in a hurry.

But can Israel's Prime Minister, Mr. Ehud Barak, and his Interior Minister (and acting Foreign Minister), Mr. Shlomo Ben Ami, escape responsibility. Anyone with the faintest acquaintance of Israeli/Palestinian affairs would have known that an event such as Mr. Sharon's visit would provoke the reaction it did. However, Mr. Barak has given sufficient proof of his sincerity vis-a-vis the process of reconciliation with the Arabs and it is very possible that he was outflanked by Mr. Sharon. If Mr. Barak had stopped him, Mr. Sharon would have accused him of being ready to surrender the very basis of Israeli identity.

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