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December 6, 2001
Sam and
Leila Bahour
The
Psychology of a Suicide Attacker
December 5, 2001
Edward Hammond
The Only
Real Way to
Prevent Biowarfare
Harvey
Wasserman
Atomic
Treason in the House
Carl Estabrook
America's
Israel
Don Williams
Questions
Barbara Walters Didn't Ask George Bush
Cockburn/St. Clair
Liberals
Hail War as
Return of Big Government
Robert
Fisk
The
Last Colonial War?
Bahour/Dahan
It's About
the Occupation
December 4, 2001
Dave Marsh
A
Plea for Byron Parker
Rep. Ron Paul
Keep Your
Eye on the Target
Susan
Herman
Ashcroft
and the Patriot Act
Tariq Ali
The Afghan
King and the Nazis
November 30, 2001
Jordan
Green
Disappeared
in the Southland
Willliam Blum
Rebuilding
Afghanistan?
November 29, 2001
Phillip
Cryan
Defining
Terrorism
Robert Fisk
We Are the
War Criminals Now
November 28, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
A
Continuum of Terror
Patrick Cockburn
Tribal
Council:
Don't Blame It All on Taliban
Robert
Fisk
At
Last, The Truth about the Sabra and Chatila Massacres
Harry Browne
The Bill of
Rights:
They Threw It All Away
Sunil
Sharma
Suffer
Palestine's Children
November 27, 2001
Paul Coggins
Kafka and
the Patriot Act
Tariq
Ali
Tigris
and Euprhates
November 26, 2001
Robert Fisk
Blood and
Tears in Kandahar
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Boeing's
Sweet Deal
CounterPunch Wire
Human
Rights Abuses and
Nuke Waste Shipments
Alexander
Cockburn
Harry
Potter and Terrorism
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
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CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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by James Ridgeway
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December
6, 2001
Sharon
or Arafat:
Which Is the Sponsor of Terror?
By Alexander Cockburn
"Arafat
is guilty of everything here."
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon declared on television Monday
night. "Arafat has made his strategic choices: a strategy
of terrorism." In sync with these fierce words, Israeli
forces launched attacks close to the Palestinian leader's house
and destroyed his helicopters, an onslaught that the US government
conspicuously failed to condemn.
So, in the wake of the last suicide bomb
attacks launched by Hamas, the sky is now the limit for Israeli
reprisals: the killing of Arafat, and, not so far down the road,
perhaps forced expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians
from the West Bank. In other words, the substitution of untrammeled
military repression by Israel's forces, and a deaf ear by the
US to all Palestinian calls for fair dealing. Write FINIS to
all efforts across the past 35 years to secure a just settlement
in Israel and some measure of satisfaction for Palestinian aspirations.
But to be honest about it, is not that
exactly what militant Israelis like Ariel Sharon have wanted
all along? Can anyone claim with a straight face that Sharon
and those like him actually want a just peace that would see
an end to Israeli settlements on the West Bank, the rise of a
Palestinian state in any guise other than pathetic little Bantustans
ringed by Israel's security forces?
There are those in Israel who outlined
clearly a couple of weeks ago Sharon's plan to force matters
exactly along the lines they have now taken.
Alex Fishman is the main commentator
on security matters for Israel's largest mass circulation paper,
Yediot Achronot, a publication with right-of-center politics.
Fishman is known for his excellent contacts in the military.
On Sunday, November 25, Fishman issued a prediction based on
the recent assasination on November 23 by Israel's security services
of the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud. It was featured in a box
on the newspaper's front page.
It began, "We again find ourselves
preparing with dread for a new mass terrorist attack within the
Green Line [Israel's pre-'67 border]." Since Fishman was
entirely accurate in this regard, we should mark closely what
he wrote next. "Whoever gave a green light to this act of
liquidation knew full well that he is thereby shattering in one
blow the gentleman's agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian
Authority; under that agreement, Hamas was to avoid in the near
future suicide bombings inside the Green Line, of the kind perpetrated
at the Dolphinarium [discotheque in Tel-Aviv]."
Fishman stated flatly that such an agreement
did exist, even if neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas
would admit to it in public. "It is a fact," he continued,
" that, while the security services did accumulate repeated
warnings of planned Hamas terrorist attacks within the Green
Line, these did not materialize. That cannot be attributed solely
to the Shabak's impressive success in intercepting the suicide
bombers and their controllers. Rather, the respective leaderships
of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas came to the understanding
that it would be better not to play into Israel's hands by mass
attacks on its population centres."
In other words Arafat had managed to
convince Hamas to curb its suicide bombers. This understanding
was shattered by the assassination of Abu Hunud. "Whoever
decided upon the liquidation of Abu Hunud," Fishman continued,
" knew in advance that that would be the price. The subject
was extensively discussed both by Israel's military echelon and
its political one, before it was decided to carry out the liquidation.
Now, the security bodies assume that Hamas will embark on a concerted
effort to carry out suicide bombings, and preparations are made
accordingly."
Ever since September 11 Israel's leaders
followed with deep trepidation the building of the coalition
against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The months of studious indifference
displayed by the Bush administration towards the Middle East's
crises suddenly gave way to President Bush's abrupt, post September
11 statement that he had always nourished the dream of a Palestinian
state.
Consequently the prime task of the Israeli
government and of its suppporters here has been to turn back
any serious pressure for accomodation with even the most modest
of Palestinian demands. In parallel the faction mustered around
deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Defense Policy Board
chairman Richard Perle has been to push for the US to reopen
direct hostilities with Iraq and settle accounts with Saddam
Hussein, once and for all.
The Wolfowitz-Perle group knows perfectly
well that any serious new confrontation with Saddam Hussein would
probably be a prolonged and bloody affair. There is no Northern
Alliance ready and eager for US intervention in Iraq. The Shia
in the south remember well what happened in 1991 when they rose
against Saddam and the US stood by while Saddam methodically
slaughtered them. The Kurds know that a post Saddam regime might
move against them, with similar US indifference. If the US acted
as supervisor and guarantor for an invasion by Ahmed Chalabi
and his Iraqi National Congress, the military and diplomatic
consequences would be both bloody and far-reaching.
It's clear that the Wolfowitz-Perle group
is equable in the face of such uncertainties, since whatever
the ghastly consequences for ordinary people in Iraq the one
outcome that would be certain is that Israel would be resoundingly
confirmed in its status as the United States' prime ally and
client in the region, even as the post-September 11 coalition
with Islamic countries falls apart. Small wonder they rapturously
echo Sharon's denunciations of Arafat as a man of terror even
though they, being smart people, probably don't need Alex Fishman
to explain how the real game is actually being played.
These are the stakes. They're far larger
than the present tragi-comic efforts to assemble a coalition
to run Afghanistan, and there isn't much sign thus far that President
Bush understands that comic-book advisories such as "You're
for us or against us" do not, in this situation, really
apply.
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