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CounterPunch
January
9, 2003
Sharon's Fingerprints on Latest
Suicide Bombing
By STEVE NIVA
It is difficult to imagine that Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon, with his much vaunted military and strategic
acumen, did not understand the consequences of his policies over
the past month.
Since the last suicide bombing on November
21, escalating Israeli military assaults have killed over sixty
Palestinian civilians, culminating in the December 26 wave of
killing and abductions, in which Israeli occupying forces killed
at least nine Palestinians, injured more than 30 and abducted
several others.
On that day alone, Israeli execution
squads assassinated three prominent members from three different
militant Palestinian groups: Hamza Abu el-Rab of Islamic Jihad,
Ibrahim Hawash, of Hamas and Gamal Abu el-Nader of Fatah's Al-Aqsa
Martyr's Brigades. All three groups vowed revenge.
As if on que, the horrific double suicide
bombing near the old Tel Aviv bus station took place within two
weeks of these assassinations and reports have now confirmed
that the bombers were members of the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades.
Twenty two Israeli's and foreign workers were killed and a hundred
more injured.
Any observer with elementary skills in
discerning cause and effect could see this latest suicide bombing
atrocity coming. In fact, the vast majority of the nearly 100
Palestinian suicide bombings since they began in 1994 have followed
an almost predictable sequence: Israeli attacks that cause major
Palestinian civilian casualties or Israeli assassinations of
important militant leaders are the most common trigger leading
to suicide bombing cycles.
This escalating cycle of violence can
be traced to the first Hamas suicide bus bombing inside an Israeli
city on April 4, 1994 following the February 1994 Hebron Massacre,
when the American-Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein murdered 29
praying Palestinians in a mosque. Since then, the Islamic militant
groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have made it a routine policy
of responding to civilian massacres and assassinations with suicide
bombings.
And Israel's assassination of the leading
Fatah militant Raed Karmi on January 14 2002 led a militant group
associated with Arafat's Fatah party, calling itself the "Al-Aqsa
Martyrs Brigade," to deliver its first suicide bombing on
January 27. This group has conducted nearly a dozen new attacks
since that time.
Yet this striking pattern has become
even more frequent and predictable since Ariel Sharon became
Prime Minister in February 2001 and escalated military assaults
on Palestinian civilian areas and adopted a systematic assassination
campaign of Palestinian militant leaders. The startling fact
is that four times as many suicide bombings--around 80--have
occurred since Ariel Sharon became Prime Minister than in the
seven previous years combined--around 20.
None of this has deterred Sharon from
escalating assassinations of militants or violent military actions
against civilians.
But what is even more incriminating is
the extent to which Sharon has systematically ordered violent
Israeli military incursions and assassinations during major cease-fires
by militant Palestinian groups as well as diplomatic efforts
to ease the hostilities, resulting in new suicide attacks.
Ariel Sharon ordered the assassination
of the two leading Hamas leaders in Nablus on July 31 2001, which
put an end to a nearly two-month cease-fire on Israeli civilians
observed by Hamas. Haim Shalev, an editorialist in a leading
Hebrew daily Ma'ariv, gravely warned on August 1 that because
"Israel has violated the cease-fire" it should expect
a new wave of suicide bombings, which indeed came on August 9
in a brutal attack on a Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria.
More notorious was Sharon's decision
to assassinate leading Hamas militant Mahmud Abu Hanoud on November
23, 2001 just when the Hamas was upholding an agreement with
Arafat not to attack targets inside of Israel and a few days
before US envoy General Zinni was to arrive in Israel.
In a widely cited article from November
25 2001, the conservative military commentator for one of Israel's
leading newspapers Yediot Aharanot, Alex Fishman, noted that
this assassination had the effect of "shattering in one
blow the gentleman's agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian
Authority." He continued that "Whoever decided upon
the liquidation of Abu Hanoud knew in advance that [a terrorist
attack inside of Israel] 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."
The brutal bombings that followed Abu-Hanoud's
assassination gave Sharon the ideal pretext for his subsequent
declaration of war upon Arafat. Moreover, it effectively scuttled
the Zinni mission and Sharon obtained an unprecedented open backing
from President Bush for more aggressive policies during his scheduled
visit to Washington the next week.
More recently, it was widely reported
that the July 22, 2002 assassination of leading Hamas militant
Salah Shehada in Gaza, which also killed 15 civilians, 11 of
them children, came within hours of a unilateral cease-fire declaration
by both the Palestinian nationalist militia Tanzim and Hamas.
Sharon had been briefed by EU go-betweens, yet he went ahead
anyway.
And now, the December 26 executions of
members from all three militant Palestinian groups took place
while representatives from Fatah, Hamas and other factions were
meeting in Cairo to formulate a cease-fire to last through the
Israeli election on January 28 later this month.
The only conclusion one can draw from
these actions is that either Sharon thought it so important to
kill these militant leaders despite the bloody consequences for
Israeli civilians or that he took these actions precisely because
he expected these consequences and cynically sought to reap the
political gains. Either way, Sharon is complicit.
And any observer can easily discern the
obvious political windfall for Ariel Sharon generated by this
attack.
First, Sharon is now able to resist any
pressure to agree to the latest draft of the Middle East peace
"road map" drawn up by the so-called quartet, made
up of the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia.
Sharon strongly opposed its recommendations that in the first
stage, from January to June 2003, Israeli commitments would include
a total freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank and a pullback
to positions held before the uprising began in September 2000.
Second, the talks in Cairo between members
of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction and representatives from Hamas
and Islamic Jihad about a temporary cease-fire are now irrelevant.
And finally, Ariel Sharon is now almost
assured re-election as Palestinian attacks inevitably give a
strong boost to the hard line parties in Israel that he leads.
Palestinian officials were quick to point
out the obvious following December 26 assassinations.
"The escalation of violence by (Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon is aimed at creating a volatile
atmosphere which he believes will serve him in his election campaign,"
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo told Reuters
on December 27. "Sharon is inviting retaliation because
he wants ... to prevent any possibility of an agreement (between
Palestinian factions) on a cease fire," he continued.
By the same token, it appears that militant
Palestinian groups are more than willing to seize upon Sharon's
provocations through their myopic preoccupation with revenge.
Palestinian militants have not only soured
the Israeli public on peace, they have also severely damaged
the Palestinian cause in the court of world opinion. In effect,
they have aligned themselves with Israel's expansionist right
wing, led by Ariel Sharon, by escalating the conflict into open
military conflagration, which could be disastrous for Palestinians.
A Palestinian opponent of suicide bombings,
the Bir Zeit University professor Salah Abdel Jawad, has recently
argued that "The failure of Palestinians, both in the leadership
and among the population at large, to grasp the danger of suicide
bomb attacks results from their failure to understand Ariel Sharon's
aims following the end of the Oslo process and the destruction
of the Palestinian authority. He wants to destroy Palestinian
civil society and thus move closer to a second expulsion of Palestinians."
Nevertheless, based on the evidence from
the past decade of suicide bomb attacks, and Sharon's clear record
of inciting these attacks, Israel's actions are of incomparably
greater significance for stopping suicide attacks than those
of Yasser Arafat and what little remains of his authority and
security services.
Israel could easily refrain from actions
that kill Palestinian civilians and could suspend the assassination
campaign of militants. It could also lift the deadly curfews
that have created a major humanitarian crisis in many parts of
the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
But if Israeli leaders were truly committed
to Israel's long-term security, they would have to offer a political
vision attractive enough to enable Palestinians to mobilize around
returning to peace negotiations with Israel, thereby marginalizing
militant organizations and depriving them of the crucial support
they depend upon to gain recruits and conduct their operations.
This vision must include the prospect of a viable Palestinian
state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
However, none of this will happen for
the simple reason that Ariel Sharon's entire political career
has been based on his long-standing opposition to a viable Palestinian
state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and his relentless support
for colonizing these lands with Israeli settlements. Suicide
bombings have become a crucial pretext for enabling the brute
force and violence needed to achieve this objective.
In a scathing August 2, 2002 editorial
in Israel's prestigious Ha'aretz newspaper, Doron Rosenblum declared
that "In short, any four-year-old child who examined this
pattern of events would conclude that this government, whether
consciously or not, is simply not interested in the cessation
of the terrorist attacks, for they constitute its raison d'etre".
Steve Niva
teaches International Politics and Middle East Studies at the
Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He writes regularly
for Middle East Report
and his articles have appeared in Open Democracy, The Middle
East Times, and The Jordan Times. He can be reached at: niva@counterpunch.org
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