Commentary
Israel's Escalating War Preparations
The situation in the Middle East has deteriorated rapidly in the past two weeks. Israel has intensified its campaign against the Palestinian people with a series of raids into refugee camps and the bombing of a number of public institutions. In the first four days of March, four Palestinian schools were bombed, including one facility for visually impaired children run by the United Nations. Also bombed was the electricity utility building in Jenin; the city has been without electricity since. In all, in the last week of February and first week of March, 150 Palestinians were killed, with dozens more injured, in what has been the bloodiest period since the renewal of the intifada in September 2000. All attacks - including the bombings of schools, which killed over two dozen children - have been justified as "retaliatory attacks" for suicide bombings.
Speaking to the Israeli press on March 6th, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon justified the series of raids by Israeli Defence Forces into refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza strip by saying he would not "allow the refugee camps to become shelters for terror." His words, clearly intended to strike fear into the Palestinians, were a chilling echo of comments he made in 1982, when he allowed Israel's militia allies to murder thousands of unarmed refugees in camps at Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon. An independent Israeli judicial commission found Sharon responsible for the massacre, and there is currently an attempt underway in Belgium to bring him to justice for war crimes for the Sabra and Shatila massacres.
The increased military excursions by Israel, along with public comments coming from members of Sharon's own cabinet, seem to indicate the Israeli government is preparing to launch an all-out war against the Palestinian people. Also on March 6th, Infrastructure Minister Avigdor Lieberman called openly for a policy of bombing Palestinian marketplaces, commercial centres, banks and gas stations. Other members of Sharon's government have given interviews in the Israeli media calling for the "transfer" of the three million Palestinians currently living under occupation to other Arab countries - astounding in that it is an open call for the exact brand of ethnic cleansing that Slobodan Milosevic is currently being tried for in the Hague.
While Sharon, under intense pressure from the Americans, seems to have agreed to drop his edict that he would not enter into peace negotiations until there was one week of non-violence, the move seems designed to earn the Israelis some respite from mounting international criticisms and nothing more. Sharon has already dismissed out of hand a peace initiative put forward by Saudi Arabia with backing from many Arab states. Under this proposed plan, Israel would immediately withdraw from all occupied territories in exchange for full recognition from all other states in the region. The current peace mission led by the American envoy Zinni will fare no better.
Sharon, faced with declining popularity for the first time since he was elected, as well as an internal crisis in the Israeli Defence Forces, seems to be calculating that by turning the screws just a little bit more, he can bring the Palestinian leadership and people to their knees and thus justify his strategy. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case. While Sharon may or may not succeed in bringing down Yasser Arafat, whom he is vilifying internationally as single handedly responsible for acts of terrorism in Israel, the factionalism that characterized Palestinian politics during the period from the early 1990s to 2000 seems to be disappearing. Even the majority of suicide bombing attacks in the last two months have been carried out against either military targets or in the settlements, a move which has made it easier for the Palestinian Authority to get international support.