Ariel Sharon's war against the Palestinians

Catholic New Times, Nov 30, 2003 by Ted Schmidt

It was the witty remark of former Israeli ambassador to the UN, Abba Eban that the Palestinians never miss a chance to miss a chance (at making peace). The same unfortunately can now be said of the present prime minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon.

The Second Intifada (also called the al-Aqsa Intifada) began, as many will recall, with Sharon's provocative walk to the Temple Mount adjacent to the Arabic holy shrine in September, 2000. Since then, and during Sharon's tenure as prime minister (since Feb. 6, 2001) 244 suicide attacks have been carried out, thousands of houses demolished, hundres of trees uprooted and 2,200 Palestinian deaths up to April 4, 2003.

There have been 22,308 injured, with 691 Israeli deaths and 498 injured Often, as things were starting to quiet down and a hudna (ceasefire) was implemented by Palestinians in early August, it was Sharon who once again threw kerosene on the smoldering conflagration. With his preemptive strikes and extra-judicial executions, the lifelong Arab-hater followed his predictable pattern.

On October 30 of this year Israel's army chief, Lieutenant-General Moshe Ya'alon, stated the obvious: Sharon's hardline treatment of Palestinian civilians is counter-productive and his policies simply intensify hatred and strengthen terror organizations.

To anybody with the slightest familiarity with Sharon's career, this is entirely true to form, as was his hysterical rejection of the recent Geneva Accord and his construction of recent and notorious Wall through the West Bank, which in effect ended the American Road Map to Peace.

Nobody is in a better position to analyze 8haron's tumultuous career than Israeli academic Baruch Kimmerling, the distinguished research professor at the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto and the George S. Wise Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Professor Kimmerling's book is Politicide: Ariel Sharon's War Against the Palestinians. Kimmerling outlines Sharon's shameless career of opportunism which, to be fair, has also included fierce bravery in war.

For him, "Israel under Sharon has become an agent of destruction ... its domestic and foreign policy oriented toward one major goal: the politicide of the Palestinian people." Politicide means the dissolution of the Palestinian people's existence "as a legitimate social, political and economic entity." The major tools of this policy are murders, localized massacres, the elimination of leadership and elite groups, the physical destruction of public institutions and infrastructure, land colonization, starvation, social and political isolation and partial ethnic cleansing." For Kimmerling, this did not start with Sharon.

Historian Benny Morris' work shows how deep ethnic cleansing ("population transfer") went in Zionist thinking. The first politicide was during the 1948 war which according to the author "is not yet common knowledge in Israel."

In an interview with CNT Kimmerling ridiculed "the completely false and historically baseless book of Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial, the second bible of diaspora Jews. Jews want to look at Israel not as a real political and social entity, but mainly as a Utopian dream where everything is pure and right. They know it is not so but feel a 'Jewish responsibility' to defend the Jewish state. No one doubts Morris' findings."

Sharon's history

Kimmerling details Sharon's unhappy childhood 15 miles, north of Tel Aviv, as a mediocre student with a violent temper, one who picked up his basic attitudes toward Palestinians from his parents: "anxiety and scorn." In the 1948 war, Sharon caught the eyes of two colonels, Yitzhak Rabin and Moshe Dayan who were both impressed with the 20-year-old. Yet they had to intervene to mitigate what would become a lifetime description of Sharon's tendencies--"irresponsible, adventurous and imprecise reports."

Sharon then made his mark in Unit 101 in 1953, a small secret commando unit formed to handle reprisal actions. On August 28, 1953 in the refugee camp called Al-Bureji, Sharon engineered a massacre of 43 Palestinian refugees, including seven women. So, began a career described by Egyptian journalist Azmi Bishara in these terms: "Kill unarmed civilians then lie through your teeth. Sharon's been doing it for half a century."

Sharon's defence was that the women were whores who served the murderers. As a reprisal, on October 15, 1953 Sharon blew up 45 houses in Qibya, the inhabitants inside. Sixty seven men, women and children died. In the investigation, Sharon maintained that he ordered his men to check every house and order everybody to leave. His soldiers denied any such order: "Kill unarmed civilians and lie through your teeth."

It was during this period that Sharon became a hero--"Arik, King of Israel"--among the Israeli military and the young, but always at a price. After Suez (1956), he was accused by fellow officers of grandstanding for personal fame, 28 soldiers having been killed and 100 injured in what many saw as pure opportunism, needless and unnecessary.