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Of course, what Sharon truly is leaving is an impossible
situation. Gaza is a small, fenced-in enclave of nearly
a million Palestinians where only the most mentally
unbalanced Israeli settlers insist on living a life
of guard towers, razor wire, patrols and spies. Sharon's
army is tired of protecting a few machinegun-toting
fanatics, not to mention the small fortune it can save
by ending the protection.
The army will be able to do a more efficient job by
policing only the perimeter of the world's largest open-air
detention center. Access by land, air and sea are tightly
controlled, although inmates are permitted on selected
days to pass through fences and checkpoints for jobs
in Israel that Israelis will not take.
America's court-appointed President, the remarkable
man who spent a hundred billion dollars to set Iraq
in flames, characterized Sharon's initiative as "historic"
and "courageous," two words whose meanings
there is no objective evidence he even understands.
During the carefully-staged ceremony in Washington,
Bush suggested the U.S. will support Israel's annexation
of parts of the West Bank. How is Bush entitled to grant
land he neither owns nor occupies to a third party without
so much as consulting those who lived there for centuries
and still often hold deeds? Apparently, no principle
more dignified than might makes right.
The de facto border of Israel keeps shifting eastward
as new settlements sprawl out like Florida land developments.
The Palestinians are not to be permitted even their
miserable 22 percent of what once was called Palestine.
Sharon's gang has always yearned for the West Bank,
minus its inhabitants, carefully dressing up its language
in biblical terms that strike a special chord in the
backwaters of America. Of course, one just as reasonably
could make a case for Greece claiming parts of Turkey
on the authority of the Iliad. The biblical claim really
is just that silly, but it carries weight in parts where
children's books are scrutinized for dire signs of witchcraft.
Sharon's government has been a disaster both for the
Palestinians and Israel. The world's reaction to his
behavior has been waves of severe criticism, but there
also has been ugly new expressions of anti-Semitism.
A number of Israel's defenders work to blur the distinction
between these two things, hoping to silence criticism.
Reasonable people are driven to despair at being treated
so mindlessly.
I believe the extreme sensitivity of many Jews to criticism
of Israel's behavior actually reflects the fact that
it disturbs them too, although public expressions of
their distress are rare. Fierce pressure is felt by
Jews who join criticism of Israel, perhaps the most
notable case being the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom
who not long ago spoke out quite forcefully on the subject
and has not been heard from since.
"It's easy to see which side you support,"
was one of the more temperate negative responses I received
once to a piece about Israel and the Palestinians. Why
must Israel's critics be put in the position of supporting
them or us? This kind of stuff — them or us —
is the wisdom proffered by the most pathetic President
in American history.
Critics emphasize grievances against Israel because
those grievances never receive the same airing as those
against the Palestinians. Indeed, there are many prominent
columnists, apologists for Israel's excesses, who frequently
suggest Palestinians are irrational, Thomas Friedman
being only the most well-known of them. Apart from the
imbalance of voices in the press, there is simply a
great moral and ethical disproportion between the acts
of desperate people opposing occupation and organized
suppression by a heavily-armed state. Israel holds almost
all the cards, so when nothing in the situation changes,
indeed when it grows far worse, how is Israel not responsible?
My original intention was to write a piece about the
departure of Sharon offering a fresh opportunity for
peace. Why not a peace initiative as inspired as the
late President Sadat's trip to Israel? But such things
never do come from Israel, and what we have now is almost
the polar opposite.
It is difficult to understand how Jews, consistently
leaders in many struggles for human rights and progress,
continue to accept the circumstances of the West Bank
and Gaza. Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu, figures of
unquestionable moral authority and heroic resistance
to tyranny, have both said that what they see there
is what they knew in apartheid South Africa. Only Sharon's
admirers, Bush's war-loving loonies, and Jerry Falwell's
strange flock awaiting the end of time are blind to
this truth.
The suicide bombings that have terrified Israelis come
from utter despair. First came Barak's contemptuous
offer to Palestinians of a perpetual Bantustan at Camp
David after years of work over the Oslo Accords. This
was followed by Sharon's ugly behavior, including his
provocative trip to the Temple Mount, seeking to exploit
fear. Sharon, a man directly responsible for war-time
atrocities, a man who always held the Oslo Accords in
contempt, was elected Prime Minister. Arafat, Nobel
Peace Prize laureate, has been virtually imprisoned,
denied a voice in Washington, and threatened several
times publicly with murder. Now we have Bush hugging
Sharon as though he had found a long-sought father substitute.
From the Palestinian perspective, it must appear an
Iron Curtain has descended.
Millions of people throughout the world understand
the necessary elements of a just and lasting peace in
the Middle East. The proposals of Israel's Gush Shalom
— a group dedicated to genuine peace, a group
so often treated by Sharon's thugs as a criminal or
subversive organization - contains the key elements.
A return to the Green Line as Israel's border and Jerusalem's
becoming capital for both states are rational conditions
for a stable peace. What is so difficult about accepting
them?
Instead, we have Sharon, a man who has killed thousands
of people, almost all civilians, hailed as courageous.
And he is hailed by a President fresh from killing women
and children in Fallujah.
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