http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/apr2002/isra-a04.shtml
Chronology of a pogrom: How Sharon, US prepared assault on Palestinians
By the Editorial Board
4 April 2002
Israeli troops continue to fan out across the West Bank, invading one Palestinian city after another—Ramallah, Jenin, Bethlehem, Tulkarm, Qalqilyah, Salfeet—killing and wounding hundreds, arresting and beating thousands. Contrary to the claims of the Israeli and US governments and the American media, this assault is not a sudden reaction to the latest series of suicide bombings, but rather the implementation by the Sharon government of a long-planned strategy.
The tragic death toll in the suicide attacks—tragic in the loss of life both of innocent Israeli citizens, and of the most self-sacrificing sections of Palestinian youth—is the occasion for the Sharon government to carry out measures which have been in preparation for several years, if not the entire period since the signing of the initial Israeli-PLO accord in 1993.
Just as George W. Bush seized on the September 11 terrorist attacks as the pretext for projecting American military power in oil-rich Central Asia and preparing a new war against Iraq, Sharon is using the bombings in Haifa and Netanya as the signal to reimpose Israeli rule on the West Bank and dismantle the infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority.
As Israeli military commander Shaul Mofaz was overheard telling Sharon at a press briefing Tuesday, “We’ve got the opportunity right now,” to deal blows to the Palestinian Authority and its president, Yasser Arafat. “I know,” Sharon replied. “Be careful.”
The actions taken by the Israeli forces directly contradict the avowed purpose of their attack. At one and the same time Sharon denounces Arafat for failing to suppress terrorism, while smashing the instruments of power which would be required for that task. Arafat, trapped in his headquarters without electricity, water or direct contact with the outside world, is supposed to prevent desperate Palestinian teenagers from using the only method of resistance to oppression which has been left them.
The claims of Sharon and Bush are absurd on their face. In the conflict which has erupted since September 2000, more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed, compared to about 400 Israelis. Yet the US posture is to present the side which has lost three times as many men, women and children as the aggressor, while the side which has done the bulk of the killing—and possesses a virtual monopoly of weapons such as tanks, jet fighters, missiles, all supplied by America—is portrayed as acting in “self-defense.”
US Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that the Israeli actions would lead to more, not less terrorism. “No matter how many tanks go through how many villages, at the end of this process you will still have suicide bombers,” he said. “Ultimately, the Israeli Defense Forces will ... have to leave the occupied territories ... and we’ll be right back to the need for a political process.”
The actions of the Israeli government can be understood only in light of the politics of the extreme-right elements represented by Sharon and his political rival, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which are based on unyielding opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state. The American media, in line with its role as mouthpiece for US government policy, omits any explanation of history or political background in its depiction of the events now taking place on the West Bank.
The longstanding aim of the Israeli right wing has been to render the establishment of a Palestinian state politically impossible, through the systematic destruction of the social and political infrastructure of the Palestinian national movement. Their method is the “making of new facts” through the use of military force to change the political environment.
Sharon and Netanyahu opposed the 1993 Oslo Accord, and it was a political supporter of their intransigent line, a fascist-minded student, who carried out the 1995 assassination of Yitzak Rabin, the prime minister who signed the agreement with Arafat and the PLO.
Netanyahu was the political beneficiary of that assassination, coming to power the following year. His government, with Sharon as housing and development minister, heavily promoted Jewish settlement on the West Bank. It is an indictment of the Oslo process itself—and the bankruptcy of Arafat’s own policy—that more Jewish settlers came to the West Bank in the eight years after 1993 than in the 26 years of Israeli control that preceded the agreement.
The wave of suicide bombings is an inevitable result of the failure of the Palestinian Authority. This regime has been unable either to effectively resist the expansion of the settlements and the seizure of Palestinian land, or to develop the economic and social life of the territories, which are held in a stranglehold by Israel.
The Sharon government has deliberately provoked these acts of d
