issuing a public order for the enemy's leader's
assassination is not conducive to mission success -
such thing require stealth...it is great to incite
more palestinian fury however
Note: forwarded message attached.
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A "Between The Lines" nationally syndicated radio newsmagazine analysis
of Sharon's order to liquidate Hamas leader suggests it was calculated
to trigger an escalating cycle of violence.
http://www.btlonline.org ,a weekly column featuring progressive
viewpoints on national and international issues under-reported in major
media
----------
For release Dec. 17, 2001
Israel's Assassination of Militant Palestinian Leaders Provoked
Latest Series of Suicide Bombings
http://www.wpkn.org/wpkn/news/waskow122101.ram
* Analysis of Sharon's order to liquidate Hamas leader suggests it
was calculated to trigger an escalating cycle of violence
Weeks of escalating violence in the Middle East claimed the lives
of two young boys ages 2 and 13 years old on Dec. 10 after
Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a car carrying a man they
accused of planning terrorist attacks. The target of the
assassination, Muhammad Sidir, who Israelis say was a local
leader of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, was wounded in the
assault along with his uncle and five others.
Israel stepped up its attacks on Yasir Arafat's governing authority
and individuals it suspects of engaging in terrorism after three
suicide bomb attacks killed 26 Israeli civilians on Dec. 1 and 2.
Contributing to the cycle of violence was the Nov. 23 Israeli
assassination of a leader of the militant group Hamas and the
deaths of five Palestinian boys killed by a bomb planted by the
Israeli Army on Nov. 22. Despite Arafat's arrest of more than 150
Palestinians thought to be connected with terror attacks, Israeli
and U.S. officials demanded that he do more to dismantle Hamas
and Islamic Jihad.
Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Rabbi Arthur Waskow,
director of Philadelphia's Shalom Center, who examines the
connection between the Israeli government's policy of
assassination and what many believe to be the predictable
intensification of violence, now stretching into 14 months of
conflict.
Rabbi Arthur Waskow: I was recently reading an article that was
published in a quite conservative Israeli newspaper, the mass
circulation daily Yediot Ahronot which is not a left or even a left
of center paper -- it's right of center. (The paper's) major military
and security analyst (Alex Fishman,) who has spent years and
years and years close to, listening to and working with high
officials in the Israeli army and intelligence operations wrote just
a couple of weekends ago a front page article which said that
the -- whatever you want to call it -- liquidation, assassination,
targeted killing of a Hamas leader by the Sharon government, as
everybody and the people who did it knew, would trigger the
suicide bombings in Jerusalem and in Haifa. The Israeli
government knew perfectly well that's what it was going to
trigger.
He writes in fact that whoever gave a green light to this act of
liquidation -- and we know it had to be Sharon -- knew full well
he is thereby shattering in one blow, now listen to this, the
gentlemen's agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian
Authority. Under that agreement Hamas was to avoid suicide
bombings inside the Green line (Israel's pre-1967 border.) So
Hamas in fact had made a deal, and the Israelis knew they had
made a deal with Arafat and the Palestinian Authority to stop
such bombings. Then came the attack, the killing of the Hamas
leader and of course the deal was off. And the Israeli government
knew that perfectly well.
In fact one would have to either think that Sharon is abysmally
stupid or that he is deliberately choosing a series of actions
which then inspire disgusting actions by ultra-nationalist
Palestinians, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and so on.
So it's like a conspiracy of "warniks" you might say, a conspiracy
of right-wingers -- both Palestinian and Israeli -- who act in such
ways as to make it impossible to get peace.
Now why are they doing that? Are they just abysmally stupid? I
think they're abysmally stupid in the long run, in that each one
thinks they're going to win something out of this. Sharon thinks
that if there can be provoked more and more and more violence
that Israel will win full control over the West Bank, that the
Palestinians will end up in a kind of civil war between themselves
and end up totally exhausted, demoralized, many of them leaving,
the leadership probably leaving, many of them killed by each
other or by Israeli action. And then Israel can establish what
Sharon has wanted for 30 years, full control over the West Bank.
Now what does Hamas think it's going to get out of stirring more
and more war and preventing a peace settlement? Hamas in the
long run wants the mirror image of what Sharon wants. Hamas in
the long run wants the shattering of the state of Israel and they
think in the long run if this can be kept up, the Israeli citizens of
Palestinian origin will become more and more radicalized and
alienated from the state of Israel and that Muslims and Arabs
elsewhere will finally, finally rise up.
Now, I think both those predictions are crazy; the result is much
more likely to be an incredible bloodbath including, very possibly
sometime down the line, a nuclear bloodbath in the Middle East.
But I think each of those right-wing groups thinks it can win what
it still fantasizes as total victory -- "the shattering of the
Palestinian people," "the shattering of Israel." They still think can
win if they prevent a peace settlement.
Between The Lines: Rabbi Waskow, when it comes to Ariel Sharon
and his government, do you think he as the head of state of
Israel is capable of making peace with the Palestinians?
Rabbi Arthur Waskow: His whole life history suggests not. His
whole life history suggests that he has taken every opportunity
he's had to attack, to roll back, to suppress the possibility of a
Palestinian state alongside Israel, at peace with Israel on the
West Bank. (In the past) he would say the Palestinians should all
move to Jordan and they should overthrow King Hussein and that
should be the Palestinian state, but leave the West Bank for
Israel. He led the invasion of Lebanon in 1980, when there were
the first major signs of a kind of non-violent version of the
Intifada; what later became the Intifada was beginning to happen
in the West Bank and Gaza. He wanted to shatter the
infrastructure of Palestinian nationalism, which he thought he
could do by attacking the PLO's strongholds in southern Lebanon.
That was the basic reason for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon,
that he was trying to "do-in" the Palestinian structure before it
could become, even non-violently, an effective resistance.
I mean it's not just Lebanon, it's not just the Sabra and Shatila
massacres, but his whole history. I do not think there is any
reason to expect that he would move in a decent direction.
Contact the Shalom Center at (215) 844-8494 or visit their Web
site at http://www.shalomctr.org.
See related links and listen to an excerpt of this interview in a
RealAudio segment or in MP3 on our Web site at:
www.btlonline.org
for the week ending 12/21/01.
-------
Scott Harris is the executive producer of Between The Lines. This
interview excerpt was featured on the award-winning, syndicated
weekly radio newsmagazine, Between The Lines, for the week
ending Dec. 21, 2001.
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