Taking Tulkarm

Published : Feb 02, 2002 00:00 IST

The attack on Tulkarm is seen as yet another instance of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's ruthless strategy towards fulfilling his long-term agenda.

FOR the Palestinian people, the last two months have been among the most harrowing in their recent history as the Israeli state has been methodically going about dismantling the visible edifices of the Palestinian state. For all practical purposes, the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) is no longer considered by the government in Tel Aviv as a negotiating partner. Palestinian autonomy has been reduced to a myth as the Israeli Army attacks and occupies with impunity areas under the P.A. In the fourth week of January, before sunrise on a cold winter's night, Israeli tanks and artillery moved into the town of Tulkarm, uprooting people from their houses. This was said to be in response to a suicide attack by a Palestinian hailing from the town who went on a shooting spree inside Israel.

In the second week of January, the Israeli security forces assassinated the leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Raed Karmi. The group is affiliated to the Al Fatah and the killing signalled the end of a de facto three-week truce between Israel and the Palestinians. During the period of the truce, more than 18 Palestinians were assassinated by the Israeli security services but the various Palestinian factions had not retaliated: they held themselves back in a bid to strengthen Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's negotiating hand. Six hundred Palestinians were made homeless in Gaza in the third week of January after Israeli bulldozers razed their homes, again in a pre-dawn strike. Before the brutal attack on Tulkarm, the main broadcasting station of the P.A. was demolished in a pre-dawn attack by the Israeli army.

Israeli armoured vehicles pushed their way to within 30 metres of Arafat's own compound in Ramallah in the third week of January. More than half the town is now under Israeli occupation and Arafat has been forced to stay put in his compound in Ramallah since the middle of December. The Israeli government prevented Arafat from even attending the traditional midnight Christmas Mass at Bethlehem; he had been unfailingly attending Christmas festivities in Bethlehem since 1995, after the city was handed over to the P.A. After the latest Palestinian upsurge started in September 2000, Bethlehem was among the Palestinian towns that bore the brunt of Israeli aggression.

Before Christmas, Arafat had prevailed upon the Hamas and the Islamic Jehad to announce that they were discontinuing their "suicide missions". The two militant Islamic groups said the decision was taken in order to maintain Palestinian unity. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's major demand was that Arafat rein in the two militant groups. For the first time in more than a year, the scale of violence in the occupied territories witnessed a dramatic reduction. For around three weeks, not a single Israeli casualty was reported.

SHARON, however, was out to fulfil his long-term agenda. As the United States special envoy to the region, Anthony Zinni, was set to return in the first week of January, Israel announced with fanfare that it had intercepted on the high seas a shipload of weapons meant for the P.A. Arafat denied Israeli allegations that he had ordered the consignment and demanded an impartial international inquiry. Israel is also trying to implicate the Iranian government in the incident. Teheran has strongly denied its involvement. Anyway, the beleaguered Palestinian people are in dire need of arms for their self-preservation owing to the undeclared war being waged on them.

Sections of the Israeli media have also been reporting that Sharon's long-term aim is to delegitimise Arafat's authority. Some Israeli commentators have said that it is the Bush Administration's restraining influence that is preventing Sharon from going to the extent of liquidating Arafat physically. According to a columnist in the respected Israeli daily Ha'aretz, Sharon told a visiting Western diplomat, "We would cause the collapse of the P.A. and send them all to hell, but we are working slowly, in order to prevent a deterioration of the situation." The Bush Administration does not want to be diverted by another conflagration while it is busy trying to smoke out the Al Qaeda terrorist network in Afghanistan.

Reports in the Israeli media also mention that Sharon is trying to prop up a quisling Palestinian leadership to replace the P.A. The reality on the ground, however, is that Hamas has become the most influential party among the Palestinian people. The removal of Arafat - whom Sharon refers to as "our bin Laden' - will leave the scene open for militant Islamists, giving Israel the excuse to launch an all-out war and annex more Palestinian territory while holding on to Jerusalem.

There are also reports that part of the Sharon agenda is to reoccupy Gaza and the buffer zone in southern Lebanon. The day after Christmas Israeli forces launched a hot pursuit action, crossing the Jordanian border to nab two Palestinian militants who had shot and killed an Israeli soldier. This was the first incursion into Jordanian territory by the Israeli Army since Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government insists that Arafat will continue to remain confined in Ramallah until those responsible for the killing of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi are handed over to it. Zeevi, an unreconstructed Zionist who had called for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland, was killed in a Jerusalem hotel last October. "I believe there is no place for two peoples in our country. Palestinians are like lice. You have to take them out like lice," was one of his controversial statements. Zeevi's assassination was the first of a Cabinet Minister in Israel's history after Independence. A recent poll conducted by the Israeli daily Ma'ariv found that around 50 per cent of Israelis favour "transferring" the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza to Arab countries.

According to a leading West Asia observer, the repeated calls by Israel and the countries of the West to Arafat to make arrests and curb terrorism, constitute "an insane demand that Arafat remain stateless but act like a dictator, and he accomplish today in Gaza what Israel could not in 34 years even when it had the powers of martial law". After Zeevi's assassination, trigger-happy Israeli security forces went on the rampage in many Palestinian-controlled areas killing more than 50 Palestinians. Despite the provocations, Arafat had apparently convinced the leadership of the Hamas and the Islamic Jehad to hold their fire. But the prospects of a lasting peace did not evidently suit Sharon's game plan.

On November 23, Israeli security forces assassinated the Hamas leader Mahmoud Abu Hanoud. Alex Fishman, a respected commentator of the largest-selling Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot wrote: "Whoever gave a green light to this act of liquidation knew full well that he is thereby shattering in one blow the gentleman's agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority; under that agreement, Hamas was to avoid in the near future suicide bombings inside the Green Line (Israel's pre-1967 borders)...." Fishman is known to have excellent contacts within the Israeli security apparatus. Sharon knew that the assassination of the Hamas leader would lead to a violent reaction. Two suicide bombings followed in Jewish populated centres inside Israel.

The latest actions of the Israeli government have evoked criticism even from members of Jewish groups settled outside Israel. A "declaration of conscience" signed by 220 prominent Jewish personalities in South Africa asserted that it was Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories that was fuelling the violence in West Asia. The statement denounced Israel's campaign of violence and compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians to the apartheid regime's treatment of South African blacks.

The Palestinians have never had any illusions about what to expect from Sharon. In fact, in the last week of December a court in Brussels started hearing a case against Sharon moved by relatives of the victims of the massacre at Sabra and Shatila 19 years ago. Belgian law allows war crime charges to be made regardless of time limitation, status or nationality. The complaint accuses Sharon and others of acts of genocide, crimes against humanity and contravention of the Geneva conventions that seek to protect civilians in times of war. The case was admitted last June but Sharon has refused to appear before the court.

Israeli officials are trying to play down the importance of the court proceedings in Belgium and in this exercise they are aided to a large extent by sections of the Western media and the U.S. government. However, Sharon was careful not to include Belgium in his itinerary when he visited Europe in July.

Israeli officials claim that there is no "new" evidence to try Sharon as a "war criminal". But the "Kahan Commission" set up by the Israeli government led by Likud leader Menachem Begin in the early 1980s had accused Sharon of "personal responsibility" for the massacre. It is another matter that no action was taken by the Israeli government of the time. After the Kahan Commission report came out Sharon was forced to resign from the Cabinet. An independent International Commission of Enquiry chaired by Sean MacBride came to the conclusion that Israel had violated international law in the conduct of the war in Lebanon. Sharon was in charge of the Israeli Army during its invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

The International Commission underlined Israel's responsibility as an "occupying power" and the "civilian status" of the residents of Sabra and Shatila. The Commission found evidence of direct Israeli military involvement in the massacre. One of those testifying in the Brussels court is a survivor of the massacre. Suad Surur is partially paralysed as a result of a bullet lodged in her spine. The West sees the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic as a turning point that will lend renewed energy to the task of arresting those fugitives still at large. If the same yardstick is applied globally, then no "war criminal" should be beyond the reach of international justice.

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