http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/apr2002/araf-a01.shtml
Israel and Washington debate murder of Arafat, destruction of Palestinian
Authority
By Patrick Martin
1 April 2002
The Bush administration and the Israeli government are preparing for a
dramatic escalation of the violence directed against the Palestinian people in
the wake of the Israeli decision to invade the city of Ramallah and lay siege to
the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
In a US television appearance Sunday, chief Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb
Erekat warned that Sharon was carrying out plans for the murder of Arafat.
Citing Sharon’s repeated statements that he regretted not killing the
Palestinian leader 20 years ago, during the siege of Beirut, Erekat said, “He
will kill President Arafat,” adding that in such an eventuality, “I can assure
you that what we are witnessing now is but the tip of the iceberg.”
Arafat himself, in a telephone interview with CNN, scorned the Israeli claims
that he was not being targeted for violence. “Do you think the missiles will
differentiate between me and any of my brothers here with me? This is a big
Israeli lie.”
“What I am facing is not important,” the Palestinian leader continued. “More
important is what my people are going through day and night. Yesterday they (the
Israelis) assassinated nine people. The tanks are surrounding the hospitals and
blocking access to the wounded.”
Arafat was referring to several instances in which Palestinian fighters taken
prisoner by the Israeli Defense Forces were summarily executed. The British
newspaper the Observer reported that five members of Force 17, the elite
unit which guards the Palestinian president, were shot in the head at close
range. According to the newspaper’s reporter on the scene, “in the few minutes
after Israeli soldiers stormed the Palestinian position, five men were wounded
and five men were put to death by the Israelis, each with a single coup de grace
administered to the head or throat.”
Reporters for American newspapers confirmed the executions. Daniel Williams
of the Washington Post cited eyewitness accounts of the murders, adding,
“There were no signs that the Palestinians had fired from their last position.
Their bodies were found in the hallway in front of offices of the Center for the
Dissemination of Democracy, but it did not appear that they had tried to take
refuge there.”
Williams also reported that Israeli soldiers were firing on ambulances and
had invaded the ArabCare Hospital in Ramallah, even though “such searches are in
breach of international rules of war.” Israeli soldiers shot and seriously
wounded a reporter for the Boston Globe, Anthony Shadid, and the military
authorities then closed Ramallah to the press to prevent further coverage of the
fighting.
In a brief televised address Sunday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared
that Israel was at war with Palestinian militants. “We must fight this
terrorism, in an uncompromising war to uproot these savages, to dismantle their
infrastructure because there is no compromise with terrorists,” he said. “This
terrorism is activated, coordinated and directed by one man, Palestinian
Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat.”
Such demonization of Arafat belies the repeated Israeli reassurances that the
Palestinian leader is only being “isolated” by the invasion of Ramallah, and not
targeted for death. The only logical conclusion to be drawn from the statements
of Sharon and other Israeli leaders is that Arafat will be killed as soon as the
green light comes from Washington.
The Bush administration has sent clear signals of its support for the Israeli
escalation on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, particularly in Bush’s own comments
Saturday to reporters called to his ranch in Crawford, Texas. He placed
exclusive blame for the crisis on Arafat and the Palestinian Authority and
pointedly refused to criticize any action taken by the Israeli government,
saying “Israel will make the decisions necessary to defend herself.”
If the Israeli military has not yet moved to kill Arafat and his closest
aides—who are surrounded and effectively under house arrest in Ramallah—it is
only because the Bush administration has not yet given its approval to the
action. The White House, in turn, is delaying a final decision while it seeks
political cover and support from European governments and the Arab regimes in
the Middle East.
Washington’s hesitation does not reflect squeamishness over assassination as
government policy. The US has openly supported Sharon’s policy of assassinating
Palestinian leaders. Its concern is that Israeli violence against the
Palestinians not disrupt or cut across plans for American violence against Iraq
by provoking political convulsions against the Arab regimes that would serve as
military bases and sources of supply for a US attack on Baghdad.
So far there has been a deafening silence from the Europeans over the Israeli
invasion of the West Bank and Gaza and its assault on Arafat, while the Arab
regimes have issued only token protests over the targeting of Arafat and the
Palestinian Authority.
The killing of Arafat would be followed by the complete dismantling of the
Palestinian Authority and a return to direct Israeli military rule of the West
Bank and Gaza Strip. Such a course of action is being openly discussed within
Israel.
One Labour Party member of the Knesset, Haim Ramon, said, “Sharon wants
Arafat to disappear and for a moderate Palestinian leadership to replace him. He
will then negotiate and try to convince it to accept a stay in 50 percent of the
West Bank. It’s an illusion. It will never happen. What is happening is what we
see now: the de facto destruction of what is left of the Palestinian Authority
and Israel’s full or almost full re-occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.”
Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Sharon’s chief rival within the
right-wing Likud coalition, has been publicly campaigning for this policy. In a
commentary published in the Jerusalem Post Friday, Netanyahu called for
seeking “a total military victory ... First, we must immediately dismantle the
Palestinian Authority and expel Arafat. Second we must encircle the main
Palestinian population centers, purge them of terrorists, and eradicate the
terrorist infrastructure. Third, we must establish security separation lines
that will allow Israeli armed forces to enter Palestinian territory, but prevent
Palestinian terrorists from entering our towns and cities.”
Netanyahu, whose co-thinkers are well represented in Sharon’s cabinet, called
for the Israeli government to follow the US example in Afghanistan—military
invasion followed by search-and-destroy operations against resistance
fighters.
The call-up of 20,000 Israeli military reservists, the largest such
mobilization in a decade, suggests that the Israeli cabinet is moving towards
such a decision. The call-up will cost the Israeli economy more than $100
million a month, a bill that will undoubtedly be presented to Washington for
payment.
From the time he took office as prime minister, Sharon’s goal has been to
dismantle the Oslo process and the Palestinian Authority that resulted from it.
The embrace of this policy by the most powerful sections of the Zionist
political establishment only demonstrates that there is no basis for a
democratic settlement in the Middle East that preserves a Jewish state, based on
the dispossession of the Palestinian Arabs, whether within the borders of 1948,
1967, or the “Greater Israel” advocated by the most extreme right-wing
elements.
A just and peaceful settlement requires the abolition of all the reactionary
state borders established by British and French colonial rule, as well as by
Zionism, and the establishment of a Socialist United States of the Middle East,
based on equal rights for all the region’s peoples, regardless of religion,
language or national origin.