On to the "Final Agreement" - Sharon the "Killer" in Charge
Middle East Realities
Email: MER@MiddleEast.Org
"Sharon was a killer obsessed with
hatred of Palestinians. I had promised
Arafat that his people would not get
any harm. Sharon, however, ignored
this commitment entirely. Sharon's
word is worth nil."
-
Ambassador Philip Habib - Ronald
Reagan's Special Middle East Envoy*
MER - Washington - 11/3/1998:
History takes strange turns indeed. The very man who has been
at the heart of Israel's campaign to massacre, disenfranchise, and
push under the Palestinians is now Israel's Foreign Minister, in charge
of negotiating the "final settlement". The very man who has championed
Israel's settlements and masterminded the "by-pass roads" and
apartheid-style "autonomy" is now mandated to "negotiate" with the
Palestinians. The very man who set up his personal settlement in the
Muslim Quarter of the old city of Jerusalem, flying the Israeli flag
and a Jewish Menorah on top of his building for all to see, this is
the man the Israelis now thrust forward to finish off the Palestinians.
What a disgrace. What an abomination. What a disaster.
Sharon led the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 as Defense Minister.
He bludgeoned, bombed, and lied his way, killing tens of thousands of
civilians as he went, creating an Israeli as well as an international
crisis as his forces laid siege to Beirut.
The youngest tank commander in Israel's history, Eli Geva, finally
refused Sharon's orders and was allowed to resign from the army rather
than face imprisonment. Desperate, though of course working in
coordination with the Israelis, the Americans orchestrated the PLO's
departure from Lebanon, Arafat and his men fleeing to Tunis.
A short time later, totally contrary to all assurances, Sharon
personally orchestrated Israel's ally, the right-wing Lebanese
Phalange, to slaughter thousands of defenseless Palestinians in the
refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla. Israeli searchlights illuminated
the camps, while Israeli army personnel watched through binoculars, as
the death squads spread unchallenged through the camps.
Much of the world -- including many prominent Jews -- branded Sharon
a genocidal war criminal. Even the Israelis themselves, after a
partial white-wash investigative commission, publicly declared that
Sharon has been "indirectly" responsible for the massacres and forced
his removal as Defense Minister.
That was the overall context for Ambassador Philip Habib, Special
Envoy of President Ronald Regain, calling Sharon an obsessed "killer".
The following commentary about Sharon's becoming Foreign Minister
and his role at the Wye negotiations is from a recent column by
Professor Edward Said published in Al-Ahram Weekly:
By Edward Said, Al Ahram
The latest outrage concerns a report published
in the US press on Saturday 10 October. In
reports of General Ariel Sharon's appointment
as foreign minister of Israel, a leading
Palestinian figure -- a minister, negotiator,
and long-time spokesperson for Arafat -- was
quoted as registering a quite remarkable reaction
to Sharon: we are prepared, he said, "to forget
history".
Remember that this Israeli military man was
responsible (the Israeli court at the time said
"indirectly") for the massacres of Sabra and
Shatila, but for our leaders this is perhaps too
long ago to count as an obstacle to dealing with
the man. Sharon's record of crimes against
Palestinian civilians in any case is a very long
one. He was directly responsible for the
"pacification" of Gaza in 1971, when numerous
citizens were killed or unjustly imprisoned, their
houses demolished and the whole area transformed
into an Israeli jail. As the head of Force 101,
as it was proudly called, he inherited (after
having participated in creating it) the tradition of
attacking Arab civilians, the massacre at Qibya being
only one example. Sharon used to boast that Israel
could invade and destroy any Arab country at will.
His whole career was compiled out of regular
assertions of Israeli arrogance, all of which ended
up in exorbitant losses of Arab civilian life.
Appointing him as foreign minister -- an act which
seems to have shocked many Israelis for whom Sharon
was a source of national shame as well as the author
of a 1981 "peace plan" whose principal points seem
to have been annexation and the creation of Bantustans:
exactly the "peace" situation of today -- was
Netanyahu's way of humiliating the Palestinians still
further, forcing them to deal with a man first of all
whose hands were literally dripping with Palestinian
blood, second, whose intentions are known everywhere
as radically hostile to Palestinians, and third, who
persisted in regarding Arafat as a war criminal. He
wouldn't shake Arafat's hand, he boasted.
By way of response, and forgetfulness, Arafat announced
that he would in fact shake Sharon's hand. And then, as
I said above, one of his closest aides went on record as
being prepared "to forget history" and deal honestly
and in good faith with Sharon.
Forget history: the phrase has a certain stink about it that
emanates directly from the sty of corruption and dishonesty
in which the Palestinian leadership from top to bottom now
swims. Why this unholy zeal to forget the butcher of Sabra
and Shatila? Of Gaza? Of Sinai? A man who directly supports'
the settlers and who has planted himself and his gigantic
belly in the middle of Arab Jerusalem, "his" house surrounded
by a small brigade of guards, an Israeli flag waving
disdainfully from its roof. A man whose hatred and contempt
for Palestinians is unparalleled in Israel today. A man who
not only wishes us no good at all, but who has in fact
done us harm for three decades. Forget history, says the
distinguished Palestinian minister. I realize that all I
can do is to write these lines in disgust and protest, to
record what is being forgotten and to mark what should not
be erased from collective memory. But that we are driven
to have not just correct but cordial relations with a
proven war criminal simply outrages one's conscience beyond
credibility.
Were this the only instance of Arab lack of dignity, it
would be bad enough. But it isn't. Last winter, when I was
in Palestine..., Sharon was sent to Jordan to meet with its
leaders.
Our Israeli soundman, whose politics were liberal, told me
that he was mystified as to why Arabs seem to respect this
dreadful man. To many of us Israelis, he said to me, he's
a war criminal. Why do the Arabs like him so much?
I must confess to having been tongue-tied, as I am again
now. But merely forgetting about it can go too far,
obviously. So it is our duty to remind these forgetful
rulers of ours that there is no way that Sharon's crimes
against humanity will be forgotten, despite the Palestinian
Authority's forgiving spirit. The danger is, however, that,
having already forgotten their own people, and certainly
its right of return, as well as its rights of residence on
its own land, the great keepers of the Palestinian
revolution, as Fatah still refers to itself, will forget
themselves too. Do you suppose it is impossible that they may
I apologize to Sharon for Palestinian existence, ask his
continued indulgence and beg him to let us live on a little
longer? As it is, the deal that they have accepted of nine
per cent withdrawal plus three per cent to be left as a
nature reserve is misleadingly referred to as a gain, even
though our leaders never point out that the 10 per cent
contains only one or at most two per cent that will transfer
land from the Israeli area C to Palestinian area A, plus
some land from C to the jointly controlled area B. All in
all, then, forgetfulness is a disastrous method of procedure,
whose ultimate benefit is to the Authority's own survival
under Israeli and US patronage.
* 9/28/1982
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