Israel's strategy: All Palestinians are terrorists (Robert Fisk alert!)

ARIAL SHARON provided one bright moment in the darkness for Osama bin Laden yesterday when he declared his "war on terror".

George Bush Senior managed to keep Israel out of the 1991 Gulf War and preserve his Islamic alliance. But George Bush Junior must be cursing Israel's arrival on the American crusade against "terrorism". Angry enough when Mr Sharon first compared Israel's losses at the hands of Palestinian suicide bombers with America's murdered thousands on September 11th, the US President has no reason to thank the Israeli Prime Minister for his latest outburst.

Yasser Arafat is not Osama bin Laden, however much the Israeli's try to persuade the world otherwise; he is much less efficient, infinitely more corrupt and very definitely no threat to civilisation.

So will Arafat "crack down on terror" - how easily we use Israel's words - or are the Palestinian's now doomed to lose even the hope of statehood in Israel's latest retaliation? The fact that the suicide bombings were the revenge of Hamas for Israel's latest murder of a Hamas leader - in its turn revenge for other Hamas bombings which were themselves revenge for Israeli attacks - makes no difference to 'Palestine's' predicaments. Israel is lining up Arafat and the Palestinian Authority and its various security Mafia as the centre of all evil, of "terrorism", "Mindless violence", etc. Arafat is now under orders to arrest his own people not only from the Sharon Government but from the European Union as well as the United States.

And as usual, we are forgetting recent history. Hamas - the principal target of the Sharon "war on terror" - was originally sponsored by Israel. Back in the 1980's, when Arafat was the "super-terrorist" and Hamas was a pleasant little Muslim charity - albeit venomous in its opposition to Israel - the Israeli Government encouraged its members to build mosques in Gaza. Some genius in the Israeli Army decided that there was no better was of undermining the PLO's nationalist ambitions in the occupied territories than by promoting Islam even after the Oslo agreement - during a row with Arafat.

Senior Israeli Army Officers publicly announced that they were chatting to Hamas officials. And when Israel illegally deported hundreds of Hamas men to Lebanon in 1992, it was one of their leaders - hearing that I was travelling to Israel - who offered me Shimon Peres' home telephone number from his contact book.

The Israeli's are now re-preaching the lesson that Yizhak Rabin once tried to teach Arafat: That true Statesmanship might entail the risk of Civil War; that just as the Israeli Government once had to shoot down the wild men of Irgun, so Arafat may have to liquidate the men who want to destroy Israel.

But this is 2001, not 1948. A Palestinian Civil War may be to Israel's advantage - it could perhaps choose a new Palestinian leader - but it will be no gain to Arafat and certainly not to the Palestinians. In any case, if Israel really wanted to string Arafat to vanquish his internal opposition, it would not be bombing and destroying his police stations and security posts - the very instruments he needs to "crackdown" on Israel's Palestinian enemies.

Arafat knows this all too well. Even when he ran his repulsive little statelet in Lebanon he killed only those Palestinian militants who personally threatened him. He is a patient man, a 'time' man, a guerrilla leader who knows that a little more delay, another promise, will buy time in which his enemies can make mistakes. How soon before Sharon's latest "war on terror" bathes Israel's hands in Palestinian blood? How soon before the American's realise that their adventure in Afghanistan may unravel because of Israel's unrequested support for Washington's "war on terror"? In Pakistan today, the front-page headlines are of Israeli missiles on Gaza rather than the fate of Osama bin Laden.

Besides, Arafat knows - even if too many journalists buy the Israeli line - that Israel's "war on terror" always failed. Sharon waged a "war on terror" in Lebanon in 1982 which ended in a war crime - the massacre of Palestinian's in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps.

Since 1970 Israel has used F16's and tanks and missiles on thousands of occasions to attack the Palestinians in Lebanon - all for its "war on terror". It's been doing the same for months in Gaza and the West Bank. It doesn't work. The Arabs have lost their fear of the Israeli's and - once fear is lost - it can never be reinjected.

Sharon's "war on terror" was thus lost the moment it began. As the next suicide bombings will prove yet again.

So Arafat will sit it out. He will gamble on a simple equation: That America's anger with him will eventually be outweighed by America's embarrassment with Sharon, that the very "war on terror" in Afghanistan will be endangered by Sharon's "war on terror" in Palestine. Arafat knows that in the end - Jewish lobby not withstanding - American lives count for more than Israeli lives - the only flaw in his argument is the assumption, even if America can ultimately control it's Middle Eastern ally, that Israel can control Sharon.

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Fisk still doesn't get it, does he?

He thinks that George W. Bush is running around trying to keep the Afghan coalition together. Fisk couldn't be more wrong: American military success is keeping the coalition to gether, and will make it stronger.

His analysis of the Palestinian situation strikes me as accurate in one respect: this generation of Palestinians has lost any fear of the Israelis. However, what Fisk doesn't understand is that Israel has an overwhelming amount of latent power at its disposal. Perhaps it is within his dreams that the Palestians should advance, smash the Jewish state (Fisk strikes me as yet another in a long line of British "Orientalists"), and set up a Palestinian state in its place. What Fisk does not realize is that over the past year, the Pallies, as well as the other Arabs, have been looking for signs of weakness among the Israelis. The Arabs believe they have the Israelis where they want them. The Arabs forget that Israel can put two million trained men in the field along with God knows how many women in the rear areas.

Democracies are tremendously destructive, once aroused. America has had it up to here with catering to the "Arab Street". Indeed, the continued demonstration of our willingness to wreak awesome vengeance on our opponents can only impress the Arab world and lead to respect for the U.S.

Naturally, being a man of the British left, he believes that the U.S. will bail on Israel if the going gets tough. Nothing could earn the contempt of the Arabs more, and Bush knows it.

Arafat will probably be assassinated by one of his more Ultramontaine colleagues. Arafat, of course, doesn't realize that whatever happens to him, his time is at hand. Methinks that Fisk doesn't know this either.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

Fisk still doesn't get it, does he?

Naturally, being a man of the British left, he believes that the U.S. will bail on Israel if the going gets tough. Nothing could earn the contempt of the Arabs more, and Bush knows it.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

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