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Posted on 12/17/2001 9:30:48 AM PST by ouroboros

To understand what’s going on in the Middle East, you have to understand Ariel Sharon, Israel’s prime minister.

Sharon does not now and never has wanted a peace with the Palestinians. He is the father of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and he will never consent to dismantling even one of them. In fact, he is committed to expanding them.

He said soon after taking office that he would never sign a permanent settlement with the Palestinians. He has refused to meet with the Palestinians. He himself started the intifada by invading Islam’s third-holiest site and arrogantly calling it Jewish property.

But Sharon had two problems. One, he was being pressured by the United States to make peace with the Palestinians. Two, Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority president, was winning sympathy in Europe for the Palestinian cause, which is simply an end to Israeli occupation.

So Sharon’s problem was thus: How do you wreck the peace process without being blamed for wrecking the peace process? The short-term solution was to set the absurd condition that seven days had to go by without a violent act before he would even consider talking.

There are 3 million Palestinians there, and Arafat’s authority is limited basically to the boundaries of a few cities. It is literally impossible for him to prevent one individual from taking a potshot at an Israeli. Especially is it impossible when Sharon himself is ordering the Israelis to commit acts of violence and other provocations.

No country in the world could systematically assassinate more than 27 political opponents without being branded a terrorist state. Of course, Israel gets a free ride in the United States. At the same time this is going on, Sharon is discrediting Arafat by blaming him for any and every act of violence, even those directly provoked by Israel.

When Israel assassinated the leader of a Palestinian group, the man’s followers promised vengeance. A few days later, they assassinated an Israeli cabinet member. They publicly took responsibility for it.

Sharon’s response was to attack Palestinian Authority police stations and to blame Arafat. But Sharon’s biggest stroke of luck was the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and President Bush’s declaration of war on terrorism. Now he had Bush where he wanted him, so the Israelis began to put tremendous pressure on the administration to include Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah on its list of terrorist organizations. And they succeeded, as the Israeli lobby so often does in Washington.

Still, Sharon needed one spectacular terrorist attack to justify his coup de grace to the peace process. And he knew how to get it. He ordered the assassination of a prominent and popular Hamas leader. Sharon knew that Hamas would retaliate, and it did, with three suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa. Now he had what he wanted: an excuse to kill the peace process once and for all.

By branding the Palestinian Authority as an organization that harbors and sponsors terrorism, and by declaring two PLO organizations as terrorist organizations, the Israeli government has announced its intention to destroy all three. Then there will be nobody to negotiate with.

Bush is snookered. Sharon can say: “Look, I’m only following your example. The Palestinian Authority is my Taliban, and the PLO organizations are terrorists. You yourself said, Mr. President, that terrorists and people who support them must be destroyed.”

I’d like to be wrong once in a while about the Middle East, but, alas, I’m right. If you wish to look back, you will see that when Sharon became prime minister, I said the peace process is dead. Later, I said the United States’ one-sided support of Israel would bring Middle East terrorism to the United States. That was in August.

Now I suggest we all hunker down. Because of Sharon’s shrewdness and ruthlessness and our stupidity and naivete, the dogs of war have been let loose. Our newborn grandchildren will probably grow beards before the blood stops flowing.

Charley Reese makes his case in clear, concise prose. "It's not important to me if people agree or disagree with my point of view," he says. "What I hope my column does is provoke people into thinking about issues, about the world, and their place in it."

Reese, a conservative columnist, does not mince words. In his column, which King Features Syndicate distributes three times a week to more than 150 newspapers, he does not hesitate to take a stand and back it up to the end. In 1985, after being horrified by acts of terrorism around the world, Reese said succinctly: "The wise thing to do with a terrorist is shoot him."

Charley Reese was born Jan. 19, 1937, in Washington, Ga. He was raised there, in eastern Texas and northwest Florida. By the time he was 19, he had worked as a janitor, printer, cub reporter, civil servant and caption writer for Plant News Pictures, Ltd. in London. In 1955, he began his career at the Pensacola News in Florida as a cub reporter. For the next 10 years, he worked at various newspapers, honing his craft by reporting everything from sports to politics. Between 1969 and 1971, he worked as a campaign staffer for gubernatorial, senatorial and congressional races in several states.

He joined The Orlando Sentinel in 1971 as assistant metro editor. He later became assistant to the publisher, then columnist and editorial board member. He retired from the paper in July 2001. He has traveled to Europe and the Middle East on assignments, all the while maintaining his distinctly American style of journalism.

Reese served two years of active duty in the Army and received an honorary doctorate from Webber College in Florida. He has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and voted the best columnist in Florida by both the Florida Press Association and the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors.

He is the author of four books, including "Great Gods of the Potomac," and was the ghost writer of "The Eleventh Hour" by Gen. Lewis Walt. An American foundation commissioned Reese to write a study of the Swiss national defense system. Reese has won numerous journalism and civic awards. His column is read by decision makers around the globe. A column he wrote on the House of Hope, a home for abused teens, prompted President Reagan to write a personal check for $1,000 to the organization.

Reese makes his home in Florida. Now divorced, he is the father of three grown children.

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