A new phase looms in Israel’s campaign
against the Palestinians
The car-bombing in Beirut that targeted the son of Damascus-based Palestinian faction
leader Ahmed Jibril is seen by Arab commentators as a sign that Israel is intent on
extending its campaign against the Palestinians beyond the occupied Palestinian
territories and President Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority (PA), and that more
trouble consequently lies in store for Lebanon and Syria.
The pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi says that while accusing the Israelis of being behind
the assassination (an assumption no one seems to seriously question), Jibril has also
publicly accused Jordanian Intelligence of colluding with the Israelis against his
organization, the anti-Arafat Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General
Command (PFLP-GC).
Many Arab analysts also see a connection between Jihad Jibril’s assassination and the
discovery of the body of Ramzi Irani, the anti-Syrian Lebanese Forces activist who was
mysteriously abducted in Beirut some two weeks previously.
In the Beirut daily As-Safir, publisher Talal Salman warns that Monday’s car bomb
could be the start of an Israeli assassination campaign targeting Palestinian leaders in
exile, especially in Lebanon but perhaps also in Syria.
For the government of Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has “declared an
open war on every Palestinian who considers or may consider resistance (to Israel’s
occupation) be it peaceful or by resorting to arms,” he writes.
To be complacent about the safety of such leaders “unjustifiably underestimates the
ferocity of an enemy who is today trying by all available military means, in a
favorable international climate and amid virtual Arab incitement against all resistance
to eradicate the (Palestinian) cause, if it can find a way of doing so, or else its
figureheads, advocates and torch-bearers,” writes Salman.
Everyone should henceforth anticipate that Israel could strike anywhere in the world, its
“appetite for blood” having been whetted by Arab indulgence of its murderous
actions in the occupied Palestinian territories.
“Its choice of Beirut as an arena is not incidental. It is a decision to expand the
scope of the war it is waging to encompass all ‘threats’ real or potential
today, tomorrow or the day after,” Salman warns.
Al-Quds al-Arabi says Sharon is bent on picking a fight with Syria and on destabilizing
Lebanon.
It says that Israel and its clients in Lebanon are the “prime suspects” not only
in the assassination of Jihad Jibril, but also Irani’s mysterious kidnapping, and the
earlier killing of Elie Hobeika (the former Lebanese minister and intelligence chief of
the Lebanese Forces militia) actions that serve to rekindle the specter of the
civil war years in Lebanon, and also sabotage the country’s efforts at economic
recovery.
Israel has a long history of assassinating Palestinian figures in Lebanon and elsewhere
and has taken to carrying out such killings on a daily basis in the West Bank, the paper
writes.
The PFLP-GC commander in Lebanon was therefore not an unlikely target, given his role in
planning various cross-border guerrilla operations in his own right.
But it seems that Sharon is particularly keen at this juncture to “create pretexts to
open new fronts in the north” in order to silence his domestic critics, who are
assailing him for the failure of his military operation against the West Bank to halt
suicide bombings.
The pretext could come when the General Command, which has a “record replete with
effective military action,” mounts its anticipated retaliation for the killing of the
head of its military wing, the paper says.
As-Safir editor in chief Joseph Samaha comments that “in other times,” the
assassinations of Jibril and Irani would have been viewed as tit-for-tat killings,
“but while those times are over, the ‘coincidence’ is intended to signal
that the door of eventualities remains open and the demons of the past could
reawaken.”
The Irani case remains shrouded in mystery, with rumors rife about the possible identity
of his abductors and killers, and official agencies insisting they knew nothing of his
whereabouts for two weeks after he was kidnapped in broad daylight in the heart of the
capital, Samaha writes.
The two incidents were no ordinary “security lapses” but evidence of something
more sinister, he says. And the “worst that could happen” would be for the
distinction between the two things to be lost in a storm of recrimination and accusations.
After all, the perpetrators of the anthrax attacks in the US remain unidentified despite
an investigation of unprecedented scope.
“While it is possible in the Jibril case to suspect a perpetrator, and while it is
necessary, in the Irani case, to be reticent,” one must also ask whether a
“political decision” has been made to ratchet up tensions in Lebanon.
If so, that would be cause for “exceptional concern,” because it would imply
that the two apparently unconnected incidents are part of a pattern. While it is wrong to
jump to conclusions, “there is evidence to suggest that there is an intention to put
pressure on Lebanon, and on Syria in Lebanon, as part of a wider scheme for protecting the
next phase of Israel’s campaign against the Palestinians,” Samaha writes.
The evidence includes Sharon’s recent remarks, recent legislation by the US Congress,
and Washington’s latest statements “reapportioning blame for terrorism in the
occupied Palestinian territories in a manner that takes into account the willingness of
some people there to accommodate American and Israeli demands. Certain positions that have
been adopted can only be understood as being in anticipation of new regional developments,
forewarning of which has been provided to those who want it during their visits to
Washington and their meetings with fifth-rank officials,” he says.
“A security lapse can be contained by means of extra vigilance, but a political
decision to raise tensions requires a completely different kind of remedy,” Samaha
writes.
The UAE daily Al-Khaleej charges that the Arab states’ incapacity in the face of
Sharon’s assault on the West Bank has encouraged him “to continue his offensive,
not just in Palestine, but in the direction of Lebanon and Syria as well.”
Thus, on the same day, Israel’s prime minister initiated a new phase of the
colonization of the West Bank with a plan to effectively cut the territory into cantons,
assassinated the son of the PFLP-GC chieftain, and set eight “debilitating
conditions” for Syria to join the international peace conference he proposed and
which the US “instantly turned into a new diversion for the Arab states,” it
says.
Jihad Jibril’s assassination did not only target the faction to which he belongs, but
also the stability of Lebanon, days before it celebrates the anniversary of its successful
liberation of the South, the paper remarks.
And Sharon’s simultaneous upping of the ante against Syria makes doubly clear that
his intention is to extend his campaign against the Palestinians beyond Palestine,
“so as to complete his plans under US auspices, after having successfully diverted
attention inside Palestine, and turned ‘reforming’ the PA, rather than getting
rid of the occupation, into the main issue.”
This while the Arab states look on impassively, “not batting an eyelid” lest
Sharon “deny them permission to sit alongside him at a so-called peace
conference,” the paper says.
Leading Egyptian Islamist commentator Fahmi Howeidi balks at the way in which Arab
governments have taken up the call for an end to “violence in all its forms,” as
Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia did at their Sharm el-Sheikh summit.
In his weekly syndicated opinion column, published in Cairo’s Al-Ahram and other
leading Arab dailies, Howeidi remarks that “halting violence” like
“reforming the Palestinian Authority” is one of those “loaded
expressions” which the US coins and the Arab states have a habit of parroting, and
which while sounding laudable conceals hidden meanings.
It is obvious that the Americans’ real aim in demanding a “cessation of
violence” is not in any way to end the “greater violence” of the Israeli
occupation, but only Palestinian resistance to it, and specifically the recent spate of
suicide bombings says Howeidi.
That is predictable, because those operations are the only thing Palestinians have done
that has really hurt Israel and “shaken” its security apparatus. They have even
“struck at the very heart of the Zionist enterprise, convincing the Jews that it
seeks to lure from all over the planet that Israel is not the solution,” and
persuading many Israelis that the cost of continuing to occupy the West Bank and Gaza
Strip has become unbearably high.
That is all the more reason to resist attempts to strip the Palestinians of this potent
weapon, writes Howeidi.
“It does not much concern us if the US president issues a fatwa deeming the brave
Palestinians who carry out such operations to be terrorists and murderers rather than
martyrs. Everyone who has ever resisted an invader has been described in such terms by the
occupier, and the Nazis were the first to brand their opponents terrorists.”
But it is of concern that the debate about such operations in the Arab world has become so
“confused,” with even some “respectable” commentators opposing them on
grounds that they can harm innocent civilians.
In principle, says Howeidi, “no one disputes that the killing of civilians is
prohibited in every code, creed and religion.” But in the specific case at hand,
other considerations must be taken into account, he continues.
These include the fact that what we have here is a cruel, colonial occupation that has
declared war on the Palestinians in their entirety and deliberately kills their activists
without discerning between military and political leaders; that Israeli society is
uniquely militarized, with all adult civilians under 50 doubling up as military reservists
who could take up arms at any time; and that the policy of throttling Palestinians is
supported by a big majority of Israelis, who elected a renowned war criminal as their
prime minister.
Nor must it be forgotten that the Palestinians only resorted to suicide bombings after all
other avenues were blocked to them, when Israel’s behavior scuppered any hope of
achieving a just settlement by peaceful means. These operations were therefore a last
resort. After all other options were exhausted, they found that only by sacrificing their
lives and blowing themselves up in the midst of Israelis could they transfer some of the
accumulated pain of half a century of oppression onto their tormentors, says Howeidi.
Yet no sooner did they begin doing that, “than voices were raised demanding that they
be stripped of the sole weapon that remains to them, so they can revert to the previous
posture of nursing their humiliation and sorrows,” he remarks.
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