If anyone had any doubts that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon does not want peace, a careful analysis of his conniving yet transparent op-ed essay in last Sunday’s New York Times should convince him. Nevertheless, US President George W. Bush received the terrorist leader, whom he insists is a “man of peace,” at the White House with open arms and, with his guest at his side, reversed a statement he had made only two days earlier after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and endorsed Sharon’s position.
After his meeting with Mubarak, Bush stated that the US must start working immediately toward establishing a Palestinian state. Yet, after Sharon’s visit, the president adopted Sharon’s position, laid out unrealistic pre-conditions for a peace conference, and reversed his policy of two-months seeking simultaneous progress on improving security in Israel and a political solution for the Palestinians.
In an editorial on Tuesday, The New York Times wondered if this 180 degree shift in policy within two days was simply because “a good host caters to his guests.” The respected newspaper hoped that “it was hospitality, not a failure of leadership, that caused President Bush to offer such different public messages.” Sarcasm aside, it is hard to believe that if Bush had read his latest Middle East guest’s op-ed the day before he would still believe that its writer sincerely wanted peace.
In the said editorial, UN Resolution 242, which Sharon had rejected in 1991 as a basis for the Madrid Conference, became his “new darling,” as Akiva Eldar wrote in Haaretz on Monday. But wait a minute. It is Sharon’s twisted, misinterpreted version of 242 to which Sharon refers, not the real thing.
Using the trite con game that Israel has used since the UN adopted 242, Sharon reads the reference to Israel’s obligation to withdraw from “territories” occupied during the 1967 war to mean that it should withdraw from “some territories” and not from others. This, he justifies, is necessitated by the need to insure the return to “secure and recognized boundaries,” to which the resolution also referred. He insists that Israel “was not expected to withdraw from all territories that its forces had entered. These were disputed territories where Israel had legitimate rights to defensible borders.”
The core of the semantics game that has gone on for 35 years is whether the UN’s reference to “withdrawal from territories” occupied in June 1967 meant withdrawal from “all” territories or simply from “territories.”
In the translation of the draft resolution from French to English, one word that would have been redundant in the French text but whose use in English, albeit optional, would have left no room for misinterpretation was “the.” “The territories,” instead of “territories” would have unequivocally meant all territories. However, the minutes of the UN Security Council meetings leading to the adoption of Resolution 242, clearly show that the intent of the council members was that Israel should withdraw from the occupied territories.
Haaretz observed that Sharon was “in fact following in the footsteps of Shamir, who realized that haggling over the term ‘secure borders’ had the rare potential for endless negotiations. And in the meantime, until the Palestinians stop shooting, they will be lured into talking about a ‘long-term interim agreement’ ­ and the government will encourage the Jewish settlers in the territories to grab more land and will pave more roads for them.” Even Israeli commentators can see clearly that Sharon’s goal is not peace but simply buying more time to build more settlements and prevent peace. Yet Bush insists that his most recent guest, whose hands are soaked in blood, is a “man of peace.”
Sharon’s article is full of other lies and misleading statements. “By 1999, 98 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were under Palestinian rule,” he claims. Assuming that his statistics are correct, what percent of Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza was under Palestinian rule?
Then, as if he had nothing to do with it, he goes on to lie further, “The Palestinian leadership decided to initiate war against Israel after the failure of the Camp David summit in July 2000.” How conveniently he forgets that it was his own desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest shrine in Islam, surrounded by throngs of Israeli soldiers and his supporters that set off the ongoing intifada and that it was then that the intifada crystallized. He conveniently overlooks the fact that his own army demolished a Greek Orthodox monastery only a week ago. Yet in the same article, he claims that it was “the people of Israel (who) have seen (their) holy sites desecrated.”
Israel “will demonstrate diplomatic flexibility to make peace again,” the lying goes on. But, surely, this alleged flexibility does not include Jewish settlements because he had earlier declared that the “settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip,” for example, “is the same as Tel Aviv. Akiva Eldar pointedly remarks that “the painful concessions do not include the elimination of Israeli colonialism in the territories.” And he speaks of flexibility.
While he now espouses Resolution 242, he insists that “Israel will not return to the vulnerable 1967 armistice lines or redivide Jerusalem.” A permanent settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute “can be guided only by changes in the reality of Israeli-Palestinian relations on the ground,” he warns. The obvious question then becomes, what remains of Resolution 242 after all these caveats? Yet Bush continues to endorse his positions while maintaining US commitment to 242 and to the principle of “land for peace.”
Sharon’s article, a pre-cursor to his meeting the following day with Bush, concludes with his vision for peace. “There has to be a regional scope to diplomacy,” he wrote. Israel “needs peace with the entire Arab world.” Yet, Israel and its American allies want a peace conference that leaves out Syria and Lebanon, among others. How can regional peace emerge from the proposed conference without involving Syria, which is a major regional player that has territories of its own still occupied by Israel, and Lebanon, which also has part of its land still under Israeli occupation and hosts hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who pose a threat to its domestic stability.
Any objective reader can see that this man does not want peace and that he speaks with a forked tongue. He gives lip service to peace while he lays traps to forestall it. The Israeli press characterized him as a “hoopster (hishuka’i), a Hebrew coinage from the Likud meaning someone who politically hog-ties a rival to keep him from taking moderate measures.”
Even Israeli observers can see through Sharon’s lies. When will Bush realize this man’s true objectives?

Adib F. Farha contributed this commentary to The Daily Star. He can be reached by e-mail at adibfarha@yahoo.com

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