ON TO THE "FINAL AGREEMENT" - SHARON THE "KILLER" IN CHARGE
"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:
History takes strange turns indeed. The very man who has been at the heart of Israel's
campaign to massacre, disenfranchise, andpush under the Palestinians is now Israel's
Foreign Minister, in chargeof negotiating the "final settlement". The very man
who has championedIsrael'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:
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
