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Not everything you see and hear is strictly
Kosher Could Hamas be connctd to Sharon.....The Mermaid xx
After this article there is a little snippet from
What really Happened.com just click on it.
Unholy
Alliance -- Sharon, Hamas Work in Concert Against Peace
By Rabbi
Michael Lerner, Pacific News Service, Dec 14, 2001
Though enemies,
Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Palestinian militant group
Hamas are working in a tacit alliance, writes PNS contributor Michael
Lerner. Their shared goal: the elimination of Yasser Arafat and the
Palestinian Authority. Lerner ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is editor of TIKKUN
Magazine, a bimonthly Jewish critique of politics, culture and society,
and rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in San Francisco.
The
strategies of Ariel Sharon and Hamas are far less irrational than
portrayed by American media. Each has been cooperating in what amounts to
a tacit alliance to achieve a shared goal: the elimination of Yasser
Arafat and the Palestinian Authority and its replacement by Hamas.
Israel's announcement that it will not deal with the PLO any more is only
one part of this process.
Ariel Sharon has never hidden his
contempt for the Oslo Accord, precisely because it aimed to create a
Palestinian state in the pre-1967 borders of the West Bank and Gaza. When
campaigning, he presented himself as the strong military man who could
play the role of peacemaker. But he always reassured his own right-wing
constituents that he had no intention of ceding any land to Palestinians.
Sharon was the inventor of the strategy of filling the West Bank
with settlements in the 1980s to prevent any possibility of Palestinians
creating their own state. His fondest dream would be to find the political
excuses that could allow Israel to reoccupy the entire West Bank and
establish another hundred settlements.
Arafat represented a thorn
in his side, because Arafat kept insisting on returning to negotiations
and on building the Palestinian state promised in the treaty Israel had
signed in the White House garden in 1993. Moreover, the United States has
made it clear that it wants Arafat in power and negotiations in place so
that Arab leaders can say to their own populations: "See, our cooperation
with the United States against Osama bin Laden has produced a return to
the peace process." But continued conflict in the region allows Arab
elites to displace resentment against the injustices of their own
undemocratic societies onto anger at Israel. So they seek a balance:
continued negotiations and an endless peace process, but not the creation
of a viable Palestinian state.
When the United States became
preoccupied with the war against terror, Sharon felt free to increase the
violence and repression of the Occupation and to accelerate the
assassinations of those "suspected" of being directly or indirectly
connected to acts of terror. Those assassinations, primarily directed
against Hamas leaders, ensured that Hamas would strike back in retaliatory
blows against civilian targets within Israel.
Instead of striking
back against Hamas, Israel instead has used Hamas attacks as justification
to destroy the infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority and to debate
what would be the best moment to kill Arafat. With Arafat dead and the
Palestinian Authority in shambles, Hamas would become the prevailing force
in the Palestinian world -- and the image of the Palestinians would then
be more like that of the Taliban. Sharon would be able to portray Israel
as fighting the same fight as the United States -- a battle against
terrorists -- a move he has tried with less success against Arafat. With
Hamas in charge of the Palestinian camp, Sharon could rally much broader
support, because even those of us who support Palestinian rights would be
forced to admit that a Hamas-dominated Palestine would be a real threat
not only to Israel, but also to world peace.
Hamas has much to
gain as well. Convinced that the peace process is betraying Islamic claims
to Palestine, Hamas is willing to wait another 30 or 40 years until Israel
tires of endless war and terror -- if, that is, it can be assured that
when Israel tires, fundamentalists will come to power. Hamas despises the
secular forces around Arafat, and worries that if the Palestinian
Authority is not destroyed it could become the government of a secular
Palestinian state. Hamas is openly contemptuous of the many Christian
Palestinians who influence the Palestinian Authority.
So it is
hard for Hamas to resist the open invitation from Ariel Sharon: Israel
will do the dirty work of destroying the Palestinian Authority and
rejecting any peace process if Hamas does its part by blowing up innocent
Israeli civilians.
Sharon refuses to negotiate unless there is a
period of non-violence, thereby signaling to Hamas forces that all they
have to do to block negotiations is to escalate their terror. And if the
violence gets intense enough, Sharon will find himself "with no
alternative" but to kill Arafat and wipe out the Palestinian Authority.
This position, of course, creates an overwhelming incentive for
Hamas to engage in acts of terror.
Washington could break this
cycle by threatening economic sanctions until Israel ends the Occupation.
I won't hold my breath. More likely, it will demand new negotiations,
which will drag on endlessly and give a new facelift to endless
perpetuation of the Occupation and the suffering of the Palestinian
people.
There is only one way for Arafat and the moderates to
protect themselves from this invidious alliance: unequivocally reject the
fantasy of armed struggle against Israel and convert to the principled
non-violence of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. Instead of
supporting or condoning any form of violence, engage in massive
non-violent demonstrations, punish rock-throwers, and refuse to respond to
the ongoing violence of the Israeli occupation with further violence.
Otherwise, moderates may soon find themselves the victims of an
all-too-clever path that links fundamentalists on both sides. But I won't
hold my breath for this course, either.
Sharon is banking on
America's focus on bin Laden to distract attention from the level of
brutality Israeli forces are using in the West Bank and ensure that he
will have political space to escalate his attacks on the Palestinian
Authority.
Unless we speak out clearly and quickly to reject his
unholy, if tacit, alliance with Hamas, the resulting chaos will likely
produce ever more frightful bin Ladens in the future -- and they are as
likely to strike America as Israel. For those of us who support Israel,
this is a moment when our voices of critique may provide the "tough love"
it so desperately needs. |
