One-Sided Pressure

Rashid Khashana     Al-Hayat     2003/09/8

Following the total war on the Palestinians that Israel has announced, one has the right to wonder about the purpose of the visit of Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom to Morocco, which violated one of the important resolutions of the Arab summit. Did it really serve, as it was said then, to prevent a severance between the two parties and set the reconciliation back on track? The Israeli decision to end the truce and eliminate all of Hamas and Al Jihad political leaders had been previously taken and everyone knew about it. Still, Shalom tried to sell illusions to the Arabs in order to achieve a breakthrough in the diplomatic severance decided by the Arab summit in 2000.   

Each time an Arab country makes a concession in favor of Israel, the latter shows its recognition by acting only more severely and violently. Following its Foreign Minister's first visit to the Moroccan capital years ago, Israel pursued the assassinations, infiltrations, bombings, destruction of agricultural lands and expansion of settlements, reaching to targeting the highest ranks of the Hamas leadership.

Instead of using the few pressure cards they have to push Sharon to implement the Roadmap, which he never believed in and never even considered carrying out, certain Arabs rushed to pressure the Palestinian side into offering further concessions, as if what the Israelis obtained with Mahmoud Abbas' government was not enough. In this regard, Shalom's visit to Morocco (and his earlier meeting with his counterpart Bin Issa in London) aimed at asking Rabat to exert additional pressure on the Palestinians, as the pressure exerted by certain Arab countries were obviously not enough to make them submit to the Israeli conditions. Can these states now prevent the Israeli tanks and choppers, based at the entry points of the West Bank and Gaza, from a total invasion and from advancing? What is keeping them from voicing their opinion in Washington and Tel Aviv, if their word is really taken into consideration the way they claim it is, so as to avoid a massacre?

Had they been able to do so, they would have pressured the EU's Foreign Ministers to avoid enlisting the political wing of Hamas on the black list. The strange thing about it is that European governments, starting with France, Greece and Belgium, have waged a battle with their partners in the Union behind the scenes of Riva Del Garda, to convince them of relinquishing this decision, whereas the Arab party didn't lift a finger.

The Arab ministers could have backed up the attempts of their European counterparts in the opposition camp, hence turning the issue into its logical direction; but each one of them was probably busy thinking about his own Hamas or Jihad, even though it is dangerous to remain silent on this European logic, because it condemns resistance movements that are forced to resort to violence in self-defense against occupations. This could later develop to reach the other Palestinian factions, to end with having the entire Palestinian people on the European terrorist list.

On the whole, some Arabs are ready to exert on the Palestinians the kind of pressure that the Americans and Israelis want, but they are not ready to exert an equivalent pressure on Israel, whenever the Palestinians ask them to.