Hunting Season

Zuheir Kseibati     Al-Hayat     2003/09/9

With Ahmad Qureih as head of the new Palestinian government, Sharon's government won't be moving any closer to changing its goal, namely to bury the Roadmap, along with the resistance and its factions' representatives. The only change in the Israeli plans will be to exploit to the full the quasi-similarity between the American and European positions regarding the resistance, which was sullied with the stain of terrorism, as in the case of Hamas.     

Despite Washington's objection to remove President Yasser Arafat from his headquarters in the Moqataa and send him to exile, Sharon seems determined to start a new phase in his war against the Palestinian Authority, to the end of destroying it, after he holds the greatest share in burning the stage of Abbas' government: through verbally supporting it, and pushing it to the corner with only one choice, which is to cooperate with the Israeli army in eliminating the resistance. 

This choice will remain standing - for the Israelis - with Qureih as the new Prime Minister, thus leaving the possibility for a serious resumption of negotiations down to nil. Everyone realizes that the current phase has gone beyond just thinking about ways to implement the Roadmap, which Sharon never wanted anyway, and has turned to a new chapter in the war against Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, as well as the other resistance groups. The leader of the Likudnik gang is determined to go to the end, without any consideration to the consequences of the great fire he is sparking.  

Clearly, Qureih's government will find itself imprisoned in that fire, through the assassinations, the Israeli raids and the retaliatory acts. Hence, it will fare no better than Abbas and his 100-day experience. Nonetheless, there still are differences, the first being that Qureih will not have to endure a struggle of prerogatives with Arafat, like Abbas did. He won't obtain an official U.S. support either, which was partly the cause of his predecessor's problems, as he was described in the Palestinian street as "the man of the Americans," and suffered from the comparison made with Karzai. Even Sharon won't wager on a new Palestinian "partner," as he spitefully did with Abbas to separate him from Arafat, at a time when the latter was accused of conspiring against the Palestinian Premier in a bid to foil his efforts to start a new page of dialogue with the Israelis.

With Abbas gone, Arafat might have regained a role, despite all the U.S.-Israeli efforts to stifle him. But nothing can tie Sharon's hands, and no one in Washington will "punish" him or reprimand him, if he decides to expulse the Palestinian President anytime soon, under the pretext that Arafat is refusing to unify the Palestinian security forces and "dismantle the structure of terrorism." As for Europe, which gave Israel a gift by putting Hamas on its terrorism list, it could be - unintentionally - encouraging the plans to assassinate the resistance's leaders, and drifting towards the American notion that fails to differentiate between armed resistance groups and common criminals and drug gangs.

With the Israeli threats to pursue a war without end against Hamas and the movement's threats to make Sharon and the Jewish state pay a "huge price," Qorei will be seeking the role of drawing the results' balance… and victims countdown, while Washington repeats its boring Roadmap refrain, and finds excuses for Sharon who didn't even feel ashamed for his assassination attempt of Sheikh Ahmad Yassine, when he promised the Israelis that he wouldn't stop hunting them down! His Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom didn't feel embarrassed either, when he talked about the ethics of the Jewish state, which tried to avoid hitting the civilians during its 'hunting' operation against Yassine!

So it's the hunting season; the Israeli Prime Minister will follow the path of his first partner U.S. President George Bush, who pursues the Baathists in Iraq, the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and found nothing to blame in the hideous assassination policy targeting the Palestinian resistance leaders, in his address yesterday. Isn't his and Sharon's war one and only? He courageously pledged that he wouldn't run away from Iraq, while his partner has vowed to eliminate Hamas down to its last member.