Ayoon wa Azan (No Political Solution)

Jihad Al Khazen     Al-Hayat     2003/08/21

Who killed the Israelis in Jerusalem? The same person who ordered the killing of two Hamas members in 'Askar' camp, and an Islamic Jihad leader in Hebron killed them. The blood of Israeli men, women and children is on the hands of Ariel Sharon, before being on the hands of the Islamic Resistance's men.

Mahmoud Abbas tried his best, and is still trying, and so are Mohamad Dahlan and the rest of the Palestinian government. But, one hand does not clap, as we say, and the Palestinian side cannot create the miracle of peace if the Israeli side sets an ambush at every turn on the road.

I reject suicide operations on principle. I also reject the last one, whatever the reason or pretext. I do not defend the planner and the executor. But I also condemn the policy of the Israeli government, which operates, with premeditation, to destroy the peace process and dispose of the Roadmap.

On the eve of 15^th August, Abbas called me and asked me to contact Islamic Jihad's outside leadership and ask them to restrain themselves and not respond to Mohamad Sidr's assassination. He also promised that he would go to Gaza and meet their leaders as soon as he got back from Tunisia. I started calling friends to get me through to Islamic Jihad's leadership, since Hamas and Islamic Jihad have left Syria, and their press offices there have been closed where phones ring off the hook. The thing is, which I conveyed to Abbas the following day, is that they are furious and feel they have been tricked. They say that they can no longer keep quiet over the killings of their men one by one. I wrote some of their words in my column, without mentioning any mediation. Two days ago, one of them said, "We would rather die in a booby-trapped car than be killed in our homes with our children, one after the other."

Not 48 hours had passed before the Jerusalem suicide operation happened.

For over a year, I have been trying to convince Hamas and Islamic Jihad to stop suicide operations. I worked on this, first with Mohamad Dahlan and Mohamad Rashid, and later with Mahmoud Abbas himself (prior to the cabinet formation), and I still am. I registered from those efforts and contacts what I could in this column. And I noticed, as did Abbas and the others, that every time we come close to an agreement, Israel does something to take us back to the starting point.

I also wrote within this context, around ten days ago, about a book "Israel's Sacred Terrorism" by Livia Rokach, daughter of the minister of the interior in Moshe Sharett's government. From Sharett's personal diary, I wrote what proves that Israel, ever since it was founded (before that and to this day), practiced terrorism to antagonize the other party and drag it to respond. Its founders had always wanted to use terrorism to expand at the expense of the Palestinians and the neighboring countries.

Ariel Sharon is Israel's most prominent terrorist, from Qibya in 1953 to Nablus and Hebron, and he is leading a government of war criminals like himself.

Only a few days earlier, Shaul Mofaz was giving a speech to Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip, he said, "There are no short cuts with our enemies. Egypt concluded peace with Israel after its defeat in the October war. This is what will happen with the Palestinians."

What Mofaz is saying is that there is no political solution. Meaning, there is no Roadmap. But the Palestinians must be militarily defeated.

I leave the Israeli peace activist Yuri Avneri to answer Mofaz. He wrote that Egypt was not defeated in the October War and that there is a victory museum for that war in Cairo. He says that Anwar Sadat used his victory credit to lead his people to peace. He stunned Egyptians by crossing the channel and destroying the Barlev Line. Even defense minister Moshe Dayan lost his mind and said that he was witnessing the destruction of the third Israeli state.

Avneri settled the issue by referring to a recent study conducted by the Israeli army, itself, that Israel did not win the October War.

The resistance was not defeated in Palestine, and I quoted the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad on this in this column. They accepted the truce, which they called "calming" in order to keep the Palestinian solidarity, and to respond to Arab pressures. Who in turn, responded to American pressures coupled with the usual promises to implement the Roadmap, which ends, at the latest by 2005, with a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel.

Ariel Sharon has once again destroyed the peace process. Just as he destroyed it by desecrating the Holy Mosque three years ago. He alone is responsible for the killing of Palestinian activists and the response he sought by assassinating them. The Americans who decried the operation do nothing but encourage Sharon to commit more crimes, whose victims are Israeli and Palestinian children, and others.

I write with all possible objectivity and say that Abbas has tried. And I heard he and Dahlan tell me, and others, that they are ready to do whatever it takes, except go into a Palestinian civil war. Now, Abbas has severed contact with the resistance. I assume that it was to absorb the anger, although, this decision leaves Sharon to deal with them in his own way.

While waiting for the next explosion, I register that, up until Wednesday noon, I did not hear Yasser Arafat condemning the Jerusalem operation, although he usually condemns such operations, and condemning this last one helps Abbas. Maybe this will not be published until the president condemns this operation, as he should.