People's Democracy

IT is no coincidence that the latest concentrated military attack by the Israelis on the Palestinian territories started almost immediately after the meeting between the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and the American president George W Bush in the first week of December. It was clear by late November that the Americans had achieved most of their military goals in Afghanistan with the Taliban militia on the run. The Bush administration obviously feels that there is no more need to mouth pious statements about the urgent need for providing justice for long-suffering people like the Palestinians.

In early November, during his speech to the UN general assembly, Bush had even gone to the extent of suggesting that the creation of a Palestinian state was inevitable. The Israeli prime minister was forced to virtually apologise by the Bush administration for some of his unwarranted remarks against the American efforts to bring on board countries and people opposed to Zionism in the so-called fight against terrorism.

Sharon was put on a leash by the Americans for around two months. Israeli troops had withdrawn from many of the Palestinian towns they had occupied in September. But when the tide against the Taliban started turning irrevocably by the middle of November, a change in the American attitude towards Israel was discernible. The Israeli government resumed its policy of assassinating Palestinian leaders. The current escalation of the conflict can be directly traced to the assassination of a key Hamas leader and the death of five innocent children, killed by Israeli explosives placed in their path while they were on their way to school. Attacks by Palestinian suicide bombers on Israeli targets followed.

Two more Palestinian children, one a toddler, were killed in the second week of November when an Israeli helicopter targeted a passenger car in the West Bank city of Hebron. In all, more than 200 children have been killed so far by the Zionist security apparatus since the uprising started last. The Palestinians have been demanding the deployment of an international observers group in the West Bank and Gaza to monitor the Israeli acts of aggression and violence against civilians.

The suicide bombings in early December in Jerusalem and Haifa were the excuse Sharon was looking for. After giving a speech in the US, which closely echoed President Bush’s speech after the September 11 incident, Sharon ordered the bombardment of the Palestinian Authority’s offices, the airport and the special units providing security for Arafat. Immediately after the events of September 11, Sharon had described Arafat as the "Osama bin Laden" of the region.

Observers of the West Asian political scene would no doubt have found this statement ironical as it came from a man who has been involved in terrorist acts almost from the time of creation of the state of Israel. There have been demands coming from human rights groups in many west European countries that Ariel Sharon should face a War Crimes Tribunal, at least for the atrocities committed against Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. A superior court in Israel had pronounced that Sharon had to bear responsibility for those killings. It was Sharon’s controversial visit to the Temple Mount in September last year which triggered off the new round of violence that has so far killed more than 800 Palestinians and 230 Israelis. That visit helped Sharon in his quest for leadership of the Likud Party and the government.

But successive American administrations seem to suffer from selective amnesia on the issue of terrorism. While the Americans were raining bombs all over Afghanistan to subdue the rag-tag Taliban militia foe over two months, killing innumerable civilians, the Israelis too started their so-called campaign against terror, targeting both civilian and administrative facilities in areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

The Israeli attacks this time clearly underlined a dual purpose. The random use of helicopter gunships, fighter planes and tanks was not only to terrorise the hapless Palestinian civilians but also to totally undermine the credibility of the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Yassar Arafat. The attacks have continued into the second week of December despite Arafat having arrested around 30 top activists belonging to the two radical Islamic groupings, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. The militant Islamic organisations themselves had offered a truce in the second week of December provided Israel stop its offensive. The Israeli government rejected the offer. On previous occasions, Israeli security forces are known to have targeted Palestinian jails on receipt of information that Palestinian radicals have been lodged there.

The Bush administration, in a further show of support to the Israeli government, froze the assets of three charitable organisations, accusing them of helping Hamas. The Bush administration’s spokesman justified the attacks by stating "that obviously Israel has the right to defend itself and the president understands that clearly." Both the American vice president Dick Cheney and the defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued statements supporting Israeli’s latest depredations. Rumsfeld recently said that "the only way to defend against terrorists is to go after the terrorists."

The new American special envoy to the region, Anthony M Zinni, on his first visit to Israel, paid floral tributes at the spot in Jerusalem where Israeli civilians were killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber. No such gestures were forthcoming for the innocent victims of Israeli terror attacks. Zinni wants the Palestinian side to make all the concessions. Arafat has made many concessions so far, including the arrest of the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Mohammed Yassin. From available indications, he is now in a position to deliver. Besides from his recent statements, he seems to have no more illusions left about the Americans.

He has openly accused the Bush administration of being pro-Israel, adding that the planes which destroyed Palestinian lives and property were brought with the American taxpayers’ money. The 2.7 billion dollars Israel annually gets from the Americans are used partly to finance the purchase of fighter planes. The Palestinian people have shown for more than a year that they are not intimated by Israeli threats, as the hopes of a lasting peace recede irrevocably. By targeting his headquarters and home, Sharon has shown that he does not consider Arafat as a negotiating partner anymore. His good friend, Rumsfeld, has already opined that Arafat "is not a particularly strong leader." The Turkish prime minister, Bulen Ecevit, has said that Sharon told him that Israel wanted "to be rid" of Arafat. Turkey is one of Israel’s closest military allies in the region.

Since Sharon took over as prime minister, the Palestinian Authority has been telling all those willing to listen that the Israeli game plan was to undermine the Palestinian Authority and give the peace process a formal burial. Israel has been trying to accelerate the pace of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza after the Oslo accords were signed. The Likud-led government in power has made it clear by its deeds that it will never be reconciled to an independent Palestinian state.

The reaction of the BJP-led government to the latest crisis in West Asia was predictable. It has been evident for some time that, under the auspices of the NDA-led government, bilateral relations between India and Israel have become extremely close. The Indian external affairs minister, Jaswant Singh, was among the first to ring up his Israeli counterpart to express solidarity in the fight against terrorism after the Palestinian suicide bombers struck Jerusalem and Haifa in the first week of December. Just hours after Singh’s telephonic conversation with the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Perez, Arafat’s residence and offices were attacked.

Jaswant Singh, however, told parliament that there was no change in India’s stance on the Palestine issue and that the government remains committed to the goal of Palestinian independence. He reiterated that India stands committed to the UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 calling for the creation of the separate state of Palestine.

It will be difficult for the BJP-led government to unilaterally abandon India’s principled stand on the Palestinian issue, like it has done on other international issues. However, the close military and security linkages that have crystallised between New Delhi and Tel Aviv under the stewardship of the BJP, have made many people view the formal statements of Jaswant Singh in parliament with skepticism. It was the same Jaswant Singh who, on his visit to Israel last, year said that India’s support for the Palestinian cause was dictated by "vote bank" politics in India, alluding that the support for the Palestinian cause was guided solely by the opportunistic politics of the secular parties. The home minister L K Advani, on his trip to Israel, went a step further and talked of deepening security cooperation between the two countries, including in the nuclear field. Advani was of course all praise for Israeli’s handling of "terrorism."

Israel is today India’s second biggest supplier of defence material. For the BJP and RSS, Israel is a "natural ally." Since the Kargil conflict in particular, Israel is seen as virtually indispensable for India’s national security. From border fencing to the supply of AWACS planes, Israel is the trusted one. At the Durban conference on racism, the Indian government was among the first to object to Zionism being equated with racism, though the issue was only raised on the sidelines by NGOs and was not on the summit’s official agenda.