On the contrary he allows and even encourages the terror to continue
Posted in General on 20. Oct, 2010
On the contrary, he allows and even encourages the terror to continue.”At American insistence, Israel has agreed – so far – not to kill or expel him. The Bush administration gave Mr Sharon a nod and a wink for his offensive, so long as it did not jeopardise the stability of “moderate” Arab regimes and their acquiescence in a planned assault on Saddam Hussein. That is Mr Arafat’s shield.In conversation with foreign mediators, Mr Sharon has suggested that he would let them take Mr Arafat out of the country – on condition that he didn’t come back. Privately, Israelis acknowledge that to be a public relations ploy.
The Palestinian leader has made it clear that he will not leave without cast-iron guarantees he can return.. Rotting bodies in Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers surrounding Palestinian civilians and militiamen in the place of Christ’s birth, unburied corpses in Ramallah – Israel’s latest war is turning into a human and political tragedy on a vast scale as the last physical symbols of the Oslo peace agreement are destroyed. But the coming weeks will decide the future of the Holy Land for years to come.If the Church of the Nativity is now a battleground, what is sacred any longer? The details are as indistinct as the smoke that still rises close to Manger Square, but Christian officials speak of at least 100 Palestinian civilians seeking the sanctuary of the church that marks the spot where Jesus is believed to have been born in a stable.With them, it seems, are at least 10 Palestinian militiamen from the Tanzim movement The Israeli army has surrounded the church with tanks. According to the Israelis, the Tanzim men have opened fire on the occupying soldiers. The Palestinians denied it.But no one can deny the carnage elsewhere. Take the phone call I received from Sami Abda yesterday afternoon.
On Tuesday, he told me, Israeli soldiers arrived at his house in the centre of Bethlehem and, despite being warned by a neighbour that his home was filled with women and children, opened fire on the building. The Israelis claimed that “terrorists” were in the house.Sami Abda was crying as he spoke to me and these are his exact words: “They fired 18 bullets through our front door They hit my mother, Sumaya, and my brother Jacoub My mother was 64, my brother was 37 They both fell to the floor I called everyone I could to take them to the hospital But there was no one to help us They were dying. When an ambulance came, an Israeli officer refused permission for it to enter our street So for 30 hours, we have lived with their bodies. We put the children into the bathroom so they could not see the corpses. Help us, please.”But that insistent question – What is sacred? – could be asked again by anyone who read The Jerusalem Post this week: a whole page of tiny photographs of the dozens of Israeli civilians torn to pieces by Palestinian suicide bombers in just one month. One teenage Israeli girl was the same age as the Palestinian girl who destroyed her life. It was a page of horror and misery.And, yes, war compounds human tragedy.