Posted on 12/17/2001 9:30:48 AM PST by ouroboros
To understand what’s going on in the Middle East, you have to understand Ariel Sharon, Israel’s prime minister.
Sharon does not now and never has wanted a peace with the Palestinians. He is the father of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and he will never consent to dismantling even one of them. In fact, he is committed to expanding them.
He said soon after taking office that he would never sign a permanent settlement with the Palestinians. He has refused to meet with the Palestinians. He himself started the intifada by invading Islam’s third-holiest site and arrogantly calling it Jewish property.
But Sharon had two problems. One, he was being pressured by the United States to make peace with the Palestinians. Two, Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority president, was winning sympathy in Europe for the Palestinian cause, which is simply an end to Israeli occupation.
So Sharon’s problem was thus: How do you wreck the peace process without being blamed for wrecking the peace process? The short-term solution was to set the absurd condition that seven days had to go by without a violent act before he would even consider talking.
There are 3 million Palestinians there, and Arafat’s authority is limited basically to the boundaries of a few cities. It is literally impossible for him to prevent one individual from taking a potshot at an Israeli. Especially is it impossible when Sharon himself is ordering the Israelis to commit acts of violence and other provocations.
No country in the world could systematically assassinate more than 27 political opponents without being branded a terrorist state. Of course, Israel gets a free ride in the United States. At the same time this is going on, Sharon is discrediting Arafat by blaming him for any and every act of violence, even those directly provoked by Israel.
When Israel assassinated the leader of a Palestinian group, the man’s followers promised vengeance. A few days later, they assassinated an Israeli cabinet member. They publicly took responsibility for it.
Sharon’s response was to attack Palestinian Authority police stations and to blame Arafat. But Sharon’s biggest stroke of luck was the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and President Bush’s declaration of war on terrorism. Now he had Bush where he wanted him, so the Israelis began to put tremendous pressure on the administration to include Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah on its list of terrorist organizations. And they succeeded, as the Israeli lobby so often does in Washington.
Still, Sharon needed one spectacular terrorist attack to justify his coup de grace to the peace process. And he knew how to get it. He ordered the assassination of a prominent and popular Hamas leader. Sharon knew that Hamas would retaliate, and it did, with three suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa. Now he had what he wanted: an excuse to kill the peace process once and for all.
By branding the Palestinian Authority as an organization that harbors and sponsors terrorism, and by declaring two PLO organizations as terrorist organizations, the Israeli government has announced its intention to destroy all three. Then there will be nobody to negotiate with.
Bush is snookered. Sharon can say: “Look, I’m only following your example. The Palestinian Authority is my Taliban, and the PLO organizations are terrorists. You yourself said, Mr. President, that terrorists and people who support them must be destroyed.”
I’d like to be wrong once in a while about the Middle East, but, alas, I’m right. If you wish to look back, you will see that when Sharon became prime minister, I said the peace process is dead. Later, I said the United States’ one-sided support of Israel would bring Middle East terrorism to the United States. That was in August.
Now I suggest we all hunker down. Because of Sharon’s shrewdness and ruthlessness and our stupidity and naivete, the dogs of war have been let loose. Our newborn grandchildren will probably grow beards before the blood stops flowing.
Show me where the Israelis have forbidden us to try Palestinian terrorists.
The Temple Mount is single most holy site in the world to the Jews. It was the site of the two Temples. There is only one explanation for an "error" this egregious: Reese is an anti-Semite. He wants to eliminate the Jewish presence from Israel, not just now, but historically as well.
People who build bombs and organize terrorist forces are not "political opponents," they are enemy soldiers.
The ink was hardly dry before Israel began attacking her neighbors
Just some minor corrections: first off, the Palestinians did NOT agree to the partition plan. Second, the Arab armies invaded Israel.
Other than those two insignificant details, though, you're absolutely right </sarcasm>
There's that stock tag again. Whenever someone disagrees with any Jewish "policy" (i.e., the parasitical attachment of the Holocaust Memorial to the U.S. National Park Service), they're certain to be branded anti-Semitic.
What garbage. We need people like Reese to remind us that, among other things, the U.S. actually is an independent country.
Of course, the majority of Jews and Israelis will have absolutely nothing to do with him. And the majority of Arabs and Muslims love Hamas, and many even send money. So quit trying to use one Jew to stereotype the rest.
Excuse me, but I wasn't referring to any "policy."
I was referring to Reese's warped view of history. I say he's an anti-Semite because of his desire to re-write history without the Jews.
Denying a Jewish historical presence on the Temple Mount is like denying the Holocaust.
Maybe we need to remind Ariel Sharon, too.
"Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." — Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, quoted from the Independent Palestinian Information Network and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
Should we welcome you to the site or say, welcome back, Patria One?
And you really trust information from those sources?
Here's to Charlie quickly going back into retirement.
I trust it alot more than I do the propaganda veronica posts from the "Camera" site.
Seems like you just can't keep a good man down!
Someone had a list of Patria One's many & varied (but banned) screen names floating around. We'll just add this one to the list.
He's on the fringe now. A good place for him, too.
LOL.
Nor can he keep Israel down with his lies. Reese won't be satisfied until every Israeli is driven into the Meditterranean.
I wonder if Reese's dream of peace involves another police state run by Islamic militants (with perhaps Arafat as its leader) where there are no free elections, no rights for women, constant oppression of Jews, and supporting of terrorists just like every other Middle-Eastern country. I wonder if Reese would like to emigrate there? Hell, I'd pack his bags.
But something tells me if Reese was forced to choose to live in either a Palestinian state or Israel, he'd choose Israel.
The weekend shift ....on Wednesday?
Too funny. I have been accused of being in the ADL, JDL, IDF, you name it.
He would--but he'd probably complain about all the Jews and the inability to get a good ham sandwich.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.