File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2002/postcolonial.0204, message 224


Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 05:05:07 +0100 (BST)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?eldorra=20mitchell?= <manynotone-AT-yahoo.co.in>
Subject: April is the cruelest month


 Robert Fisk The Independent  April 14, 2002 
Why doesn't Colin Powell go to Jenin? What has
happened to the world's moral compass indeed to the
United States when America's most famous ex-general,
the Secretary of State of the most powerful country on
earth, on a supposedly desperate mission to stop the
bloodshed in the Middle East, fails to grasp what is
taking place in front of his nose? The stench of
decaying corpses is wafting out of the Palestinian
city. The Israeli army is still keeping the Red Cross
and journalists from seeing the evidence of the mass
killings that have taken place there. "Hundreds'' on
Israel's own admission have died, including civilians.
Why, for God's sake, can't Mr Powell do the decent
thing and demand an explanation for the extraordinary,
sinister events that have taken place in Jenin?
Instead, after joshing with Ariel Sharon after his
arrival in Jerusalem on Friday, Mr Powell is playing
games, demanding that Yasser Arafat condemn Friday's
bloody suicide bombing in Jerusalem (total, six dead
and 65 wounded) while failing to utter more than a
word of "concern'' for the infinitely more terrible
death toll in Jenin. Is Mr Powell frightened of the
Israelis? Does he really have to debase himself in
this way? Does he think that meeting Arafat, or
refusing to do so, takes precedence over the enormous
humanitarian tragedy and slaughter that has
overwhelmed the Palestinians? Is President Bush whose
demand that Ariel Sharon withdraw his troops from the
West Bank has been blandly ignored so gutless, so
cynical, as to allow this charade to continue? For
this is the endgame, the very final proof that the
United States is no longer morally worthy of being a
Middle East peacemaker. Even for one who has witnessed
so much duplicity in the Middle East, it is a shock to
reflect on the events of the past nine days. Let's
just remember, as the Americans would say, "the
facts". Almost two weeks ago, the United Nations
Security Council, with the active participation and
support of the United States, demanded an immediate
end to Israel's reoccupation of the West Bank and
Gaza. President Bush insisted that Mr Sharon should
follow the advice of "Israel's American friends'' and
because our own Mr Blair was with the President at the
time of "Israel's British friends", and withdraw.
"When I say withdraw, I mean it," Mr Bush snapped
three days later. But of course, it's now clear that
he meant nothing of the kind. Instead, he sent Mr
Powell off on his "urgent" mission of peace, a journey
to Israel and the West Bank that would take the
Secretary of State an incredible eight days just
enough time, Mr Bush presumably thought, to allow his
"good friend'' Mr Sharon to finish his latest bloody
adventure in the West Bank. Supposedly unaware that
Israel's chief of staff, Shoal Mofaz, had told Mr
Sharon that he needed at least eight weeks to "finish
the job'' of crushing the Palestinians, Mr Powell
wandered off around the Mediterranean, dawdling in
Morocco, Spain, Egypt and Jordan before finally
washing up in Israel on Friday morning. If Washington
firefighters took that long to reach a blaze, the
American capital would long ago have turned to ashes.
But of course, the purpose of Mr Powell's idleness was
to allow enough time for Jenin to be turned to ashes.
Mission, I suppose, accomplished. As Israel's
indisciplined soldiery yesterday continued to hide
their deeds from the outside world by preventing the
Red Cross, aid workers, ambulances and journalists
from entering the rubble of Jenin, Mr Powell was
sitting idly by in Israel, calling for the "utmost
restraint'' from an army that has not yet finished
filling the mass graves of Jenin. That he should see a
visit to Yasser Arafat the grotesque, corrupt old man
of Ramallah as the make-or-break issue of his
"peacemaking" shows just how skewed Mr Powell's
morality has become. Mr Arafat's advisers (let's not
give any credit to the would-be "martyr-chairman" of
the Palestinian Authority for this) shrewdly announced
that it is for Mr Powell to condemn the killings in
Jenin, for Mr Arafat could be expected to condemn the
vicious suicide bombing in Jerusalem on Friday. And
even though Mr Arafat mouthed the relevant words of
contrition and condemnation yesterday afternoon, it
makes little difference. All last week, while Mr
Sharon's soldiers were running amok in Jenin, White
House spokesman Ari Fleischer was playing the role of
Mr Sharon's point man in Washington. When Israel
announced that its army was pulling out of three tiny
West Bank villages so tiny that no one had ever heard
of them before Mr Fleischer announced that this was "a
step in the right direction''. Then by Friday morning,
when even the most dimwitted observer had grasped that
something was terribly wrong in Jenin, Mr Fleischer
was telling us that Sharon was "a man of peace''. How
much longer, one wonders, could this nonsense
continue? Of course, the Palestinians or whoever
directs the sepulchral, nightmarish campaign of
suicide bombing, for it surely cannot be the
preposterous Mr Arafat are going for the jugular. The
Al Aqsa Brigades or Hamas or Islamic Jihad clearly
intend to ensure that Mr Sharon's ruthless operation
fails (the Israeli reoccupation, after all, was
supposed to be preventing these wicked Palestinian
crimes) and to ensure that Mr Powell is made to look
impotent. They seem certain to accomplish both goals.
The Palestinian Authority, to all intents and
purposes, has for now ceased to exist. That was surely
one of Mr Sharon's intentions. And Mr Powell's
weakness, his failure of nerve, his cowardice, are now
likely to set off an Israeli-Palestinian war even more
terrible than what we have witnessed so far. But let's
pause for a quick journey down memory lane; to
September 1982, when Ariel Sharon was "rooting out the
network of terror" in the Sabra and Chatila refugee
camps in Beirut. Before sending Israel's murderous
Phalangist militia allies into the camps, Mr Sharon
told the world that the Palestinians had assassinated
the Phalangist leader, Bashir Gemayel. This was
totally untrue, but the Phalange believed him. And
evidence is now emerging in Beirut that, long after
the Americans had called for Israel to withdraw the
killers from the camp, the Israeli army, commanded by
then Defence Minister Sharon, handed more than 1,000
survivors over to those same murderers to be
slaughtered over the following two weeks. This,
primarily, is why Mr Sharon is so worried by the
attempts to indict him for war crimes in Brussels. 
Hasn't Mr Powell glanced through the State Department
archives for 1982? Hasn't he read what Mr Sharon said
back then, the same ranting about "terror networks"
and "rooting out terror" that he employs today? A
lexicon which Mr Powell himself is now
enthusiastically using? Has he forgotten that the
Israeli Kahan commission held Mr Sharon "personally
responsible'' for the massacre of those 1,700
civilians? Does Mr Powell really think that Jenin,
albeit on a smaller scale, is much different? Even if
we dismiss all the Palestinian claims of civilian
butchery, extrajudicial executions and the wholesale
destruction of thousands of homes, what on earth does
he think the Israelis are hiding in Jenin? Why doesn't
he go and look? Yes, the Palestinians' suicide
campaign is immoral, unforgivable, insupportable. One
day, the Arabs never ones to look in the mirror when
it comes to their own crimes will have to acknowledge
the sheer cruelty of their tactics. They have not done
this so far. But since the Israelis never attempted to
confront the immorality of shooting to death child
stone-throwers in the early days of the intifada or
the evil of their reckless death squads who went
around murdering Palestinians on their wanted list,
along with the usual clutch of women and kids who got
in the way, is this any wonder? In the annals of war,
the conflict in the Middle East has reached a new
apogee, but the story of the United States'
involvement in the Middle East will never be the same
again. Thanks to Mr Powell, President Bush and Mr
Sharon, America's credibility has been shattered.
Israel, it turns out, does indeed run US policy in the
region. The Secretary of State sings from the Israeli
songbook. So when, oh when, will the Europeans screw
their courage to the sticking-place and become the
peacemakers of the Middle East? 



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