Going will be rough for the U.S. president
Before President Bush takes another step toward his promised war against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, he owes it to himself and his countrymen to give serious attention to watch how his "man of peace," Israel's hawkish prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is taking advantage of America's preoccupation.
Before President Bush takes another step toward his promised war against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, he owes it to himself and his countrymen to give serious attention to watch how his "man of peace," Israel's hawkish prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is taking advantage of America's preoccupation.
The scripted response of the Bush administration whenever it is compelled to voice criticism of Israel's dastardly actions against the Palestinians is that they are being "not helpful." It has never gone beyond these muted, colourless words.
As he has done many times in the past, the Israeli prime minister saw another golden opportunity to hit hard, this time demolishing Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah, while the American president is engaged in an tough battle to win domestic and international support for his uphill campaign to oust Saddam.
Once again, Sharon ploughed ahead at a time when Palestinian and Israeli officials were seen to be finding some common ground and, much to the satisfaction of the international community, the Palestinians were demonstrating willingness and ability to institute reform.
For example, the Palestinian cabinet resigned en masse following the recent outrage voiced by Palestinian legislators. A cataclysmic and bold event by Palestinian standards.
Sharon could not stomach this commendable Palestinian ferment and assertion of self-assuredness. At the first opportunity - the regrettable suicide bombings - he launched his savage war on Arafat's headquarters, raising the ante as the demolition progressed, seeking first 15 said to be on Israel's wanted list from among the Palestinian leader's housemates, then 25 and lastly 50.
The unbelievable scenes of bulldozers tearing down buildings were jarring on the television screens here, but these were fleeting moments.
As the siege progressed, I decided to see (with my 90-year-old mother) Gaza City, a riveting documentary shot by an American filmmaker, James Langley, who was on his first-ever visit to the Middle East when the Al Aqsa intifada began after Sharon was elected prime minister.
"The idea to make a documentary about Palestinians in the Gaza Strip was mainly a reaction to what I perceived as a lack of good media coverage of that area," he wrote. "It was difficult for me to find intimate material of the Palestinian struggle in the mainstream U.S. media."
He added: "My idea of a good documentary is a film that captures the most essential aspects of its subject, a film that shows rather than tells. I wanted to make a film that would convey not only the hard facts of life inside the Gaza Strip, but also the emotions, sensations and driving desire of the people I filmed.
"I made the film to fill a gap in our knowledge and a blind spot in our thinking about this conflict, but more than anything this film is an attempt to record the humanity of the people I met there, the thing that is impossible to tell in words."
Brilliant job
He did a brilliant job, shooting over 75 hours of interviews in verite style, without narration and with little explanation focusing primarily on the life of a 13yearold newspaper vendor. The 87-minute film offers a heart-rending, grim view of life for the helpless 1.2 million Palestinians under siege.
In a nutshell, the film, which should be widely distributed and shown on a major television network, explains better than anything I have seen so far the reasons behind the Palestinian rage and anger: the sins of Israeli occupation, the demolition of Palestinians houses, uprooting of date groves, the nightly terror of Israeli tanks, air raids and snipers, crowded hospitals, and the aimless children, hardened by the events and contemptuous, as one noted, of both Arafat and Sharon.
At one point, Langley makes an honest-to-goodness observation: "To my great relief, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip turned out to be people like everyone else. It is the situation they find themselves in that is extraordinary."
It is unlikely that George Bush will see this film (although I am willing to be proven wrong), but he should not be deluded, if his eyes and ears in the region are honest, in realising that an unsanctioned war on Iraq at a time when Sharon is ploughing up the Palestinian landscape will not settle well with the Arab peoples even in the four Arabs states where U.S. bases are located: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman.
The going will be rough. The first upset, albeit in Europe, was scored in the just-concluded German national elections where Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder repeated his refusal to support a war on Iraq.
