Questions and futility of the Arab vision

The situation in the Middle East has raised a million questions and a million possible answers. What does Sharon want? How will the Arabs respond to the popular street demands they are facing? And more importantly - where are we all heading?

One can be sentimental and say, "we are heading towards war." The sentimentalists, who are many, can listen to revolutionary music all day long, take part in parades, throw stones at their own armed forces,and chant, "Open the borders, we want to die for Palestine."

The latest Hezbollah attacks on Mount Hermon and Kiryat Shmona have managed to send emotions soaring, with Arab citizens demanding that their governments do the same. They do not know how dangerous the attacks can be, to both Syria and Lebanon, and how ineffective they be in damaging the Israeli war machine.

The word "war" is being used interchangeably and freely with "confrontation" but nobody knows its psychological, financial, and political impacts. This new generation of Arabs, born between the years 1965-1985, does not know the meaning of war. This is a generation that was too young to remember 1967 and 1973.

War will lead to defeat and nobody knows that better than Arab leaders - who despite all that is being said, are nevertheless rational in their stance. We do not need another Gamal Abdul Nasser to drag us into defeat. We are not here to judge the Arabs on why their armies are weak.

We are not here to ask our leaders, how is it that after so many years of arms-build up, they are not prepared for war? Why has 85 per cent of most regional taxes gone to the armed forces?

Ariel Sharon, it must be noted, wants radical Arabs to rise to power and foolishly declare war on him. He would love another 1967. He has tried repeatedly to provoke the Arabs, declaring his intention to bomb the Aswan High Dam in 2000, flying constantly into Beirut airspace, and shelling a Syrian radar station in Lebanon in April 2001. Still, to his dismay, the Arabs have not reacted.

Sharon believes in the policy of "might makes right" and knows better than everyone that he has unlimited powers to do as he pleases. He knows that if an Arab-Israeli war were to erupt, he will be leading the winning army and, unlike in 1967 and 1973, the Arabs are on their own and there is no USSR to help them.

He wants to militarise the conflict and has succeeded in transforming it from a stone-throwing campaign, which had the entire world on its side, into an array of suicide bombers who have aroused pro-Israeli sympathy from the international community.

Sharon was embarrassed by the image of his soldiers shooting down young Palestinian stone-throwers but justifies himself when Palestinians are blowing themselves up in Israeli populated civilian territory.

Sharon has worked relentlessly since September 11 to portray the Palestinians as terrorists and depict his war against them as similar to the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan. Yasser Arafat was seen as another Osama bin Laden and the PA were seen as the Taliban.

Bush had his own reasons to strike at the Arabs. First, he wanted to "punish" them for their refusal to endorse the U.S. campaign against Iraq. More importantly, however, he wanted to voice his resentment to the Iraqi-Gulf rapprochement that was agreed to at the Arab Summit in March 2002.

Sharon came storming into Ramallah on March 29 with a clear nudge from President Bush, and had he wanted, Bush could have gotten him to withdraw within hours from the invasion. Having secured U.S. backing Sharon did not seem to mind what the rest of the world thought of him.

To move on, the Palestinians must forget that salvation is to come from the Arabs and realise that they are in a war on their own. TIME magazine ran a story this week entitled 'Worse Case Scenario' claiming that if the killing continues, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would call his massive army into Sinai, forcing the Israelis to freeze their atrocities and prompting Syria to move its forces to the Golan Heights.

Other Arab states, mainly Iraq and Jordan, would follow in a confrontation that would erupt into an all-out regional war. I personally find that very hard to believe - knowing perfectly well how reluctant, unable and unwilling the Arabs are to sustain such a war.

The policy Sharon has laid out for the Arab world is an ugly one. He wants to push deeply into the Palestinian territories, kill anything that moves, and break the spirit of the Palestinian people.

He wants to inflict maximum pain, without any regard to UN resolutions, or Israeli opinion, and force the Palestinians to surrender. In doing so he wants to re-occupy all the Palestinian territories given at Oslo and negotiate a peace agreement from scratch. This time, however, negotiations will be different.

In 1993 the Palestinians were the victorious ones, after the triumph of the first Intifada. Arafat presented his conditions for peace and was received promptly by what today seems to be the relatively moderate Yitzhak Rabin and Bill Clinton.

Unlike the first Intifada, the Palestinians would emerge from this war in defeat, tormented by so much blood and anguish that their negotiating stance would be weak. No matter how brave they may be, too much death can cripple the most courageous of nations. Negotiations will be conducted with a gravely wounded Palestinian side.

The Sharon strategy

In reaching that, Sharon would have weakened the Palestinians' will and destroyed their aspirations for statehood and independence. At first, we thought he was out to kill Yasser Arafat. Today it is clear that Arafat is the safest Palestinian citizen alive - he is being protected by the Israeli Army itself! However, Arafat will emerge weak and humiliated like his people and would be disenchanted by the Arabs than ever before.

In a battle of nerves, Sharon might succeed in breaking Arafat's spirit and making him hopeless, defeated, forgotten, and weak. Once this is achieved, international pressure will be applied on the PNA, forcing Arafat to sign any agreement laid out before him or suffer prolonged massacres against his people. Given such a choice he would accept proposals that he had turned down in the past.

Step Two of Sharon's plan would be to offer Arafat the same proposals made by Prime Minister Ehud barak at the Camp David talks in 2000. The Palestinians would be given 95 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza, with parts of East Jerusalem, the right of return for a limited number of refugees, and compensation up to $30 billion.

In return the PNA would sign an agreement declaring an end to the state of war with Israel and offer full-recognition to the Jewish state, which would be accompanied by economic deals that would keep the Palestinian economy forever dominated by the Israeli one.

The strings to such an agreement, which led Arafat to reject in 2000 are that the Israelis would continue to have settlements, and would continue to control the border with Jordan. The holy sites in East Jerusalem, which include the Wailing Wall, would remain in the hands of a joint Palestinian-Israeli authority.

In addition the time of the Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territory and East Jerusalem would be left for the Israelis to decide. Gush Sh