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The appalling massacre committed in cold blood by the Israeli army against Palestinians on the Haram Es-Sharif, in Holy Jerusalem, on September 28th, 2000, killing at least seven citizens, and wounding more than two hundreds, with its ghastly details of cruelty, such as the blockade of the city hospitals throughout the hours following this criminal onslaught on the faithful gathered for the Friday prayer, will be remembered in the history of this blood-ridden conflict as a major crime, and certainly as a turning point in the unfolding of the “peace process”.
The chain of events is a simple one: General Ariel Sharon, a notorious terrorist and war criminal, whose personal responsibility in the massacre of more than three thousand Palestinian old men, women and children in the Beirut Camps of Sabra and Chatila in September 1982 was established and acknowledged by an official Israeli parliamentary commission of inquiry, staged an outright provocation on Thursday 27th, by invading the Haram Es-Sharif, escorted by a huge military force, in violation of the status quo prevailing on the Haram, under the pretext of a private visit. This gross violation of all rules, laws and agreements, which had been deliberately advertised in advance, met with mass Palestinian peaceful protest, and the occupation forces undertook to scatter the demonstration by a resolutely excessive use of force, wounding several Palestinian civilians and brutalizing dozens of protesters, among which Palestinian Legislators and Arab Israeli Knesseth members. From then on, the elements of the provocation were in place, and the scenario was predictable, leading to the announced bloodbath: the occupation forces invaded the Haram, preceded the flow of prayers coming to the Friday service, and unleashed hell on the faithful. With the spread of the news, Palestinian protesters took to the streets all over the country, and tension and violence erupted throughout the Palestinian territory, from Ramallah to Kalandia and from Hebron to Gaza. The provocation has worked, and instead of the peace agreement the whole world has been waiting for since the Camp David negotiations, we have now death and mourning, rage and anger, and the ingredients of the most serious crisis since the signing of the Oslo accords seven years ago.
Besides his ominous record as a butcher and serial killer, Ariel Sharon is no isolated individual. He is the head of of the main opposition party in the Israeli Knesseth, the man who makes no secret of his desire to gain power at the expense of the present Israeli government, and of his will and commitment to undo whatever has been achieved in the way of the peace-process, and to tear apart all the agreements signed between the parties, including the October 1998 Wye River Memorandum which he himself signed, together with the Israeli Prime minister of the time, Binyamin Netanyahu. It is therefore a source of wonder that the present Israeli Prime minister Ehud Barak, who is supposed to be engaged in serious final status negotiations, particularly on the issue of Jerusalem, and even more particularly on the issue of sovereignty over the Haram Es-Sharif, could allow, endorse, protect and support the blood-thirsty provocation of his supposed political rival. Unless, of course, the Israeli Prime minister cynically decided to use this butchery in order to interrupt the talks and avoid the growing international pressure to walk the last extra-mile to a peace agreement.
For one cannot but reflect upon the hardly hidden convergence between the totally irrational, perfectly illegal, completely unacceptable and indeed unprecedented demand of Israeli negotiators to exert sovereignty over Islamic Holy Sites in Jerusalem - and Sharon’s choice of date (the eve of the Jewish New Year) and venue to stage this ultimate criminal provocation. Both Barak and Sharon are thus courting and flattering, and competing for the favour of the most extremist sectors of the Israeli religious ultra-right, the fanatic sects who openly ask for the expulsion of the Old City’s original Arab population and for the reconstruction of the Jewish Temple in stead and place of the Haram and the Two Holy Mosques. We have not stopped denouncing this gratuitous escalation of claims, and warning against the Israeli attempt to transform the territorial dispute into a religious war. In this sense, the Israeli government’s political and personal responsibility in these tragic events is not only a legal technicality. Sharon appears, in this perspective, as a mere instrument of official policy. For the massacre in Jerusalem yesterday was not perpetrated by “uncontrolled” elements from among the settlers, but by the regular armed forces of the state of Israel, upon regular instructions from their field commanders, and upon a decision of the highest political echelon.
The Israeli government will have a hard time restoring any sort of credibility in the peace-process after these events. Nobody can predict what will happen in the coming hours and days. The world as a whole, our Arab brothers in the region, the Islamic and Christian worlds, our European, African and Asian friends, the US sponsors of the peace-process and the United Nations must act at once, and impose an end to violence: get occupation forces out of the Holy City, protect the Palestinian people from Israeli state-terrorism, and put an end to the shocking immunity which Israel enjoys when it comes to violating international legality and UN resolutions. For we remain, as ever, committed to search for a just and lasting peace. But there will be, let us repeat it once again, no peace in our area unless Israel, as a state and as a society, agrees to become a part of – and not an exception to – an international and regional order built upon the common law of states and peoples.
30 September 2000
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The Editor |
