What is Sharon aiming at?

It seems Sharon has had Shaikh Yassin killed only to make Palestinians mad with anger and to make them think only of revenge. Sharon, the calculating politician, despite his deep personal hatred of Palestinians, is pursuing a policy that he expects will achieve his ends: accompanied by hate-mongering, the supposedly tit-for-tat hits on Palestinian targets, dressed up as revenge against suicide bombings, can make him popular and retain PM's job. Let us find out what this policy of deliberately provoking Palestinians is calculated to achieveunless he is mentally unsound. This he is not. What is Sharon's policy is to be seen in the context of both short-term Israeli politics and of the longer-range Israeli aims. In the short-run, he, after having done his worst to render all peace formulas a dead letter, now proclaims a new peace march, beginning with unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza Strip, but after leaving no organised authority to assume power and responsibility. His actions seem calculated to create maximum anarchy. This is his way of peace-making.

Significantly, he has said nothing about the West Bank areas' future, also under Israeli occupation. Will this military occupation continue indefinitely, even after 37 years? What sense does it make for Israel to vacate Gaza Strip and go on sitting tight over so much Palestinian territory indefinitely? Which long-term future can one talk about? There must be something for West Bank areas in Sharon's mind. Why is he silent on that? Then, there is this new wall, deep inside the designated West Bank areas for Palestinians, supposedly to safeguard an Israel which refuses to share its ideas about the future of the area. It is clear that Israel is destroying the contiguity and economy of West Bank territories, perhaps for good. Malodour of bad faith is now overpowering, though it has not reached White House.

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Who can forget that Israel has never lived within defined territories ­- from 1948 onward; it has not respected the borders given it by the UN resolution authorising its founding; it conquered more territories after defeating all the Arab armies, including Glubb Pasha's legendary Arab Legion. Then, in 1967 it suddenly attacked Egypt, Syria (UAR), Jordan and others, conquering all the West Bank, Golan Heights and Nagev Desert. Israel has never published an authentic map of itself, not wishing to define its borders definitively. Who can miss the significance of this? There are boatloads of Israeli hawkish politicians, parties and Rabbis who never tire of invoking Ertze Israel, the mythical greater Israel; they assert it is their destiny according to their religious texts.

Israeli hawks have recommended strange courses of radical action, involving a lot of ethnic cleansing ­

- displacing Arab Palestinians and making the entire Judea and Samarra (West Bank areas) a part of Israel. How they do not say. How far east or south must they go to achieve their Ertze Israel is not common ground among the hawks? Some Ashk-e-Nazi secular Israelis do talk of peace with Palestinians based on vacation of undefined parts of West Bank areas. But Tel Aviv hawks have set up hundreds of Jewish settlements, connected by criss-crossing roads. Even according to secular Israelis not all settlements can be dismantled and Israeli IDF will continue to guard them and control the roads. So even the ideas of enlightened Israelis do not permit Palestinians to expect more than some isolated Bantustans, all of which will not be economically viable. The prospect is one of apartheid with the Israelis lording it over enslaved Arabs.

One wonders what has been the basis of Arab-Israeli negotiations so far. We can forget the negotiations before and immediately after 1973 War. They were mainly between the US and other Arab states, most of which eventually made their own peace with Israel and have stopped championing the Palestine cause; only Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran continued to support Palestinian rights. Iraq has been destroyed; Iran and Syria are under heavy pressures; and Libya is undergoing a transmutation. Palestinians stand alone today; virtually no state speaks for them.

Even so, where are the Oslo Agreements? Where are the two Nobel Peace Laureates? Who sabotaged those agreements? Then, what happened to the hard work by the Quartet that finally took the shape of American Road Map to ME Peace? Where has this roadmap led to? End result will be what Sharon may be about to do to Palestinians. His 'achievements' to date are an indicator. Has anyone asked: what can the Palestinians look forward to? It is doubtful that the US, the hyper power busy reshaping ME, has ever taken into account the disaster awaiting Palestinians; the latter's human rights have not been the worry of the US or most major powers. It is only recently, after the Iraq fiasco, that the socalled "old Europe" has begun to notice the pitiable Palestinians on their radar screens; they sometime mention the Palestinians' future. Would no one ask the simple question: why are the Palestinians so mad as to resort to suicide attacks on Israelis? Why select the Israelis? Palestinians see them as heavily-armed robbers who have snatched most of their historic homeland, thanks to America's support and acquiescence of major powers like Russia, UK and France. This support first led to the rubber-stamping by the newly-created UNO of what the US and UK wanted ­

- with all Arab states opposing. Zionists had imposed themselves on Palestine with the active British help after WWI. Later Israel usurped territories in the war of 1948. It conquered much of remaining Palestine in 1967. It is still militarily occupying West Bank areas and Gaza ­

- 37 years after the war. For thirty-seven years of living under the Israeli Martial Law, Palestinians have had no civil rights. No wonder, they are desperate and angry. As they see it, Israelis have successfully sabotaged all peace-making efforts. Arabs have gone from one humiliation to another. Doubtless, they are paying for their disunity, backwardness and weakness; the strong has vanquished the weak. Fine. But each action has its apposite reaction. If the defeated and brutally oppressed (weak) are adopting the only weapon left to them, terror, no one should be surprised. Regrettable as loss of human life is, history's ineluctable imperatives were behind 9/11 and March 11 outrage in Madrid; worse should be feared.

The US and its Iraqi Coalition friends have to understand this stern logic:

Israel does what it does because it works in close mesh with America and it is the latter which underwrites the state of Israel politically and financially. For Arabs everywhere Israeli actions vis-à-vis Palestinians or other Arabs are really American actions at one short remove. What can avail but terror against the hyper power or its satellite? Hence the threat of more terrorist attacks is serious.

The US and friends of Israel thus qualify, in Arab eyes, as legitimate targets. This seems to be the genesis of 9/11 and 3/11 (Madrid) attacks. It is easy to condemn terrorist attacks because the innocents suffer ­

- and not the main policy-makers who actually enrage the attackers. The latter just go on. That makes terror basically futile. One regards individual terrorists' attacks anywhere to be useless, misplaced and mostly counterproductive. Modern states are too powerful. But it is vital to understand what motivates these terrorists and why. To be able to stand in their shoes is necessary to realise that terrorists are looking for ways to make their opinions heard. It is enlightened self interest of the high and mighty to provide a credible platform or tribune to the dispossessed and the oppressed Palestinians from which they can proclaim their love of freedom.

Mr. Bush, the US Presidential candidate, talks much about freedom. Has he heard of the Palestinians? Don't they deserve freedom? Can monstrous historic wrongs not be corrected? Is 84 years so long ago that no one can discover the origins of Palestinian troubles ­- when the League of Nations handed over Palestine to Britain. What was its demographic character at the time the Mandate was given? Did the League hand over a Jewish-peopled Palestine to the British care? Let us ask how honestly did Britain achieve the objectives that the League must have specified? What precisely was League's Mandate and what did the British accomplish. Isn't Israel an instance of Albion's perfidy?

The time has come to employ a wholly fresh and radical approach to the Palestine question. After all the lives of a whole people have been destroyed because the supposedly liberal opinion in Europe had a bad conscience, having massively oppressed the Jews. Those who grieve for 3000 American lives in 9/11 and 200 in Madrid's 3/11 should reserve a few tears for the many thousands of Palestinians brutally killed by IDF just as many Israeli civilians have been needlessly killed. Shouldn't Europe and others wake up to what the latter day Nazis ­- on the rebound ­

- are about to do? Discovering a method in the apparent madness of power-drunk Israeli politicians is a priority.

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.