Ariel Sharon, the prime minister of Israel, is a war criminal. In 1982, he gave the order for the Israeli separatist militia, the Phalange, to invade the Sabra and Shatilla Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Sharon led the Israeli Defense Forces assault with more than 80,000 Israeli troops and 1,200 tanks. The American Red Cross counted 10,000 dead and 100,000 homeless by the sixth day of the Israeli attack on Lebanon. To Palestinians, Sharon is a butcher. Israeli forces surrounded the camps as the Phalange, with Israeli equipment, killed every man, woman and child it could find.
Three months after the invasion, 30,000 Lebanese and Palestinians were murdered by Israeli forces and the Phalange, under the order of Ariel Sharon. Half a million were left homeless after Israeli forces went on a bulldozing rampage, destroying thousands of Palestinians' homes.
The Kahan Commission, an official Israeli board of investigation into the massacre, found Sharon responsible and urged his resignation. Shortly after, Ariel Sharon was forced to resign as defense minister of Israel. Now he is the prime minister of Israel without ever having been brought to justice for the atrocities he committed.
In June 2001, two Belgian lawyers filed a lawsuit against Sharon under a law that allows Belgian courts to try people for genocide and other crimes against humanity. Shortly after the lawsuit, the British Broadcasting Corp. aired a documentary clearly implicating Sharon in the massacres. Human Rights Watch has joined the calls for a criminal investigation of Sharon's role in the refugee massacre.
Sharon claims that the Palestinian Authority orchestrated the intifada and suicide bombings that have shaken Israel for the last 18 months. Sharon must take responsibility for his own role in instigating the rage of the Palestinians. In September 2000, he forced his way into the Muslim holy site al-Haram al-Sharif during prayer services. He was accompanied by more than 1,000 armed Israeli police who forced Palestinians out of the area. Palestinian frustration with a stalled peace process was already building, and Sharon's vulgar display of force in al-Haram al-Sharif was the final blow to peace talks.
Sharon's visit was calculated to take place at the most sensitive moment in the peace talks. Sharon guaranteed an angry reaction from the Palestinians by provoking them on the anniversary of the event for which he is most despised'the massacre at Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. His provocation was orchestrated right before the Israeli elections to demonstrate that he would not negotiate with the Palestinians, but instead use force to smash them into submission. Israel now has what it voted for: all-out war with the Palestinians.
To restore hope, Palestinians will need a reason to believe in the peace process. The United States will have to show a willingness to pressure Israel. The necessary first step will be for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories in the West Bank. Just like the Israelis believe that civilian casualties are a necessary evil to promote their own self-interest, so do the Palestinians. It is unfair to call a Palestinian militant a terrorist and an Israeli militant a soldier. They are both responsible for denying peace.
Under Nazi rule, Jews lived in ghettos and were killed with impunity. Hitler's goal was to create a pure Aryan state. It is tragically ironic for the Jewish people to now want to create a pure Jewish state. Suppressing a group of people based on their religion, ethnicity and political beliefs is ethnic cleansing. The second-class citizenship of Palestinians in Israel and the constant monitoring they suffer under the Israeli police state should remind us all of the lessons learned from history. Jews resisted the Nazi occupation in armed uprisings, like that of the Warsaw Ghetto riots. Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation should be looked at in the same context; it should not matter that the current oppressors were once the oppressed.
