The death of Ariel Sharon a few days ago (although many, myself included, might have had a little jolt of surprise to discover he was still even alive, having been in a coma for eight years) has led to many predictable eulogies for a man described as “one of Israel's greatest heroes and defenders” or as one who “sought to bend the course of history toward peace” (those quotes being from failed US Presidential candidates John McCain and John Kerry respectively). However, for those of us with more critical faculties, it also provides an opportunity to look at the rather less peaceful actions Sharon took during his career as a soldier and politician, and what they say about Israeli-Palestinian relations today.
As an Israel Defence Force commander during the nation's formative years, Sharon was in charge of the troops who committed the Qibya massacre, attacking a small village in the West Bank and killing 69 Palestinian civilians, two-thirds of whom were women and children. During other wars, Sharon is alleged to have ordered Egyptian prisoners of war to be killed, and he consistently rushed into battle rather than waiting for orders or holding his troops back to prevent deaths.
But perhaps his worst crimes, or at least the ones which have caused the worst effects for the most people, came after he moved into politics in the 1970s. As Minister for Agriculture, he was responsible for starting the Israeli settler system in the West Bank which led to the de facto annexing of such a large amount of Palestinian land. These actions can be traced directly to the current situation, where Palestinians are separated from their land by an enormous concrete wall, and must pass through degrading and inhumane military checkpoints simply to tend to their fields. In contrast to this, the later withdrawal of a small number of settlers from the Gaza strip means little.
In the 1980s, while in charge of the military, he ordered Israeli intervention into the Lebanese civil war in an attempt to ensure a favourable outcome to the war. More massacres inevitably followed, this time in the Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut. Shortly before becoming Prime Minister, Sharon also managed to provide the spark for the second intifada, or uprising, by visiting the contested Al-Aqsa Mosque site with a guard of riot police – endangering his own people as well as further enraging the Palestinians.
Yet despite this catalogue of mistakes, provocations, and outright murders, Sharon's career only ever moved upwards until the stroke that incapacitated him. Shortly after the Al-Aqsa incident, he became Prime Minister of Israel, and despite almost universal acceptance of his role in the massacres at Qibya and Beirut, he never came close to facing any real justice. This is not just extraordinary luck – rather, I think we can say that the life of Ariel Sharon represents one of the key threads in Israel's history for the past sixty years or so, and that is a complete disregard for the humanity of the Palestinian people. The fact that Sharon could get away with all of these terrible actions and only become more popular with time shows that this attitude is not limited to a minority of Israeli society.
The continued Israeli persecution of the Palestinians, through the blockade of Gaza and the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, represents one of the darkest sides of modern politics – an attempt by the powerful to treat the powerless as less than human, as an 'Other' that requires less concern and far fewer human rights. The life of Ariel Sharon was just one of the most obvious examples of this – of the powerful crushing the poor.
Ariel Sharon, John McCain, Israel defence force, minister for agriculture, al-aqsa incident, West bank, Israel prime minister
No comments:
Post a Comment