Author: Editorial
Publication: The Times
Date: March 15, 2001.
Protests At Last From The Weak Who
Protect The Strong
Stone-throwing, flag-waving Palestinian
youths ripped through the town of Ramallah yesterday in the first of two
"days of rage" declared by Yassir Arafat's Fatah organization. It will
have been no trouble to recruit this rent-a-mob; there is rage to spare,
after nearly six months of futile battling against Israeli occupation.
But rage, the most nihilistic of impulses, has done nothing but harm to
Palestinians.
A few powerless people, as they
mourn children killed in crossfire or pushed, like human shields, ahead
of rioters attacking Israeli troops, are beginning to whisper the truth
-- that they are being deliberately exposed to danger and death, exploited
by their own side's gunmen.
As The Times reported yesterday
from El Bireh, the Palestinian residential area where people's flats are
daily used by snipers attacking a nearby Jewish settlement, locals have
appealed to the gunmen not to expose their families to returning fire.
For response, they get official banners acclaiming their dead infants as
martyrs. They too hate Israel. But they do not want to be martyrs to an
unending, unwinnable confrontation. They want to be left alone.
These grieving voices should be
heard, by their own leaders and by others. They are ignored. The European
Union has had plenty to say about the damage inflicted by Israel's economic
blockade and military roadblocks in the West Bank; in Jerusalem yesterday,
that was also Chris Patten's theme. But foreign leaders limply shrink from
condemning the cynicism with which various Palestinian factional leaders,
who themselves are in no firing line, have played upon popular fears and
frustration.
From Hamas and Fatah's increasingly
militant Tanzim militia leaders, both out to destroy any chance of negotiated
cohabitation in this wracked land, each Palestinian death is a weapon of
war. But even Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian legislator who was once a moderate,
has signed up to the politics of hate. This week she circulated an incendiary
"open letter" purporting to be from Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister.
"To every man, woman and child in the Palestinian territories", it said,
"you are my target; you will be made to suffer; and you shall pay for the
original crime of being a Palestinian."
This crude forgery is black propaganda
and bad satire. What good can Ms Ashrawi think to do by inciting the most
violent to fresh extremes? Six months after it started, the "al-Aqsa intifada"
has presented Palestinians with a grim set of accounts. Death has claimed
at least 345 Palestinians, 13 Israeli Arabs and 65 other Israelis; hundreds
more have been maimed.
The Palestinian central bank calculates
that economic activity, already feeble, has halved. In some areas it is
down by 80 per cent. Tourism, which could be a big earner, is for obvious
reasons only a memory now, bringing in a mere 7 per cent of what it made
before. Trade is ruined. More than 160,000 Palestinians cannot travel to
their jobs in Israel.
But such statistics do not reveal
a more corrosive and potentially lasting evil, the brutalization of children
of both sexes who are trained and indoctrinated at terrorist boot camps
before being used as expendable cover for gunmen. "Closure does not frighten
us", shouted protesters yesterday. It should. Civilians are paying an unendurable
price -- children first. Tense Israeli troops have too often shot before
asking questions; but the harsher truth is that those children should be
kept far from trouble, not pushed towards it.
At his first full Cabinet this week,
Mr Sharon promised to ease restrictions on most Palestinians and to punish
only those responsible for violence. That must be right. It is easier said
than done, certainly while Mr Arafat sticks to the official Fatah line
that all Israel understands is violence. In the coming fortnight, violence
is likely to worsen, ratcheted up in advance of the March 27 Arab summit
in Jordan.
There are risks for Israel in lifting
restrictions around towns such as Bethlehem and Hebron at a time when Fatah
is calling on Arabs to join "the beginning of war" and Saddam Hussein is
training thousands of volunteers to send. Israel must maintain its vigilance
so long as Mr Arafat scorns the compromises that would make for a better,
freer Palestine.
