The passing of Ariel
Sharon, the war criminal-politician of Israel, is a grim reminder of the
continuing injustice and impoverishment of the brave Palestinian people under
conditions of racial apartheid and colonial enslavement in their own homeland,
now known as the Occupied Territories. Sharon literally got away with murder and
mayhem he unleashed against countless innocent civilians of Lebanon and
Palestine, thanks to the support of the worldly powers that sustained his
politics. Yet, he spent his last years of life in this very world in a
condition of “neither living nor dead” in which no worldly might
could be of any help or succour to him. In an article published in the Hindu Newspaper
(India) on January16, 2014, distinguished scholar Vijay Prashad points
out that the eulogising pabulum that greeted
Ariel Sharon’s death ignored his history as a harsh military leader with a
record of many atrocities.
We reproduce the Essay for the benefit of our readers:
The settlements, for Ariel Sharon, were an instrument to make life so
miserable for Palestinians that they would eventually quit the remainder of
their lands
Ariel Sharon (1928-2014) had slipped into a coma in 2006, as if too
embarrassed by his misdeeds to face the world for his remaining eight years. A veteran of the Haganah, one of the Jewish paramilitary battalions
that helped seize Palestine for Israel, Sharon became one of Israel’s best
known generals and then, later, one of its most powerful politicians. Allegations of atrocities had followed
Sharon from 1953 to his grave — including the more serious charge of war
crimes. Protected by the United States and the Europeans, Sharon never had
to face these charges in any international court. “It’s a shame that Sharon has gone
to his grave without facing justice for his role in Sabra and Shatila and other
abuses,” said Human Rights Watch’s Sarah Leah Whitson, referring
particularly to the Beirut massacre, in which fourteen hundred defenceless
Palestinians and Lebanese civilians were killed in 1982. “His passing,” Whitson said, “is another grim reminder that
years of virtual impunity for rights abuses have done nothing to bring
Israeli-Palestinian peace any closer.”
Sharon’s death was greeted with the typical pabulum — statements about
him as a man of peace, and as a great statesman. What was routinely ignored was his history as a harsh military leader
and the architect of the current, failed policy pursued by the Israeli
government to garrison their state, grind the Palestinians till they flee the
occupied territories and secure the region for a narrow vision of a Jewish
state. Words like “controversial” and the theme that Sharon had had a “change
of heart” to become a “man of peace” in his later years were used to paper over
Sharon’s atrocious record. In Palestine and Lebanon, two places most brutally
assaulted by Sharon, words of anger, not sadness, could be heard at Sharon’s
death — graffiti in Ramallah promised that Palestinians would “never forget”
what Sharon had done, while in Beirut older Palestinians honoured the names of
their dead relatives and friends that evening.
Ruthless, with impunity
Sharon’s record opened in 1953, when his Unit 101 went into the
Palestinian town of Qibya, detonated forty five civilian buildings (including
schools) and killed almost seventy civilians (half of them women and children).
In his aptly titled memoir, Warrior, Sharon reflected that “Qibya was to be a lesson.” His
ruthlessness was to send a message that “Jewish blood could no longer be shed.”
The line from Qibya to the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut is not long. In 1982, Sharon would
oversee the massacre at those camps for which Israel’s Kahan Commission found
him “personally responsible” — the killing, according to Human Rights Watch, of
“infants, children, pregnant women, and the elderly, some of whose bodies were
found to have been mutilated”. When the victims’ families eventually brought a
case in the Belgian courts against Sharon, political pressure resulted in that
country’s parliament amending its laws to invalidate the case. Sharon was
untouchable.
When Sharon left the military, he helped found Likud, the right-wing party that would sweep to power in 1977.
Sharon took over the Agriculture portfolio, from where he designed the
settlement policy. Speaking of this policy, Sharon said in June 1979: “In
another year, settlement activity might be impossible. So we must act now — to
settle vigorously, quickly. First of all, to establish facts of foothold, and
then to beautify the settlements, plan them, expand them.” This was
done on land occupied by Israel in the 1967 War, and now settled in
contravention of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Hundreds of
thousands of Israeli settlers went forth under the protection of Sharon’s
armies. The Israeli state annexed more and more land, created boundary walls to
hem in the Palestinians and created freeways for the settlers alone that cut
off Palestinians from each other.
A profitable annexation
A U.N. fact-finding committee report from January 2013 described the end
point of Sharon’s plan to commandeer as much of the West Bank as possible (the
retreat from Gaza being a feint to distract from this more profitable
annexation). “The settlements are established and advanced through a system of total
segregation between the settlers and the rest of the population living in the
Occupied Palestinian Territory,” the report showed. “This
system of segregation is supported and facilitated by strict military and law
enforcement control to the detriment of the rights of the Palestinian people.”
Settlements, as much as Sabra and Shatila, are Ariel “the bulldozer” Sharon’s legacy.
The settlements, for Sharon, were an instrument to make life so
miserable for the Palestinians that they would eventually quit the remainder of
their lands. By using a policy of restrictions of access to land and of
closures of the security barriers that imprison the Palestinians as well as
forcing Palestinians to use Israeli entrepôts for the transmission of goods,
the Israeli state controls the Palestinian economy. An October 2013 World Bank report showed that half of the West Bank —
nominally ceded to the Palestinians in the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords — is
inaccessible to Palestinians by the policy of restriction and closure. This “sets the current loss to the Palestinian
economy at about $3.4 billion.”
Consider other policy constraints and it is evident that it is the
Israeli occupation that has been, since 1967, perpetuating the impoverishment
of the Palestinians in what is essentially an open-air prison. Unfortunately for Sharon, neither the massacres nor the settlements
nor, indeed, the everyday suffering of the Palestinians succeeded in quelling
the Palestinian quest for national self-determination. Indeed, it fuelled the
second Intifada (2000-2005) under his watch as Prime Minister. Sharon’s
response to it was to tighten the garrote around the neck of the Palestine.
Sharon and India
In 2003, Sharon became the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit India.
He had been invited by the BJP-led government to cement the newfound ties
between India and Israel. At that time, The Hindu wrote, “New Delhi has sent out wrong signals by
playing host to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at this particular
juncture… Even if it was possible to set aside [Sharon’s] appalling personal
history, his apparent distaste for a just and permanent settlement with the Palestinians
cannot be ignored. Even moderate constituencies in Arab countries are convinced
that Mr. Sharon was largely responsible for scuttling the Oslo process. The
policies Israel has implemented under his stewardship have aggravated the
violent confrontation with the Palestinians.” Nonetheless, the Bharatiya
Janata Party and later the Congress endorsed Israeli policy by its new
attachment to Tel Aviv. India quickly became the largest importer of Israeli
arms, unwittingly helping the Israeli economy in its principal task — to pursue
the occupation of the Palestinians.
Not all of India embraced its leaders’ camaraderie with Sharon. “Katil Sharon se yaari, sharam karo Atal
Bihari [shame on you,
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, for befriending the murderous Sharon],”
and similar slogans echoed across the country at Sharon’s death, despite the
warm condolence message crafted by the Prime Minister’s Office. India’s
government, which once led the Non-Aligned world to defend the rights of the
Palestinians, is now reticent to be critical of Israel and allows itself to
celebrate the life of a man whose day in court was postponed because of his
Western allies.
(The writer is the Edward Said Chair at the American University of
Beirut.)
For the Article in the Hindu, click here