'Without restrictions'

by Rima Merriman

The pressure on the new Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to demilitarise the militants or to crack down on terror, whichever way one likes to see it, is increasing.

A few days ago, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told his Cabinet: "The [Israeli army] and the security forces have been instructed to step up operational activity against terrorism and they will continue to do so, without restrictions, I emphasise, without restrictions, as long as the Palestinians are not lifting a finger."

Sharon was reacting to the news of the death of six Israelis and the wounding of several others in an attack last week by Palestinian militants at a crossing point between Israel and Gaza.

He made no mention of the operations of the occupying forces in Gaza, just prior to this incident, which had resulted in the death of several Palestinian civilians, among them a 23 year old who was driving his pregnant wife to hospital in the north of Gaza, a civilian walking on a road near Gani Tel settlement, near Khan Younis, and another who was shot dead while waiting at a checkpoint travelling from the north to get to his work in central Gaza.

Nor did Sharon mention the fact that only one day after Abbas' election, Israeli bulldozers razed several cultivated plots of land around the Eretz crossing in the north of the Gaza Strip, or that the Israeli army will start demolishing 3,000 homes in Rafah, an impoverished southern Gaza city, within weeks, in order to dig a moat to prevent militants from using smuggling tunnels under the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

He did not mention, just to pull a few other Israeli actions out of a hat, the new Jerusalem Plan that will forcibly transfer 6,000 Palestinians from the Old City of Jerusalem to Shu'fat Refugee Camp, or the new Israeli procedures that prevent Palestinian Jerusalemites from entering Ramallah through Qalandia.

In addressing his Cabinet, Sharon continued: "The Israeli people have been struggling against terrorism for more than a hundred years. We did not capitulate to terrorism in the past and we do not intend to do so now."

Never mind that there was no Israel and so no Israeli people before 1948. Obviously, the Israelis feel that they have been under attack in the region long before the establishment of the state of Israel. Until the advent of Zionism, however, the behaviour and attitude of the Muslim world towards Jews come off very well compared to their treatment by the Christian West. Much of the anti-Semitism in the Arab world has been incited by Zionism, by the victimisation and the expulsion of the Palestinians from what was Palestine before 1948.

Israel also believes that it has the right to retaliate, "without restriction", in order to protect itself, its citizens and its colonialist policies: "The political leadership has instructed that any action be taken that is necessary to halt terrorism," says Sharon. In other words, the gloves are off, as in fact they have been for a long time, giving sanction, under the self-serving rationale of "security", to Israeli state terrorism, in the form of collective punishments (curfews, closures, checkpoint humiliations, indiscriminate shelling, "administrative detentions"), the targeting of civilians, extrajudicial executions, house demolitions, expulsion, the razing of agricultural land, land confiscation and annexation, colonisation through the shifting of Israeli populations into the occupied territories, land grab under the excuse of the wall, turning the occupied territories into an economic dumping ground for Israel, etc.

Sharon's language expresses a mindset little different from that of Palestinian militants who believe that they are fighting for their land and security, and who are also willing to "take any action" to secure these goals. Likewise, Sharon's rhetoric is not that much different from the rhetoric of many Islamists who advocate action in the face of perceived threats against the Islamic "ummah" or nation. The difference is in how all these "actions" are perceived.

An Islamist e-mail dubbed "hate material", now circulating on the Internet, illustrates the deeply rooted double standards used to judge rhetoric about the Jewish state versus rhetoric about the Muslim "ummah". The e-mail, which could very well be a fake, is titled "Eid-ul-Adha: State of Confusion Continues". It is written in laborious and faulty English that sometimes echoes the cadences of the archaic language of the Koran. It ends with a series of slogans, including "We will never accept the existence of Israel".

But the major thrust of the e-mail, the underlying ideas and emotions expressed, are clear. Distilled, they are similar to the emotion, mindset and rationale expressed by Sharon (and are identical to ultra-conservative Jewish rhetoric).

The writer of the e-mail bemoans the fact that Eid Al Adha is not being celebrated on the same day by all the Muslim "ummah", in spite of the fact, as he explains, that the Koran is not ambiguous on that point. He calls for unity among Muslims and says that this unity is sorely needed at this time and age, because the Islamic "ummah" is under attack from the US and Israel - and gives examples of such attacks in Iraq, the occupied territories, Afghanistan and Chechnya - and also from Arab "puppet regimes". He quotes the Prophet Mohammad to emphasise the value put on the life of a Muslim and concludes with the following quote: "Wherever there is an occupation there will be Resistance, Resistance, Resistance."

Like Sharon's perception that Israel has been under attack by terrorists for the last hundred years, the writer of the e-mail sees that the Muslim "ummah" has been under continuous attack by the West and by Israel and that resistance/retaliation is called for.

Because of the overt Muslim-centric rhetoric of the e-mail, which includes references to infidels and stone worshipers and a hope that Islam would again "rule the world", the West is likely to construe the above as the ravings of a delusional Muslim Arab mind.

It is possible, however, to see a legitimate human response to real historical and current political provocations, that is to say, to give it the same legitimacy that Sharon's self-righteousness and chauvinistic claims are granted. Sharon sees uninterrupted terror against Jews over the course of the last hundred years and denies Palestinian dispossession. The writer of the Islamist e-mail, likewise, sees a clear and present danger to the Palestinians and, by extension, to the Muslim "ummah" as a whole.

This article was published in the Thursday, January 20, 2005 edition of the Jordan Times. It is used here with permission.