In focus: The fall of the Arab system Where are the leaders of the Arab world as Iraq continues to burn and Gaza and Syria appear next, asks Galal Nassar Israel had been waiting for a pretext to unleash its venom against the people, resistance, and Palestinian Authority (PA) in Gaza and the West Bank. The capture of an Israeli occupation soldier offered its convenient cover to wage yet another of its pre- meditated campaigns of aggression, exactly as it often did in the past. Israel used Egypt's closure of the Straits of Tiran in 1967 to wage a full-scale war against its neighbours. It used the assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London in 1982 to invade Lebanon. And it used the case of Ahmad Saadat and Fouad Al-Shobki to lay siege on Yasser Arafat's headquarters in 2002. Since Ariel Sharon's time, Israel has been determined to disengage unilaterally from the Palestinians and liquidate the resistance. And since Hamas came to power, Israel has been waiting for the right moment to bring down the Palestinian government. This is what the current confrontation is all about. Israel wants to liquidate the Palestinian issue and put an end to Palestinian patriotism. It wants the Palestinians to accept self-rule in the areas left after Israel carves off large chunks of the West Bank and Gaza, in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 242. Israel doesn't want to hear the Palestinians talking about Jerusalem, the right of refugees to return to their homes, and a sovereign state on all land occupied in 1967. In brief, Israel doesn't want to hear about Palestinian national rights. To get what it wants, Israel took to claiming that no Palestinian partner existed for negotiations. This claim is Israel's way of turning its back on international obligations, on Resolution 242, the Madrid Conference, the Oslo Accords, and the Roadmap. Three years ago, Israel made up its mind. It started building the apartheid wall in the occupied territories and then proceeded to pull out unilaterally from Gaza. The withdrawal from Gaza was a litmus test. Israel wanted to see how the world would react. Israel soon discovered that its political scheme has the explicit support of the Americans and the implicit backing of the Europeans. But to implement that scheme, Israel would have first to quash the resistance and crush Palestinian human and combat capabilities. Israel learned a lesson from its withdrawal from Gaza. It learned that withdrawal and disengagement alone will not silence the Palestinians. The resistance kept showering Israel with rockets and even carried out operations inside Israel's 1948 borders. This is why Israel decided to go after the resistance. The capture of the Israeli soldier was just an excuse. Israel wants to dismantle the Palestinian Authority because it needs to tell the world that the Palestinians have no one to speak on their behalf. This has been the Israeli line since the siege of President Arafat. Israel boycotted Arafat during his life and has not engaged his successor in serious talks. When Hamas came to power, Israel decided to act. Although it knew that the Americans and Europeans didn't like Hamas either, Israel waited for months to act against the movement. The reason Israel waited is that it was hoping Hamas and Fatah would turn on one another and spare it the task of bringing them both down. Yet Israel's hopes for a full-fledged civil war were dashed once the factions agreed on a document for national consensus. Palestinian common sense has triumphed, and thus deprived the Israelis of the spectacle of domestic strife they'd been hoping for. It is no coincidence that the Israelis attacked as soon as the document was signed. Once the Palestinians were acting as one again, the Israelis had no option but to send in the tanks. Israel is fighting the resistance. It is fighting the PA. And it is fighting the Palestinian people who brought the government and PA to power. Israel is taking ministers and parliamentarians, as well as heads of municipalities, into custody. This is all a part of its collective punishment of the Palestinians, matched only by its bombardment of bridges and power plants. What Israel forgets is that you cannot bomb a people into submission, and that moral right is ultimately stronger than the executioner's menace.
