The Sinai bombings present Sharon with an opportunity to further marginalise the Palestinian cause. He will exploit it with relish, argues Azmi Bishara That Israel's Gaza rampage was not just a response to the firing of Qassam missiles does not mean we have to subscribe to claims that Israel needs no excuse for its actions. That argument, with its implication that no means of combat can influence Israeli policy or behaviour, is self-defeating. The latest Israeli incursion into Gaza was not unrelated to the rudimentary weapon -- missile is perhaps too grand a term for these devices -- Gazans have developed to fight the situation into which they have been thrust, a situation, unprecedented in modern history, that essentially locks a million and a half people into a prison with two gates. Israeli violence in Gaza, in Jenin and Nablus, is structurally integral to the problems of disengagement -- you cannot impose a unilateral solution to a conflict without recourse to extraordinary levels of violence. Unlike the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon where a sovereign state claimed control and responsibility on the evacuated areas, the issue in Gaza is not just one of unilateral withdrawal, but of redeployment on conditions Israel believes will consolidate its control over areas of the West Bank. It hopes to control Gaza with less friction from the outside and annex parts of the West Bank while at the same time improving its international standing and alleviating international pressures to engage in a settlement process Israel neither wants nor can engage in given its current leadership and the state of public opinion. (Sharon's determination to abort any possibility of negotiations with Syria has been splashed across Israeli newspapers.) It is the Qassam missiles, though, that have thrown into relief Israel's threadbare justifications for the construction of the security wall and unilateral disengagement. The wall cannot hold even against such a primitive weapon. Israel is perfectly aware that after the redeployment of the Israeli troops the occupants of Gaza will never accept their fate as prisoners, will not accept an occupation at arm's length from the other side of a wall, certainly not in the absence of even the promise of a just settlement and a resolution to the question of Palestinian national sovereignty. Israel is not taken in by its hollow demagoguery about the culture of "terrorism". It is perfectly aware of the causes and knows exactly what to expect. It will make every attempt to minimise the possibility of Palestinian reaction, by using all its military capacities to produce a climate of fear. The brutal assault against Gaza is, then, an attempt to provide an answer to a knot of intertwined problems. There are, for example, domestic political issues, raised by those who question the feasibility of suppressing Palestinian resistance by brute force. The Israeli government's answer is to move from one kind of violence to another, from one phase of escalation to the next, hence the military incursions into poor residential areas and targeted assassinations in Damascus. There are also strategic questions over how to inhibit the development of the Palestinians' capacity to resist following unilateral withdrawal. Israeli efforts in this regard have been greatly facilitated by the Sinai bombings, the first operation that has allowed a link to be made between international terrorist networks and the Palestinians, and the first time international terrorist operations have been mounted around the borders of Palestine. Regardless of their positions vis-�-vis the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, the Palestinian factions maintain good relations with Egypt and want to keep it that way. If asked, the factions would all reply that only harm could come from attempting to rock the economic or political stability of Egypt. More importantly, Palestinian political organisations have made it clear that they will not target Israeli citizens abroad. Disengaging from violence of any sort against civilians in nations outside Palestine was a wise decision, in spite of the fact that the Israelis have not responded in kind. The Sinai bombings offer Sharon an historic opportunity to promote tighter security coordination in the region and provide a justification for linking security coordination with economic and political interests. The response of Egyptian public opinion to the Luxor attacks of 1994 was sufficiently vehement to alter the course of fundamentalist violence, compelling many organisations to modify their thinking. If this was the case when the perpetrators were Egyptian, imagine the reaction when such attacks are linked to non-Egyptian groups? It would be impossible to misconstrue the reaction of Egyptian public opinion to the Sinai operations and, in spite of the Egyptian government's attempts to play down the magnitude and causes of the bombings in order to prevent panic in the tourist industry, you can be sure that it is taking the matter very seriously. The first reaction of Israeli ministers was to hurl criticism at Egypt for being slow to allow in Israeli rescue workers. Such inanities and fictions are concocted for media consumption in times of public hysteria. Sharon quickly put a cap on that, reproaching his ministers for their pettiness and reiterating his opinion, and that of "experts", that had the victims all been Egyptian the Egyptian authorities could not have acted more competently, this is their capacity. Here was an opportunity for Sharon to extend his embrace to Egypt over the matter of security coordination in the fight against terrorism. He told his ministers to swallow their knee-jerk responses and keep their opinions about Egypt to themselves. Israel, as we all know, uses terrorism as a blanket term. And now, acting on Sharon's directives, Israeli ministers are suddenly singing Egypt's praises in the hope of flattering Cairo into closer security cooperation, even if that means meeting the Egyptian demand to amend the Camp David peace treaty to permit for a stronger Egyptian military presence in Sinai. Whether or not Egypt responds to these overtures, Israel has seized upon the Sinai bombings to step up its drive to establish a network of bilateral security cooperation links in the region, while simultaneously sustaining its brutal assault on Gaza. Meanwhile, one cannot help but note what appear to be Arab efforts to underplay Israel's actions in Gaza. Some Arab newspapers kept the subject off the front page on the first day of the operation while others placed it towards the bottom of that page. This suggests a drive to manufacture a climate of weariness over the Palestinian cause, to engineer fatigue among Arab public opinion. The only non-wearying items that appear newsworthy these days are discussions within the Palestinian leadership, or about the Palestinian leadership and possible candidates. This, for some reason, seems a perennially exciting subject. And it allows the Palestinian cause, and Israeli crime, to be reduced to a constant focus on the role of the Palestinian leadership and the need to change it. Those who would advise the Palestinians have tired of everything but harping on this crisis. They remain doggedly persistent. Israeli crimes appear nothing but a secondary detail, Israeli declarations that they will wreak vengeance on Palestinian society as a means to pressure the factions into halting their military operations fall on deaf ears. The official American definition of terrorism, as defined in the Patriot Act, holds that terrorism is "to subject American civilians to acts of violence with the intent of influencing the policy of their government". Well, Tel Aviv has made it abundantly clear that it is bombarding Palestinians in order to influence the policy of their leadership. But the US vetoed a security council decision condemning Israeli aggression in Gaza. And what is the Arab stand on this? You won't find out in the Arab press. There was a time when we spoke about American phases in the region. There was a Truman phase, a Kissinger phase, a Carter phase and a Baker phase. Perhaps we should now talk of a Sharon phase, a phase of Israeli schemes and projects. Its most salient features are to be found in the military and political structures and operations required to marginalise the Palestinian cause, even in the Arab world, making the disengagement plan the only available alternative, with no roadmaps or even detours. This Israeli phase will be characterised by attempts to internationalise the Congress approved boycott of Syria. The recent UN Security Council resolution on Lebanon -- which has nothing to do with the Lebanese constitution and everything to do with encircling and striking at Syria -- can only be understood as a building block in this process. I would wager that the US, and the Security Council, would have let the whole constitutional matter drop if Damascus had backed down on issues crucial to the Israeli phase. Needless to say, constitutional reform is not among them. The Syrian situation is sufficiently absurd to make even the most painstakingly cautious observer laugh. If Syria really wants peace, Israel says, it must demonstrate this "in deeds, not in words". At the same time, and without batting an eyelash, Israel refuses to negotiate with Syria because negotiations could only result in Israel withdrawing to pre-June 1967 borders. Israel puts about the false claim that Syria is begging on its knees for Israel to negotiate, then turns up its nose at the imagined entreaties, all the better to swagger and strut and play the bully shoving aside pedestrians on the sidewalk. But Syria has made no new overtures of any sort: it has merely reiterated its commitment to previously stated positions on a settlement and on the negotiating process. In concocting this image of a grovelling SyriaIsrael is underscoring the balance of powers in the region. The US hasn't changed one iota. It is still breathing down Syria's neck and it will go on breathing down Syria's neck until Syria does its bidding. But because there are no justifications, not even according to US-Israeli logic, for declaring war on Syria the only course open to them is to do everything in their power to weaken Syria, undermine its sovereignty and encourage others to do the same. These are just some of the traits of the new phase Israel is seeking to usher in to the region. Of course, the going will not be so easy. Apart from the political map inside Israel, there are structural problems Israel will face. The only power at present capable of occupying other nations is embroiled in the war it engineered in Iraq. It has found itself incapable of controlling the pace and the logic -- or lack thereof -- of this war. Israel, in its attempt to inaugurate its own phase in the region, is certain to encounter obstacles next to which those that America is facing in Iraq will pale. So wisdom requires from Israel to get acquainted with its real size in the region. It will also not be harmful for the Arabs to have some knowledge about it so they do not get intimidated so easily.
