A hawk in flight

Against the backdrop of US efforts to resume peace talks, Sharon has been aggressing Palestinians on all fronts, writes Khaled Amayreh from Jerusalem
Rather than hailing the virtual halt to the Palestinians' armed resistance, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appears to have ordered his forces to keep up the assault on the beleaguered people.
A fresh round of bloodletting began on 30 December when Israeli occupation troops ambushed and killed six Palestinian civilians who the Israeli army alleged were "terrorists" on their way to attack Israeli troops.
An occupation army spokesman initially claimed that three of the victims were trying to infiltrate the settlement of Eli Seinai, built on confiscated Palestinian land belonging to the village of Beit Lahya.
A few hours later, the spokesman changed his story, saying that the young men were only heading toward the settlement when they were shot and killed.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) condemned the killing of the six Gazan civilians as "a vile atrocity" aimed at "provoking the Palestinians to retaliate against Israel."
The killing in Gaza took place as the Israeli occupation army continued nightly incursions and raids into PA- administered towns and villages, ostensibly for the purpose of arresting "wanted Palestinians."
This week, the Israeli army raided villages in Hebron, Tulkarm, Nablus, Ramallah and Gaza, where Israeli soldiers harassed, beat, and humiliated Palestinian families. Israeli soldiers reportedly tattooed numbers on the arms of Palestinian detainees, allegedly to identify them more easily.
Meanwhile, Sharon's actions suggested that he intends to be even more intransigent. This week he told his increasingly powerless foreign minister, Shimon Peres, that creating a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was no longer a goal of the state of Israel.
Sharon, according to Israeli state run radio, also told Peres that his discussions with Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Ahmed Qurei should be restricted to security issues, emphasising that Peres was not authorised to initiate "political talks" with the Palestinian Authority.
Further confirming his refusal to send positive signals to the Palestinian leadership, Sharon even ordered Israeli President Moshe Katsav to refuse to accept a PA invitation to address the Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah.
The invitation was relayed to Katsav earlier this week by former Arab Knesset member Abdel-Wahab Darawshe who suggested that Katsav propose to Palestinian legislators a year-long cease-fire allowing the two sides to resume peace talks.
Sharon ordered Katsav to close the subject, saying a visit to Arafat in Ramallah would undermine Israel's position and effectively break the blockade that Israeli troops are imposing on the Palestinian president in Ramallah.
This week, Peres revealed, probably inadvertently, that Sharon and his ideological bedfellows had been considering as their main strategy the idea of "transfer" -- effectively the expulsion of millions of Palestinians from the entirety of mandatory Palestine.
Israeli state radio quoted Peres as saying, "I don't think that transfer is a viable option, and the more we talk about it, the more damage we suffer in the international arena."
Because Peres's comments did not respond to a question about transfer, the foreign minister's remarks give the impression that imply that he knew of high-level discussions on the matter.
The Jordanian government may well have received word of a trend to that effect when one of the country's officials warned last week that Jordan would close all border crossings from the West Bank to Jordan in the event that a large number of Palestinian refugees try to enter Jordan.
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