In an August 2 editorial the Wall Street Journal said there is "a right and wrong with this struggle, which at bottom is an attack on the West and the idea of democracy. Hard as it is to accept, the differences with the Palestinian regime...may just not be bridgeable." The paper urged the Bush administration to shift gears, recognize the interests of the Israeli rulers and the Palestinian people as irreconcilable, and declare itself unambiguously in favor of Tel Aviv's bellicose course.

Arguing against Washington's ongoing attempts to restart negotiations, it said in support of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon that he "comprehended from the first that the danger was not that the situation would degenerate into war [but that] Israel was already in a war...a continuation...of the war of independence from 1948, when the Arabs rejected the United Nations compromise and attacked the fledgling Jewish state."

In an interview featured in the New York Times, former Labor Party leader Barak focused his attack on Yasir Arafat, head of the Palestinian Authority, as a foil for how he thinks the Palestinian people as a whole should be treated. "I think [Arafat] should feel a cold shoulder from the world," he said, characterizing him as a "thug" who "runs a terrorist enterprise."

The paper reported that Barak supports Sharon "when he sends the Israeli army to kill accused masterminds of terrorism, while stopping short of threatening all-out war against the Palestinian Authority." The Times added that "'such calculated killings...were also carried out under Mr. Barak."

"It was time for Israel and other countries to get tougher with Mr. Arafat by 'isolating' him, much as they do figures like [Iraqi president] Saddam Hussein and [Libyan president] Muammar el-Qaddafi," the Times said of Barak's views. Israel should unilaterally redraw its borders to cut the Palestinians off completely, Barak said, a move that "would involve creating a security zone along the Jordan River and forming large settlement blocs to include 80 percent of the Israelis living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip."  
 
Claims Palestinian leader an 'obstacle'
Mortimer Zuckerman presented his views in a New York Daily News column titled, "Arafat is the obstacle to peace in Mideast," complete with a racist caricature cartoon of Arafat. Responding to statements by Palestinian leaders on why negotiations with Israel have failed, Zuckerman stated that the Palestinian leader "seeks to rewrite history through a propaganda campaign."

Arafat and Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Korei had told the press that aside from a patchwork of territorial "concessions" offered by Tel Aviv in the negotiations, the Israeli government demanded control over military affairs, the water aquifer, and other key resources and powers as part of a settlement. Arafat said the two parties never even got to the issue of allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes in successive assaults by the Israeli regime to return. In response to their demand for a contiguous state, the Palestinians were offered a group of "cantons," the Palestinian officials said.

In 1967 Israel launched a surprise invasion of Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, and, in a six-day war, seized the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Unlike their seizure of land in 1948, which was marked by massacres and other actions to drive Palestinians out of the country, the Israeli imperialists sought to capture the Palestinian populations of these regions and to superexploit this large pool of labor power. Today the Palestinian Authority has nominal control over the Gaza Strip and hundreds of spots in the West Bank--areas the Israeli government says it can invade at any time for "security reasons."

Dubbing Arafat a "liar" who talks "glibly in English about his readiness to make peace, then ominously in Arabic about erasing Israel from the map," Zuckerman opposed conceding to Palestinian demands for the resumption of talks or the assignment of an international observer force to the Middle East. He supported Tel Aviv's assassinations policy, writing that "preemptive action, based on intelligence, is the only way to minimize the dangers terrorism poses to a civil society.... No American leader could survive if he failed to take preemptive action against terrorist groups."  
 
Unbridgeable differences
Washington and other major imperialist powers represented in the European Union continue to call for a restart to negotiations, and frequently differ with their allies in Tel Aviv over how to deal with the Palestinian struggle.

After a strike July 31 by Israeli helicopter gunships in the West Bank City of Nablus, which took the lives of two leaders of Hamas and six other people, the president of the European Union issued a statement in "rejection of targeted assassinations of Palestinian militants by Israel." He also exhorted "the Palestinian Authority to intensify with unfailing determination its efforts against extremist violence and terrorism."

U.S. vice president Richard Cheney expressed mild tactical disagreement with the Israeli action, saying that "there's some justification in [Israel's] trying to protect themselves by preempting. Clearly, it would be better if they could work with the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority and the terrorists of whatever stripe could be headed off and imprisoned and tried, rather than having them actually assassinated."

State Department spokesperson Charles Hunter used stronger language, saying, "The [Israeli] attack represents an escalation, is highly provocative, and makes efforts to restore calm much more difficult."

The assault sparked a mass outpouring the next day in the West Bank city of Nablus, home to more than 150,000 people. Tens of thousands of people packed the central square. Participants accompanied the victims' coffins, carried Palestinian flags and posters, and perched on rooftops to hear speakers who included the city governor and a representative of the Fatah organization. All the major Palestinian organizations were represented in the action.  
 
Closer to 'total confrontation'
The attack took Israel a "step closer towards total confrontation with the Palestinians," reported the August 2 Financial Times. In late July several major media outlets had reported draft Israeli plans for an all-out military assault--a strategy that is the subject of widespread debate in Israel's ruling circles.

"Israel's action appeared to mark a turning point in the 10-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation," continued the report. Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, it stated, had de-emphasized international diplomacy, "mov[ing] on from attempts to win international support and pin blame for the collapse of the cease-fire, brokered by the U.S. in June, on Yassir Arafat."

Sharon has been criticized inside his cabinet and within the Likud party as he has resisted calls for the immediate launch of a full-scale military offensive. According to the Times, one recent Likud rally degenerated into a shouting match as Sharon defended "his relative restraint against those urging preemptive invasive action into Palestinian-controlled areas." Likud parliamentarian Yuval Steinitz stated that the Israeli military should "go in to destroy Palestinian infrastructure and destroy illegal mortars and weapons...not a permanent hold but a preemptive strike to prevent a greater war later on."

Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit is one cabinet minister who support's Sharon's present course. "All-out war against the Palestinian Authority would be a terrible mistake. We have to do everything possible to put a stop to terrorism without setting off a real war," he said on August 4.
 
 
Related article:
Israeli rulers beat the war drums  
 
 
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