If Ariel Sharon falls from power because of his involvement in a sordid little bribery scandal, little is likely to change in Israel’s oppressive policy toward the Palestinians. Sharon may epitomize Zionist oppression of the Palestinians, but the awful achievement of this policy is not the work of one man.
Behind Sharon in the Likud party are the architects of an unflinching drive toward a greater Israel. Behind Likud is the rest of the Israeli political establishment, including the Labour Party, whose agenda is little different. There are Israeli politicians who see the crushing of Palestine as folly, but this is a political, not a moral judgment. There are even a few Israelis who believe that what the Israeli state has done and continues to do to the Palestinians is wrong on moral grounds. But these people are an insignificant minority within a state that was built on and can only survive with Zionist policies. Thus the only things that change in Israel are the presentation and the degree to which the country’s leaders are prepared to pursue the long-term aim of oppressing and ousting the Arabs from their midst. The good cop-bad cop routine plays well with an American public suckered into blind support for an Israel which it sees as the oppressed party.
With Sharon, we have been in the bad cop phase, and he has played his part masterfully. The game is simple. Announce an extreme position and, when the world protests, backtrack and, in an act of ostensible moderation, settle for half of the extreme. Thus the wall carving up Palestinian territory has changed from being a naked annexation of land to a temporary measure to keep out suicide bombers. But it would not suit Zionist aims to keep out all suicide bombers. Some have to be allowed to get through to murder and maim, so international sympathy can once again be stirred for poor defenseless Israel.
Meanwhile, internationally sponsored peace initiatives are greeted with the glum prophecy that they will not work. Nevertheless, because Israel desires peace and moderation, it will reluctantly go to the negotiating table. The tactic of course is to draw out and frustrate the negotiating process to the point where the Palestinian men of violence return to their dreadful business. The first or, if they want to seem long-suffering, the second suicide bomb blast will force Israeli from the negotiating table, and it can then return to tightening the screws on the Palestinians.
Along the way, the legitimate Palestinian leadership is treated with contempt and its authority continually undermined. That way there can never be any danger that the world will see moderate Palestinian opinion. Sharon is merely one exponent of this well-scripted charade. If he falls from power, there are plenty of understudies to take over.
