The Israeli's captured a munitions ship they claim was headed for Palestine. Sharon and the right wingers are foaming at the mouth and Zinni still thinks there is a chance for peace.

Zinni leaves upbeat, despite ship incident

Arafat and Sharon's double game

It is clear that the smuggling of Katyusha rockets to the territories does not contribute to the security of the citizens of Israel, just as the use of helicopters and F-16s does not prevent the escalation of terror and violence.

On the other hand, one doesn't have to be a famous historian, or even to look far, in order to know that nationalist organizations have abandoned the path of terrorism when they succeeded in freeing themselves from the yoke of occupation. In war as in war, there is shooting, arms smuggling, lying and a loss of confidence. However, at the end, after the blood price has been paid, there is usually a resolution, and one may hope - a political compromise. The reason for the dead end in which we find ourselves is that both sides are talking about peace and making war.

If it turns out that Arafat is in fact talking about a cease-fire and at one and the same time smuggling arms, he will cut off the branch on which men of peace such as Dr. Sari Nusseibeh and Dr. Yossi Beilin are sitting. One picture of the cache of Katyushas that the PA was planning to launch at the residents of Israel, outweighs dozens of peace manifestos.

But the same is true of the Palestinians: The sight of a new settlement next to their home outweighs all the agreements, from Oslo to Mitchell, from Wye to Sharm al-Sheikh.

Traumatic experiences such as the smuggling of Katyushas and suicide attacks naturally distract people's attention from central but dry facts. Who will now question Sharon's demand for a total cease-fire before he agrees to begin the implementation of the Mitchell report?

Who remembers that the late minister Rehavam Ze'evi repeatedly said that he would not have remained in the Sharon government if it had formally approved this report? Could settler [and present tourism minister] Benny Elon sit in the government that signed a document which says that it must "freeze all settlement activity, including the `natural growth' of existing settlements," and that "the kind of security cooperation desired by the government of Israel cannot for long coexist with settlement activity described very recently by the European Union as `causing great concern' and by the U.S. as `provocative'?
(...)

The preoccupation with the cease-fire, like the proposal of the National Security Council to get rid of Arafat, or to wait for his successor, are part of the national sport of throwing the ball into Arafat's court. How many Israelis are willing to bet that if Arafat arrests all the Hamas activists, and doesn't allow a single gun to cross the border - Sharon will make an offer that will leave the PA chairman alive? The interests and beliefs of the two can come together only on the battlefield. Peres and Ben-Eliezer, Tenet and Mitchell, Zinni and Solana, the residents of Israel and the Palestinians, are only extras in this endless war dance, which is accompanied by off-key songs of peace.
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Sharon hammers out yet more terror

Suicide is neither political nor religious. It is what it is: a sad brew of despair, a hope for Liberation from a life found not to be worth living. It must be recognized that this distressing situation has come to be exploited and spread by those who have political ends.

The consequences of this movement have been devastating, not only for the Israelis but for Palestinians as well. Suicide bombings have been spawned by the continued brutality and the humiliating conditions created by the Israeli occupation that has sucked life and hope out of a generation of Palestinians and created the fertile ground for this particular "rush to martyrdom".

Sharon's blows against the P.A. are designed to further weaken it and, ultimately, to destroy it. Israeli society appears to be supporting Sharon's measures. The terror of occupation and the destruction of the P.A. will produce only one thing: more terror.

"It would be a tragic mistake to believe that everything not achieved by force can be achieved by even more force," Israeli opposition leader Yossi Sarid recently observed. Just as the suicide bombers cannot succeed in ending the occupation, so Sharon's campaign of violence cannot succeed in halting Palestinian demands for justice.

At the end of the day, if the P.A. is destroyed and full occupation restored, Israel will be left with a situation more destabilizing and potentially more destructive than the one that existed before the first intifada.
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