- "Reality shows that under Ariel Sharon's government,
violent friction has become the only contact between Israelis and Palestinians
and the government is doing nothing to instruct the army to behave in a
restrained manner in its ongoing security operations."
-
- The dry account provided by the army said an armored
force entered the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza early yesterday morning
to strike at Islamic Jihad activists. According to the Israel Defense Forces
report, a firefight ensued between armed Palestinians and the armored force
and the IDF identified direct hits on 10 armed men. The result is that
at least nine Palestinians were killed in the incident, five of them from
the Islamic Jihad. The Palestinians said an 11-year-old boy and three workers
were killed and an ambulance driver was wounded.
-
- It was another one of those routine reports that the
Israeli public has grown used to. Apparently the public is accepting a
situation in which military activity in Palestinian towns is accompanied
by indiscriminate killing.
-
- With a kind of collective shrug, the killing is excused
as something self-evident in the circumstances of the war, in which it
is difficult to distinguish between terrorists and innocent civilians.
Nobody disputes the need to chase down activists from terror groups that
want to strike in Israeli population centers, and the circumstances of
the incident are such that occasionally innocent civilians can be accidentally
harmed because terrorists operate in their midst.
-
- But lately, there's a growing impression that the army's
finger is too quick on the trigger and its senior commanders are forgiving
toward soldiers and junior officers responsible for the fighting and its
consequences. The IDF must provide a more serious explanation about the
unnecessary deaths left behind after its operations.
-
- The IDF is trying to persuade us that the focused preventive
operations, even when lethal, are necessary and that these operations are
conducted against terrorists when there is near certainty that terror attacks
against Israelis will take place. The IDF operation yesterday does not
adhere to either of those two principles.
-
- The IDF fired, according to reports, at armed men who
opened fire at it, including using an anti-tank rocket. These were not
armed men whose identity was known in advance and whose plot to carry out
an act of terror could not be foiled any other way. And to them must be
added an unknown number of casualties who were hurt because they happened
upon the scene.
-
- The justified war against terror cannot by itself be
the way to end the conflict. The IDF must stick to the principle under
which, lacking any choice, it responds to acts of Palestinian terror, enabling
the political echelon on both sides to discuss substantive solutions.
-
- Reality shows that under Ariel Sharon's government, violent
friction has become the only contact between Israelis and Palestinians
and the government is doing nothing to instruct the army to behave in a
restrained manner in its ongoing security operations.
-
- That is not meant to absolve the Palestinian Prime Minister
Ahmed Qureia's government of responsibility for the political crisis, but
the Israeli side is apparently not making any effort to renew dialogue.
-
- And now, as American mediators come to the region, when
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and Egyptian intelligence chief Omar
Suleiman are trying to revive the negotiations or at least get a cease-fire,
and when Arab leaders are trying to find a reasonable formula for a solution,
such a grave incident takes place in Gaza. © Copyright 2004 Haaretz.
All rights reserved
-
- http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/388246.html
|
