Mobilization against a death foretold

UJFP (French Jewish union for Peace)

The politic world reluctantly reproved the strategy of target assassinations led by Israel for the last three years.Some simple facts nevertheless: one target murder is still a murder and it makes the one who plans it as well as the one who performs it, murderers.

Murder is not an attribute of democracy. It is that of sordid dictatorships and a democracy using such methods indeed looses its democratic status.

The assassination of Sheikh Yassine, spiritual father of the Hamas but mainly a Palestinian religious authority, indicates a significant turn-point in this strategy of war. By attacking a religious symbol, Sharon displays his will to turn a political conflict into a religious one; the prime minister thus shows his intention to internationalise the conflict by instigating the expected Hamas’ threats against Israeli interests all over the world. This allows him to make a link between Palestine and international terrorism at the time of the attacks on Madrid, thus using those terrible images to his advantage. All and every European person had a thought or remembrance of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem when looking at the images of Madrid. The assassination of sheikh Yassine came just a few days later, almost as a reply by the western world to Al’Qaeda’a.

But there is even worse: Sharon has, twice, pointed president Arafat as the next target for assassination and this, in spite of the U.S.’s explicit interdiction. As the biography published in Israel describes him: "he does not stop at red lights". Careful examination of his background clearly shows that his menaces are not idle words and that he always accomplishes them.

The Palestinian situation is getting worse every day and the person of president Arafat, due to his history and to the strength of his symbolic representation of the whole Palestinian people, seems to be the only man capable of federating the different political trends and of maintaining national cohesion in order to aim at negotiations for peace with Israel.

The situation has become so totally unbearable that it favours radicalisation and/or explosion within the Palestinian political people. Arafat’s disappearance would, at this time, bring total confusion to Palestine and would indefinitely thrust aside the negotiated schedules such as the "road map" or the Geneva initiative, but that is precisely what Sharon wants.

Confusion and chaos do not frighten him, on the contrary! They are useful for a carefully tuned strategy.

The assassination of president Arafat is planned, scheduled on the Israeli notebook. Sharon easily managed to have it approved by his staff. Public announcements come in handy to prepare public opinions and foreign governments to this execution; they also allow measure of risks brought upon Israel.

It is a matter of urgency to realize that this is not a simple attempted threaten; to ignore its gravity is to favour its liability. On the contrary, it is necessary and urgent that Sharon should be given a serious formal notice by governments of the world, along with threatens of penalties strong enough to stop him.

French associations interested in Palestinian wrights have the obligation to call upon French and European political staff in order to insist that they show very strong reactions and, more than all, that they take the necessary measures in order to immediately protect the elected president Palestinian president, by the presence of international observers at theMouqata’a. The next coming weeks could well be conclusive for the future of Palestine, as well as they could be for that of Israel.

Could all this be just a way to attain scary effects but not a real danger, a catastrophic scheme?

It is still true that the chief of a government publicly stating that he is going to have the representative of another nation murdered, is a villain, a scoundrel, turning his country into a felon one. This public threaten is ignominious and unacceptable by the democratic countries of the world; it deserves an immediate and scathing response. It is about time that Sharon should be disowned and treated as what he is: a delinquent, offender, without limits and who plays with grenades ready to explode.

Michèle SIBONY
Vice-présidente, UJFP

Union juive française pour la paix (UJFP)
B.P. 102
75960 PARIS Cedex 20
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