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01/07/2006:

"The whitewashing of Ariel Sharon"

AS ARIEL SHARON'S career comes to an end, the whitewashing is already underway. Literally overnight he was being hailed as "a man of courage and peace" who had generated "hopes for a far-reaching accord" with an electoral campaign promising "to end conflict with the Palestinians."

But even if end-of-career assessments often stretch the truth, and even if far too many people fall for the old saw about the gruff old warrior miraculously turning into a man of peace, the reality is that miracles don't happen, and only rarely have words and realities been separated by such a yawning abyss.

From the beginning to the end of his career, Sharon was a man of ruthless and often gratuitous violence. The waypoints of his career are all drenched in blood, from the massacre he directed at the village of Qibya in 1953, in which his men destroyed whole houses with their occupants — men, women and children — still inside, to the ruinous invasion of Lebanon in 1982, in which his army laid siege to Beirut, cut off water, electricity and food supplies and subjected the city's hapless residents to weeks of indiscriminate bombardment by land, sea and air.

As a purely gratuitous bonus, Sharon and his army later facilitated the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians at the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, and in all about 20,000 people — almost all innocent civilians — were killed during his Lebanon adventure.

Sharon's approach to peacemaking in recent years wasn't very different from his approach to war. Extrajudicial assassinations, mass home demolitions, the construction of hideous barriers and walls, population transfers and illegal annexations — these were his stock in trade as "a man of courage and peace."
latimes.com

A 'Butcher' Capable of Making Peace
CAIRO — They have called him "the Butcher" and seldom mention his name without listing the places where he has been blamed for bloodshed: Sabra, Shatila, Jenin. During long decades of Middle East strife, few men have been more thoroughly reviled in the Arab world than Ariel Sharon.

But after years of battles and vitriol, and memories of the deaths in those Palestinian refugee camps, many Arabs grappled this week with a nuanced reaction to the failing health of a warrior who helped change the borders of Arab countries.

As the realization hit the region that the Israeli prime minister might no longer lead the Jewish state, a mood of regret and uncertainty crept into the tone of Arab analysts and editorials. As Sharon clung to life, the leaders of Egypt and Jordan, Arab countries that signed peace treaties with Israel, sent word of their concern.

In the end, after all their historical grievances against his wartime tactics, many Arabs saw Sharon as the only leader stubborn and strong enough to push Israel into accepting a Palestinian state. Arabs worried that the loss of Sharon would throw Israel into tumult and freeze already stagnant peace talks.

"It's not that they bought that Sharon suddenly turned into a man of peace, but they saw him as capable of making peace. There is a very big difference," said Iman Hamdi, a professor of political science at the American University of Cairo. "They may still think he's a butcher, they may still hate him, but he's the only one with the guts to withdraw from Gaza."
Well they haved NOT withdrawn from Gaza, and this Reagan-type fallacy of saying that only a war-monger has the balls to make peace is sickening.

The Truth You Don't Hear
What is the current situation on the ground in Palestine? The Israeli narrative that continues to dominate the international media presents an image that is absolutely at odds with reality. The Gaza redeployment was spun as the beginning of a peace process; a great retreat by General Ariel Sharon, who was portrayed as a man of peace. Yet the fact remains that Palestine is 27,000 square kilometres, of which the West Bank constitutes only 5,860 square kilometres, and the Gaza Strip, just 360 sq km. This is equal to only 1.3 per cent of the total land of historic Palestine. So even if Sharon really had withdrawn from Gaza, this would amount to just 5.8 per cent of the occupied territories.

But the Israelis did not get out of Gaza. A big fuss was created about the great sacrifice Israel was making and how painful it was for settlers to leave. If you steal a piece of land and keep it for 20 years, of course it becomes painful to leave it but it is still something stolen that should be returned to its owners. Prior to the disengagement, a total of 152 settlements existed in the occupied territories: 101 in the West Bank, 30 in East Jerusalem, and 21 in the Gaza Strip. These figures do not include the settlements that Sharon and the Israeli army have created in the West Bank without officially recognising them. With the disengagement, and the evacuation of settlements in Gaza and four small settlements in the Jenin area of the West Bank, 127 settlements have been left in place.