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[/QUOTE][ relationship with Israel, called the action "appalling".
To condemn the action is not to condone Hamas or to paper over the fact that it is a fundamentalist group, which indiscriminately kills civilians. But the thousands upon thousands of Palestinians who poured out in the streets of Gaza and the West Bank, and above all, in Israeli cities like Nazareth, were not condoning or supporting Hamas. They were appalled at Israel’s outrageous conduct. When states take revenge by imitating sub-state terrorists, they reduce themselves to their level. Indeed, morally, they sink even lower, and physically, they can be incomparably more brutal.
The assassination is certain to provoke an unspeakably bloody response through another series of revenge attacks by Hamas. Many Hamas leaders have gone underground, and their newly appointed leader in Gaza, Abdal-Aziz Ranteesi, has vowed apocalyptic revenge — to "make the earth tremble under the feet of the Zionists". The slogan is "war, war, war" on Israel.
Sharon’s plan to assassinate Sheikh Yassin was opposed, not just by his interior minister, but also the head of the Israeli Security Service, Shin Bet — men who cannot be accused of being "soft on terrorism" or covert "Hamas supporters". The Sharon government could not have but willed terrorist attacks. It is inconceivable that it acted in a knee-jerk manner, without knowing of the likelihood of more terrorist strikes.
Sharon does not mind sacrificing the lives of scores, even hundreds, of innocent Israeli civilians, by provoking a large-scale violent response to "targeted assassinations". Such diabolical cynicism has long been integral to Israeli policy. It bears recalling that Hamas is itself the creation of Israel. It has been revealed by Israeli General Yitzhak Sager that beginning in 1978, the Israeli state funded Sheikh Yassin to divide the Palestine national movement and divert it from its PLO-centred secular mainstream.
Over the past three years or so, Israel has succeeded in isolating the secular PLO leadership and promoting Hamas. It has now given the Islamic Brotherhood the very martyr it was looking for. It’s as if Hamas and the Sharon cabinet had become partners or allies in murder, blood and gore. Both are identical practitioners of the politics of revenge
However, Sharon is not just being devilishly and ruthlessly cynical towards his own people. He seems to have larger objectives. At least three are apparent. First, Sharon wants to send out the message that Israel is pulling out from the Gaza Strip, but not with its "tail between its legs", it is doing so from a position of strength. The hope is that Hamas will find it hard to convince the Palestinian people that Israel can be forced out of the West Bank too by violent methods. This will eventually help Israel keep about half of the West Bank, which belongs to Palestine, indeed is its main contiguous territory.
Second, Israel calculates that the violence it provokes will legitimise Sharon’s extremist solutions through growing Israeli civilian support for them. A climate of insecurity and constant fear will impel many Israelis to approve of measures like the "anti-terrorist" 650-km long Apartheid Wall (or 4 times longer than the Berlin Wall), which will permanently tear up Palestinian territory and perpetuate illegal Israeli settlements. A terrorised, terrified population can be manipulated to support the suppression of elementary human rights — and to further dehumanise and demonise the Palestinians.
All Palestinians can then be equated with and vilified as mere scum, vermin, or beasts unworthy of elementary decency or lawful treatment. They are "barbarians who want to take our lives", and must be overpowered by superior force.
The third objective is to create conditions for what many Israelis — and certainly much of the world — consider unthinkable, including measures like mass expulsions or a long-term virtual siege of a territory like Gaza. Hardcore Zionists have no intention of trading land for peace. They want to subjugate the Palestinians, so they can keep some of their land.
Mass expulsions and ethnic cleansing were indispensable to the very creation of the Israeli state, and may be necessary in future to ensure its survival. For Right-wing Zionists, the Palestinians "will always pose a threat and they must therefore be controlled and caged in".
Wait!! Don't tell me, the world owes it to them!!!!!!!
yes well, things should look up now that we've elected a Muslim potus here.....but i've a q...?, do we all face east during the state of the addy address?