Haaretz
Sivan 17, 5765
The atmosphere in the meeting between Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen
(Mahmoud Abbas) was charged and tense, reported Sharon's people. In the
context of the endless spin, they are interested in presenting Sharon as a
firm leader, who doesn't give breaks to any Arab. "He demanded that
[Abbas] dismantle the terror infrastructure," they announced with
admiration, and the newspapers quoted them enthusiastically. "We didn't
give them anything," they emphasized, and the Israeli public emerged
satisfied. Look, we gave it to them again. Although we're withdrawing from
Gaza, we proved to them who's the boss here and who gets
reprimanded.
Sharon, cynic that he is, continued to maneuver on the
matter of home demolitions. He is both for and against. Who is as familiar
with the soul of the Likud Central Committee members, whose greatest fear
is "to come out looking like suckers versus the Arabs," and, therefore, if
we have to withdraw, at least let's destroy everything. Let them
suffer.
The Palestinians are also vacillating between yes and no.
On one hand, during meetings on the subject, they supported demolishing
the buildings, apparently in order to prevent Israel from demanding money
for them. But in an interview Abu Mazen gave Israel television's Channel 1
this week, he said explicitly that he would like the houses and public
buildings to be left in place, "so that they will be used for the benefit
of the Palestinian people." And if Israel demolishes them despite that, he
added, he will be willing to clear the ruins and use them as a basis for
the construction of the Gaza port. That is actually the agreement reached
by Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and PA Security Minister Mohammed
Dahlan: We will demolish, and they will clear. A kind of insane and
grotesque agreement.
The demolition festival was led by Finance
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a ministerial consultation held by Sharon
about a month ago, Netanyahu enthusiastically supported the demolition. In
his opinion, "Leaving the buildings will serve as a great moral victory
for the Palestinians - equivalent to `Have you murdered and also
inherited?' - and we must prevent a situation in which Palestinian
murderers inherit the homes of their victims, and dance on the roofs while
calling for the destruction of Israel."
Netanyahu (who is not at
all disturbed by the negative economic consequences of canceling the
disengagement) is enlisting the best of Holocaust rhetoric to his aid.
From his point of view, the settlers are victims rather than the
representatives of a cruel occupation, who seized lands that didn't belong
to them, who made the Palestinians work at starvation wages, who turned
the lives of the residents of Gaza into a prolonged hell under an
apartheid regime. He doesn't even hesitate to use such false emotional
terms as "the destruction of Israel." Everything is permitted in order to
prevent the disengagement and to bring down Sharon.
His hatred for
the Arabs is so profound that he is incapable of seeing them as human
beings who also have dreams and hopes for a normal, quiet life. He is
afraid of "a great moral victory" for the Palestinians. But anyone with a
brain knows the victory does in fact belong to them. We fled the Gaza
Strip because of the terror attacks, the military and economic burden, and
the firing on Sderot - because we understand only force. That's why
they'll dance with joy in any case, with or without the
houses.
After we have demolished thousands of houses in Gaza and on
the Philadelphi route, and left families to the mercy of the sun and the
rain, Netanyahu and his friends want to strengthen Israel's destructive
image in the eyes of every television viewer throughout the world. The
hatred that already exists toward Israel and the Jews is not enough for
them. They want all the inhabitants of Europe and North America to see the
bulldozers turning the houses into piles of ruins, and the Palestinians
watching them from their miserable tin shacks. Is there a worse image than
that in terms of the Israeli interest? What condemnations will be leveled
at Israel for destroying buildings that can serve as vacation villages,
hotels, entertainment facilities, universities and conference
centers?
We are approaching the 11th hour, but there is still time
to turn back the wheel of demolition. Demolishing houses is a barbaric
act, it is inhumane, immoral and un-Jewish. Those in favor of demolition
want to imprint the withdrawal with the dust of the demolitions, and thus
to raise higher the walls of hatred - in order to prevent any possibility
of reconciliation between the two nations. They must not be allowed to do
so.