THE GENIUS OF SHARON

Back in early February, I told you that Ariel Sharon’s purpose in building a Security Fence walling off the “West Bank” was to precipitate a civil war among Palestinian terrorist groups (The Coming Palestinian Civil War, TTP Weekly Report, February 6, 2004). Four months later, we can see Sharon’s strategy is clearly working.

In those intervening months, terrorist attacks are way down while the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) has relentlessly hunted terrorists down and either killed or stymied them. Hamas has been decapitated. Arafat, sick and dying, finds his grip on power slipping away. Even senior members of the Palestinian Authority run by Arafat are admitting that it would disintegrate except that it pays salaries to 140,000 workers – which are now in serious arrears.

The February essay predicted a dark period of murderous chaos with Palestinian militants killing each other off in a warfare of competing mafias. Thus there are now news reports that militants in the West Bank and Gaza have “created a lawless society in which citizens complain more about the armed gangs than about Israeli soldiers.” Yet there are indications that this could be short-lived.

In the Palestinian town of Tulkarm, once the center for the terrorist Al Aqsa Brigades, residents have declared the “Intifada” or terrorist uprising against Israel to be finished. Only remnants of the Al Aqsa Brigades are left. One of its former members, Nidal Jallad, told a journalist, “Everybody’s either dead or in prison. It’s over. We’ve had enough.”

The good news isn’t just that the terrorists are giving up. Because they are, life is getting better for many Palestinians. The Jerusalem Post quotes Hader Abu Sheikh, an official of the Palestinian Legislative Council: “There is 70% more nightlife in Jenin (a main West Bank city) than a year ago. We are talking about the resumption of traditional Palestinian nightlife. Weddings, men sitting in cafes late at night, women visiting each other…”

From Ziad Mifleh, director-general of the Jenin Chamber of Commerce: “There are positive business indicators, as people are starting to think of capital and investment and commerce again.”

And this amazing admission from Palestinian Legislative Council member Sakhri Turkuman: The security fence has “created some stability in Jenin.”

There may be more – lots more — violence and bloodshed to come. There may still be a Palestinian Götterdammerung. But the odds of it are now reduced. The IDF’s ruthless gunning down of terrorists and Sharon’s implacability towards Arafat have so decimated and demoralized them that even elements of the Palestinian Authority security service have begun to mutiny.

Earlier this week, a Palestinian police unit of 130 officers and men seized a base of Force 17, Arafat’s personal bodyguards. The mutineers’ commander, Ahmed Mobarakh, said his men demand the removal of their top commander, General Abdel Razak el Mujeida, and other officers for stealing their salaries and supplies. He warned that unless their demands to cleanse the Palestinian Authority of corruption, “thousands of Palestinian security personnel will join us,” becoming a full-scale revolt against Arafat.

The Palestinians, as Sharon planned, are turning on themselves, and with any luck, Palestinian leaders who “love their children more than they hate the Jews” (in Golda Meir’s words) may emerge more quickly now.

This is thanks to the genius and courage of Ariel Sharon – and in no small part to that of George W. Bush who has steadfastly supported him. Because of this support, President Bush received 23 standing ovations – yes, 23 standing ovations when he spoke last month in Los Angeles to members of AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee).

Below is what To The Point reported to you in February. As you read it, you might consider giving your own ovation to Ariel Sharon and George Bush for the precipitation of peace that is increasingly possible in Israel today.

The Coming Palestinian Civil War, TTP Weekly Report, February 6, 2004:

Sharon is building his Security Fence in order to precipitate a Palestinian Civil War.

The ostensible purpose of the fence is to wall out Palestinian suicide-terrorists. Its further purpose is, by securing a Fortress Israel behind its walls, to evaporate the Palestinian fantasy of obliterating Israel.

What sustains Arafat, the PLA, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and all other Palestinian terrorist groups, is the hope, the dream, of someday destroying The Zionist Entity, of “pushing Israel into the sea” and establishing a Palestinian State from the Jordan to the Mediterranean free of the hated Jews.

What Sharon understands is that this hope is the only common bond that binds all these terrorist groups into a “Palestinian” identity. Destroy the hope and you destroy the bond. Kill the hope and the terrorists will start killing each other. Outside the fence and bereft of their destruction-of-Israel dream, suicide-terrorists will be blowing up fellow Palestinians in bloody internecine power struggles.

Such a civil war bloodbath is the only way to purge the Palestinians not only of the terrorists among them, but of the mentality of terrorism that infects them all. Terrorist organizations completely dominate Palestinian society. All attempts to advocate political and economic freedom for Palestinians, genuine democracy, an end to the gargantuan corruption of Arafat, the PLA, Hamas, et al, and regarding Jews with anything other than a Nazi-type hatred, are brutally and quickly snuffed.

Sharon sees the most efficient way to assure Israel’s survival is to create a situation where the terrorists kill themselves off. This requires him to get those Gaza settlers out of Indian Country. Once the Palestinian Civil War starts, they are toast unless he gets them safely back inside Fortress Israel.

The brilliance, scope, depth, and Machiavellian deviousness of Sharon’s Fence Strategy is so breathtaking that there is only one world leader shrewd enough and supportive of Israel enough to figure it out and back Sharon: George W. Bush.

In June of 2002, Bush gave a major speech in which he said: “I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty.”

Bush’s marginalization of Arafat and the PLA continues to this day. While he has allowed some mild criticism of the Fence for diplomatic cover, he has privately assured Sharon of his support — and not just of the Fence, but for Sharon’s announced plans to double the Jewish population of the Golan from 17,000 to 34,000 in 3 years, and keep increasing the number of Jews in the so-called West Bank (now at 236,000).

It was the Palestinians’ choice to play a zero-sum winner-take-all game with Israel. If their leaders had the slightest desire for an honest share-the-territory peace, there would be no conflict today. Sharon decided if that’s the way the game must be played, then so be it. The only way for there to be peace is for either Israel or the Palestinians to give up, flat-on-their-back defeated, and Sharon is making sure it will be the latter.

The suicidal energy of the Palestinians is about to be turned upon themselves. It will be a Götterdammerung of blood and horror, but the Palestinians left standing will be able and ready to live in a real peace with the Israelis, and flourish together. That was the dream of Israel’s founders, but only Ariel Sharon is tough enough to know how to achieve it.