Sharon's war

摘要

So the Organisation of Islamic States has determined that Palestinian suicide attacks on Israel do not amount to "terrorism". But how else to describe the murder of a dining-roomful of elderly Jews at their Passover supper in Netanya last week? And this attack, which killed 26 people, was only one of scores of atrocities. Over the past two years, but with mounting intensity since America sent General Anthony Zinni to negotiate a ceasefire, Palestinian "martyrs" sent out from the West Bank have waged a campaign of mass murder against Israeli civilians wherever they gather: sitting in cafes, emerging from synagogue, queuing outside a seaside disco. As intended, these attacks have sown terror and destroyed normal life in the Jewish state. Whatever else you think about Ariel Sharon's decision to send his army back into the Palestinian areas of the West Bank, the Israeli prime minister is therefore entitled to call his new campaign a war against terror. And the Americans, though accused as always of siding as always with their pampered ally, are right to say that Israel is entitled to defend itself. Most Arab leaders, and many European ones, find this self-defence proposition impossible to accept. They are, indeed, outraged by it. At last week's Beirut summit, Arab leaders extended Israel a grudging hand of peace but also voiced admiration (and pledged material support) for the intifada, which they see as a just war whose deserving end-casting off Israel's occupation-justifies the appalling means. Even European governments that are willing to call Palestinian terrorism by its proper name reject Israel's right to make any military reply, least of all by invading territory it signed over to Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority under the Oslo accords.