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Palestinian Terrorists Desperate, Not Cowardly
Posted on 2001-12-11 10:44:45 by dalliaa |
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 Commentary on the current mid-east stagnant situation. Peter Preston attempts to analyse and put forth solutions to the problem following the suicide bombings in ben Yuhuda Street. Preston asks where the line is drawn on the term 'terrorism' and where do we go from here ?
There's that word again. Cowardly - as in "these despicable and cowardly actions must be brought to an end". This particular bit of rent-a-response flowed predictably from Colin Powell after the bombs in Ben Yehuda street had taken too many young Israeli lives and ruined dozens more - though he could, of course, have been talking about the twin towers again. Terrorism, in his pat definition, is always cowardly. Alas: it isn't so.
The two young Palestinians who brought such horror to west Jerusalem on Saturday night, or the others who died in the debris of buses across the country yesterday, are like the 19 young Arabs who staged September 11: dead by their own hands, blown to pieces with their victims. You may heap any combination of adjectives on them you like. But leave "cowardly" out of the equation. Desperation carries its own lexicon.
Whichever way our generals in this "war" against terrorism twist and turn, we keep coming back to the Middle East, to Israel and the embryo state that might be Palestine. Not because it leads us straight to Osama bin Laden - but because, in too many ways, it doesn't. Bin Laden merely adds the Palestinian cause to his bizarre agenda as a political afterthought. The carnage across Israel yesterday - like the tit-for-tat carnage that follows it - is more central than that. It backs us against the Wailing Wall. It demands to know what we mean by "terror".
Afghanistan, a designated war zone, operates to conventional rules. Armies mass around Kandahar. Commando squads scour mountain caves. Civilians endure collateral damage. It matters - in Belgrano mode - whether the Northern Alliance have copies of the Geneva convention in their knapsacks. And already a movable circus of negotiators troops between Bonn and Kabul, trying to agree the forms of words that go with peace settlements. There is, in short, the appearance of a familiar, comforting structure to events. Here is a war with victories and defeats easily recognised - and supposed final triumph only one brass band short of a load.
Where does George Bush go from here? Anywhere that a fleet of B-52s will carry him. On to Somalia and Sudan for a while, perhaps - faraway places of which his public opinion knows nothing. But then, all too clearly, Saddam Hussein will be centre stage. Unfinished business. The fragments of Iraqi opposition are mustered for orchestration as some kind of united front. George talks menacingly about the "consequences" for Saddam.
See Full Text of the Article from the Guardian.
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