What will Israeli premier Sharon do for Mideast peace?

The following is the second of two articles by Azzam Tamimi, a researcher at the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London.

LONDON (JP): It should probably be remembered at this point, and this is something neither the Israelis nor the Americans would like to hear, that Arab and Muslim governments engaged in "normalizing" relations with Israel are undemocratic and unrepresentative of their peoples.

It is not an exaggeration to even say that the majority of the population detests them. The positions of ruler and ruled on the issue of Palestine and making peace with Israel seem as wide apart as the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

Seven years of peace making seem to have produced nothing but more bitterness.

On the Israeli side, Israelis are no less frustrated than the Palestinians. The promise of peace and security is far from fulfilled and Ehud Barak, who won the election less than two years ago, failed scandalously to reach a final agreement with the Palestinian Authority.

Even his decision to withdraw Israeli troops from South Lebanon was a humiliating episode paralleled on the Lebanese side by jubilation and celebration. Rejection of Israel and the level of hatred for the Jews in Arab minds and in their media are no less than they were before any peace talks between Israelis and any Arabs took place.

Israelis express their frustrations by going back to the polls to elect a new prime minister or a new Knesset. Palestinians, on the other hand, who are anyway relieved from the burden of having to choose those who claim to represent them, express their frustrations by taking to the streets to stone Israeli occupation troops. Frustration on both sides was bound to impact on Israeli politics and result in a power challenge.

The election of Sharon was not unexpected and his margin of victory surprised few people. Barak simply proved to be one of the least able politicians in the short history of the Zionist state in Palestine. He lost not only because more people voted for Sharon but also because more than ever people did not vote at all.

Most Palestinians of the 1948 Palestine, known as "Israeli Arabs", boycotted the election altogether. This was in protest against the killing of 17 of them by Israeli security forces during their demonstrations in the first few days of the intifada, held to express solidarity with fellow Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who were under Israeli fire.

But do the Israelis who opted for Sharon really believe that he will be capable of what Barak failed to accomplish? What will he do? With a brutal history attached to his name, will he wage war? And against whom? Will he frighten leader Yasser Arafat into signing what he could not sign before? Or is he simply less likely to "compromise", being a hater of Arabs and a butcher of Palestinians?

The days ahead may bear answers to some of these questions. However, until that happens it is not unreasonable to suggest that Israel's predicament is too big for any prime minister or ruling party, or even a unity government, to resolve.

In other words, it is not the change of face or cabinet that will make the difference. Israeli politicians may not be able to count any more on their potential ability to pressure, threaten or entice Palestinians.

There is hardly much any "collaborating" Palestinian person or agency can do to help Israel find the peace and security it eagerly looks for. Gravely mistaken will the Israelis be if they are to adhere to the false assumption that the Palestinian Authority can guard them or provide them with protection.

This will be an impossible mission so long as Palestinians continue to be treated as subhuman, shot at by trigger happy Israeli troops and children, men and women under occupation are denied food, shelter, education and medication.

The intifada has proven beyond doubt that the very Fatah organization (tanzim) on which the Palestinian Authority relies for legitimacy and protection is extremely furious and frustrated. The organization's members have been as involved and as active in expressing anger and impatience with Israel as everybody else.

Israelis must come to terms with reality. The attitude of dehumanizing the Palestinians and turning some of them into collaborators hunting down, imprisoning and persecuting fellow Palestinians will not deliver peace but more anger and more dynamite barrels. The popularity enjoyed by Sharon may be taken to signify an abundance of sparks.

On the other side, Palestinians and Arabs make a mistake if they exaggerate Sharon and fall prey to some media portrayal of him as a one off warmonger who will be impossible to deal with.

Which of the Israeli leaders, since Israel was established in 1948, had not been a warmonger and a butcher? Even Shimon Perez, the winner of the Noble peace award and dreamer of a peaceful and prosperous Hong Kong-like Middle East, butchered women and children. Few Arabs, if any, will forget the massacre at Qana in South Lebanon. Or were Barak's days heavenly moments of peace and tranquillity compared to the days of Netanyahu or even those of Rabin, the bone-breaker?

As far as dealing with the Palestinians, as well as with the Arab and Muslim circumference, Israeli policy is neither dogmatic nor ethical. Like all Western colonial projects before it, the philosophy underpinning the Zionist project is utilitarian, pragmatic and Darwinian.

Like other colonialists, Zionists are ready to grab all they can if they can get away with it and will give up all if forced to. Sharon is definitely no exception to the rule. He was the one whom Israeli negotiators at the very first Camp David talks between Israel and Egypt turned to, so as to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to agree to an Israeli withdrawal from Sinai, and to the dismantlement of Jewish settlements erected there during occupation.

Israel simply needed the peace with Egypt and had to pay the price Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was asking for.

Israelis will, as they have been doing since 1967, change their position, reduce their ambition and give more back, of what they once snatched, the more they feel there is no other way out.