Fearing and Mourning Sharon

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The Arabs trembled when Sharon took over as Israel’s prime minister, out of fear of his brutality and his violent policies against the Palestinians, and his unwillingness to make a peace that would spare the Arabs at least some face. Thousands of articles were written in hundreds of newspapers and magazines over long stretches of time expressing pessimism about the state the Arab region would end up in, and about the wars Sharon might drag it into. Those articles did not fall short in vilifying Sharon, describing him as a war criminal, the butcher of Sabra and Shatila, and a rejectionist of the Oslo accords. Many articles shed tears over the course of negotiations, expressing regret over the efforts made to bring Palestinians and Israelis to the negotiating table. Other articles appealed to the Americans to act, to pressure Sharon and rein him in, and to keep the negotiating process alive.

Today, however, it seems some hands are open in supplication to God, praying for life to be restored to Sharon. Many writers now believe that Sharon had begun a peace process departing from his ideological roots, and that the dismantling of the settlements in Gaza points to this. They see Sharon as one of those historic leaders capable of taking decisive, important decisions in relations with the Arabs, and believe his absence might freeze the clock. Among the expected leadership figures, none is seen as capable of taking a historic decision except Shimon Peres, whose luck has always faltered at the ballot box. Arab leaders are preoccupied with Sharon’s health, and are making their contacts, especially with the United States, in search of what the future holds.

At the level of the Palestinian street, for the first time, there is no one who mourns this man. Ordinarily, there would be those waiting for a change in Israeli leadership, hoping that whoever the Palestinian leadership favored would come to power, but with Sharon it is hard to find anyone weeping over him, or waiting for his health to improve.

In both cases — Sharon’s rise and Sharon’s disappearance — the Arab position erases the Arabs themselves, and this in itself is the danger. There is a negation of the Arab self and an erasure of the Arab role that could be effective, and a dependence on others to solve the problems we suffer from. We negate ourselves, surrendering to a culture of incapacity that turns us into an object rather than an agent, reducing us to mere tools or mounts that others ride, who may then graciously grant us whatever they see fit. The equation is as follows: we stand marginalizing ourselves, waiting to see what the White House or the Israeli government will do to us. As long as we remain like this, we cannot achieve anything we aspire to, and we will get nothing except what others see as serving their own interests.

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…the leaderships of democratic states, and its effect shows up in the details of various domestic and foreign policies, but these are differences that can never override the institutional dimension. Personal differences appear within the institutional framework and its rules, and cannot exceed them; and should they ever exceed them, the institution steps in to criticize, try, and prosecute. The second truth is that Sharon did not leave Gaza and dismantle the settlements because he had become reasonable and realized his own extremism, but because he was forced into it. Sharon roared when he was elected prime minister, thundered and foamed, and promised to crush the intifada within a hundred days. The days passed and he found himself powerless, despite the harshness of the blows he dealt the Palestinians. It was then that Sharon realized his military capabilities could not defeat the firm Palestinian will, so he set ideology aside and decided to work through politics instead.

There are Palestinians who say that Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza was a conspiracy, yet they did nothing to resist Israel’s withdrawal. This claim can be dismissed, because Sharon fought against his Lord’s own teachings and against every electoral platform he had put forward over the years, in dismantling the settlements. The matter is simply that the powerless grieve when they see someone else achieve something. The Gaza Strip is now besieged, and there was not a single military strategist who expected otherwise. Israel had been trying to preserve its interests from within Gaza; now it has no choice left but to preserve them from around it.

If the Arabs studied the history of Israeli leaderships, they would find that the dovish leaders are the least tolerant toward the Arabs, or the least capable of preserving the face of Arab leaderships. It was Begin who signed the Camp David Accords, Shamir who went to the Madrid Conference, and Netanyahu who withdrew from the city of Hebron. The Labor Party leaders, described as the reasonable ones, would trail along behind the steps of Israel’s right-wing leaders and try to finish the journey they had begun. If the Arabs want an Israeli peace, they should hope for the rise of a cursed extremist to the premiership.

It would be far more useful for the Palestinian leadership, and with it every Arab leadership, to search within itself, and within the capacities it possesses or could develop, in order to achieve the desired goals. If they want a quick solution to the Palestinian cause and to achieve comfort and relaxation, they must become part of the equation, not remain on its margins. If the enemy finds that someone is pressuring it rather than pleading with it, it will think long and hard before committing aggression, or before stubbornly refusing to meet its enemy’s demands. The shortest path is not supplication for Sharon’s recovery, but supplication that strength be instilled in us, so that we may come to know ourselves.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الخوف من شارون والبكاء عليه” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.