Actually, the BBC crew was fired upon by Israeli soldiers, who would not even let them get into their clearly labelled vehicle, they just kept firing until the crew escaped on foot, still filming. They were playing the tape of the entire scene yesterday on BBC World news. Something very similar also happened with another crew, I can’t remember from which channel though.
Nonsense, Sharon does not have his country’s support in this, as a matter of fact he faces dissent even from inside his own government over the methods employed over the last year. Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s largest daily newspaper, blasted Sharon just the past month, citing an opinion poll that indicated 72% of its respondents said the government had failed to meet their expectations. They were just about the kindest voice reported in Israeli Media Criticize Government (BBC online). I expect the support has sank even farther by now.
Where do you get that from? Sharon’s position has always been to give as little of anything as possible to the Palestinians (including and especially land). It’s always been his official position to follow Israeli Jewish interests at the expense of those of the Palestinians. This is one of the reasons why this nutcase was elected, because people expected him to kick the Palestinians into submission after the patient negotiations of Barak apparently failed (IMHO they didn’t so much fail as they were cut short–I think a lot of Arafat’s “refusal” rhetoric was the kind of Middle-Eastern bluster required to establish both face and the operating parameters of negotiations. After all, while Barak’s offer was extremely generous, it did not address a couple of key points very important to the Palestinians).
What restraint? I have seen little of it since Sharon rose to power! His lack of coherent leadership and restraint has allowed the situation to approach the severity of the 1967 wars.
Of course that is true, no one is saying that Israelis are murdering psychos. But that is hardly a defence of Sharon’s sanity or his tactics.
The issue is more complicated than that, and your statement above could be applied to both sides. Don’t forget that for several months now Sharon has been at work disabling Arafat’s security infrastructure, deliberately crippling him. Sharon cannot confront Arafat without pressing military might, because Arafat has a long history of gathering support and surviving the direst times, and he would no doubt survive the ineffectual Sharon. Sharon’s plan consists of eliminating the Arafat threat, but of course he can’t kill him (that could mean all-out war, or at the very least a dramatic rise in support for the Palestinian cause). Instead he has spent the last several months pressuring Arafat to curtail terrorism while launching regular attacks against Palestinian Authority security targets. The same security that he insist crack down on terrorism, if that makes sense.
At the same time, terrorism is the tool of choice of extremists like Hamas, not necessarily of Arafat (although Arafat may possibly have resorted to such means some of the many times his back was put against the wall). There is still no evidence to suggest that Arafat is the mastermind of a significant portion of acts of terror, as Sharon suggests (but then again Sharon wants Arafat out and someone less hard-bitten to lead the PA).
It’s also incorrect to say that Arafat and the PA have done “absolutely nothing” to stop terrorists. Numerous suspected or wanted terrorists were arrrested a number of times, in spite of the compromising nature of such actions as regards the PA and Arafat himself, who lose popular support when those who are perceived as “freedom fighters” are seen to be detained by their own side. Because of the tensions that arise from such detentions, and the further splintering of extremist groups like Hamas, and because Israel has never expressed will to negotiate following Palestinian security crackdowns, arresting “freedom fighters” is simply not a high PA priority when Palestinians see that all that stands between them and the might of Israel are these same terrorists.
It is hardly commendable, but negotiation is impossible when one side holds all the power; so, in a twisted and bizarre way, the terrorism of extremist groups actually preserves a rudimentary balance of power, with both sides able to threaten and negotiate (if only they would stop fighting now that both have proved that they both have teeth).
Sharon probably won’t last much longer, and I can see the elegance and restraint of someone like Simon Peres appealing to Israelis far more than Sharon’s rabid and ineffectual approaches. We’ll just have to see what happens, but don’t forget, both sides are wrong here, yet both sides have valid claims.