 |
||||
Now open for business 6am to 6pm coast to coast! |
||||
| (Home Page) | (How to Buy Gold) | (Gold Coin Images) | (Daily Market Report) | (Live Gold Price) |
| (First-time Buyers) | (Gold Discussion) | (ABCs of Gold Book) | (Gold IRA) | (Gold Coin Shop) |
| (European Clientele) |
|
(About Us) | ||
Welcome to USAGOLD's "Gilded
Opinion" pages.
We invite you to browse our index
of outstanding gold-based commentary.
(Back to Holger Jensen Index)
While we find Mr. Jensen's columns particularly informative with respect to foreign affairs, his opinions do not necessarily represent those of Centennial Precious Metals, USAGOLD, its management and clientele.
INSIDE FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Sharon borrows a tactic from
a most unlikely source -- Arafat
by Holger Jensen, International Editor
Talk peace, make war.
In 18 months of intifada, Yasser Arafat has been the one most often accused of using this tactic. But this time, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appeared to be borrowing a page from the Palestinian leader's textbook.
When President Bush announced last week that he was sending retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni back to the region for his third attempt at peacemaking, Sharon made two remarkable concessions -- remarkable for a man who seemed bent on living up to his nickname, "The Bulldozer."
Sharon dropped his long-standing insistence on a week of calm before he would even begin peace talks, saying he was now prepared to "negotiate under fire." He also announced that he was ending Arafat's three-month confinement in Ramallah, where the Palestinian leader had been living under the guns of Israeli tanks, saying he was free to move around the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Two right-wing Cabinet ministers were so outraged by what they saw as a softening of Sharon's previous commitment to military victory that they quit.
But Sharon then launched the largest combat operation in the occupied territories since their capture in the Six-Day War of 1967. More than 20,000 troops and 200 tanks invaded the West Bank and Gaza, engaging in running gunbattles with Palestinian defenders in Ramallah, Bethlehem and six refugee camps.
The offensive capped two weeks of escalating military action in other Palestinian population centers -- Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm and Qalqilya -- aimed at rooting out terrorists responsible for suicide bombings and shooting attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.
However, a Roman Catholic kindergarten was bombed in Gaza and two doctors' groups, the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief and Israel's Physicians for Human Rights, reported that Israeli troops in the West Bank fired on ambulances and hospitals.
As the daily death toll soared into the double digits, a group of 500 Israeli academics and peace activists sent United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan an urgent letter asking for the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers.
"We believe that without a decisive, immediate and impartial international intervention," it said, "there is a palpable danger of massacres of hundreds of innocent people."
Annan did, in fact, castigate both sides.
He urged Israel to "end the illegal occupation" and "stop bombing civilian areas, the assassinations, unnecessary use of lethal force, demolitions and the daily humiliation of ordinary Palestinians." And he told the Palestinians their "deliberate and indiscriminate targeting of civilians is morally repugnant."
President Bush was milder, saying Israel's actions were "unhelpful" to securing a truce. And the State Department issued a studied understatement that "the violence certainly makes a difficult backdrop" to Zinni's mission.
To prop it up, the U.N. Security Council passed a U.S.-sponsored resolution calling for a Palestinian state to be established alongside Israel. It was a historic first for the council, and the first time in recent memory that the United States had initiated, rather than vetoed, a resolution touching on the troubled region.
In another hopeful sign, Israel's ambassador to Washington, David Ivry, hinted that his country would accept U.S. monitors if a cease-fire was achieved. Israel has always opposed "internationalizing" the conflict with foreign monitors, but "an agreement has to be monitored," said Ivry.
Nevertheless, public attitudes have hardened on both sides.
Polls conducted by the Palestinian Policy Center for Surveys and Research indicate that 80 percent of Palestinians support suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks as their only weapon against Israel's superior firepower.
And a poll by the Jaffe Center of Strategic Studies indicated that 46 percent of Israelis support the idea of "transfer" -- forcible expulsion of all Arabs from the occupied territories.
Zinni's task, difficult as it is, will be to convince Sharon and Arafat that they must talk peace without making war.
March 16, 2002
Send your questions to international editor Holger Jensen, who will answer one each day. E-mail: hjens@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 The E.W. Scripps Co. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted by USAGOLD with permission of Mr. Jensen. No further reproduction without permission.
View INSIDE FOREIGN AFFAIRS Index Page
 Centennial Precious Metals Gold coins & bullion since 1973 Denver, Colorado 80246-0009 We educate first-time investors! |
for quotes and purchase information.
|
