Israel has the capability to end the al-Aksa intifada, says a veteran Knesset member.
According to Moshe Arens, a former defense and foreign affairs minister of Israel, the country has the intelligence and the army necessary to end the violence. Now it just needs to put them to use.
“It must be done,” said Arens, who shares Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s belief that a cease-fire must hold before peace talks can resume. He was in San Francisco last week as a guest of American Society for Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
“Only once the violence ceases can we reach for negotiations.”
So how does the former associate professor of aeronautical engineering at Haifa’s Technion suggest ending the violence? By taking the Palestinians’ weapons away.
“In order to kill they need weapons. Unfortunately, they have a lot. They have to be surrendered or we have to take them away. And I wouldn’t give them back so quickly.”
Though he puts it in simple terms, Arens is currently complicating Israel’s coalition government as part of a growing chorus of voices from the right putting pressure on Sharon to employ harsher policies against the Palestinians.
During an Oct. 26 interview at the Plaza Hyatt, Arens criticized what he called a year without enough assertiveness on the part of fellow Likudnik Sharon.
“He shouldn’t have let 12 months go by with so many Israeli casualties,” said Arens. “Maybe it is as the result of criticism and the assassination of a minister in the government that he has decided to take a more forceful course — a greater extent of initiatives against Palestinian terrorists.”
Referring to the Oct. 17 assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine “was a shock, of course,” Arens said. But it did not entirely surprise him since “these guys are out to kill Jews.”
“If somebody holds a position of prominence, as far as they’re concerned, that person is a better target than someone who is not known even though [groups like the PFLP] have also killed children and babies that are unknown.”
The Marxist PFLP claimed responsibility for the killing as revenge for Israel’s Aug. 27 assassination of its secretary-general, Mustafa Zibri. But this is not a justified claim, said Arens, calling Zibri “a terrorist.”
“I don’t think anyone in the United States would say if the United States got [Osama] bin Laden that it’s fair game for the Taliban to come and kill the American president. Like bin Laden’s people who initiated an attack on America, [Yasser] Arafat, Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, the PFLP have started a war against Israel.
“We’re going to put an end to it by getting the people behind this violence, the masterminds that initiate and direct it.”
The Palestinian Authority chairman, he added, “began the violence and is reaping a whirlwind.” And until Arafat and the Palestinians understand “that nothing will be achieved” through those means, discussions about a Palestinian state cannot take place.
“If Israel were to give in today to a Palestinian state, Arafat and the Palestinians will feel violence has accomplished its aims and there will be more violence.”
Besides, he noted, the Palestinians have a state today that is under the control of “people like the Hamas and Arafat” who are “bringing about a lot of trouble and bloodshed and causing a great deal of suffering to the Palestinian people.
“So it’s not doing any good.”
Israel’s own acts of violence against the Palestinians, he said, are necessary retaliatory efforts. “When violent means are used against you, you’ve got to subdue the people who do it,” he explained. “That goes for bin Laden, as well. I think the U.S. understands that.”
In fact, the United States and Israel “are fighting the same war” against Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. “These are people who think they’re getting a ticket to paradise by committing these atrocities,” he said.
Although the PFLP is not an Islamic group, he believes it operates under the same premises and makes unjustifiable “excuses” for terror.
As for “collateral damage” — a military term for accidental civilian deaths during wartime — it is an “unfortunate” reality, he said.
Arens brushed aside concerns about the state of Israel-U.S. relations. If anything, he said, they are stronger “for obvious reasons.”
Arens believes the supposed pressure that the United States is putting on Israel to ease up on Palestinian territories is not pressure at all. Instead, he said there are conversations in “very polite, courteous tones,” because the United States is trying to form an anti-terrorism coalition that would include Arab nations.
Secretary of State “Colin Powell is engaged in an effort which I’m afraid is not going to bear fruit, to form a coalition against terrorism that would include Arab countries and even those Arabs who are themselves engaged in terrorism. I don’t think these countries are going to join a coalition. I don’t think these countries are interested in fighting Osama bin Laden.”
Therefore, he said, it is only a matter of time before their invitation will be withdrawn.