March 25, 2004
By David Dolan
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

Ariel Sharon is trying to carry out the "Roadmap" peace plan. This has greatly upset most world leaders, including some of the primary sponsors of the international plan. They are angry that the Israeli leader has chosen to take matters into his own hands after his alleged peace partner, the Palestinian Authority, totally failed to implement its side of the bargain.

Unveiled nearly one year ago, the Roadmap called upon Israel to "immediately dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001" (when Sharon came to power), followed by a "freeze" on all other settlement expansion. Sharon has already gone way beyond this, announcing in February that he will totally uproot most Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip later this year, along with some isolated settlements situated in Israel's biblical heartland, the hills of Judea and Samaria.

The Palestinian Authority's first order of business was simply to "declare an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism," followed by the more difficult task of "undertaking visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent acts on Israelis anywhere."

Palestinian Authority leaders have done just the opposite. Not only have they not lifted one finger to crack down on Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Brigades terrorists, but Palestinian "president" Yasser Arafat has repeated earlier calls for "1 million shahids" (Islamic martyrs) to surrender their lives in order to "liberate Jerusalem" from Jewish control.

What is the aging PLO chairman advocating here? Does he really expect hundreds of thousands of kamikaze bomb-wearing Muslims to come marching into Israel's largely unrecognized capital city to blow themselves and their Jewish victims to smithereens?

I think Arafat is promoting something far more sinister. He is calling upon the Palestinian's Mideast allies to fire non-conventional weapons, possibly nuclear ones, onto the territory of the detested "Zionist entity." If a million local Arabs die in the process, so be it. It should be somewhat difficult for Israel's many critics to construe this cheery Arafat admonition as "declaring an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism."

So the government headed by Ariel Sharon is doing it for him, starting with the helicopter missile strike on Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the "holy man" founder of the ultra-violent Islamic Resistance Movement, better known as Hamas.

It has long been determined by Israeli security officials that Hamas is totally run from the top down. Therefore, getting rid of Yassin was a high priority, even if doing so had been deferred for political reasons until now.

Though described as "blind" and wheelchair bound, Sheik Yassin was able to read large lettered items held up close to his face. He was known to have personally approved all major Hamas "operations" against Israeli civilians after being appraised of the details of each planned attack.

Hamas terrorist assaults have numbered over 475 since late 2000, including 52 suicide bombings that have killed nearly 400 Israelis and left 2,706 wounded, many for life.

Among Yassin's sanctioned atrocities were the two most notorious attacks of the current Palestinian attrition war – the Tel Aviv Dolphinarium bombing that left some 21 young people dead in June 2001 and the Netanya Passover massacre of March 2002, which slaughtered 29 Jews and triggered Israel's largest military campaign since the 1982 Lebanon war.

The crocodile tears shed for the Islamic "spiritual leader" by many world leaders are as puzzling as they are appalling. If anyone qualified as a certified terrorist who deliberately set out to kill and maim innocent women and children (some of them fellow Arabs by the way) to achieve political aims, it was Yassin. At least Arafat has the decency to thinly veil his calls for mass murder, a technique the Hamas leader never learned.

More than this, Hamas officials have always openly adhered to their 1988 founding charter's call for Israel's complete annihilation. The IRA in Ireland, Basque separatists in Spain, Chechen forces and other groups employing terrorist methods in their political struggles wouldn't even dream of insisting that England, Spain or Russia be entirely wiped off the map.

Bowing to intense international pressure, especially from Europe and America, Prime Minister Sharon fully intends to pull out of most of the Gaza Strip in the coming months. But he cannot do so if Hamas stands ready to fill the void. Decapitating the militant group is judged to be the most effective way to prevent a Hamas takeover, even if public support for the Islamic group has soared, as expected, in the immediate aftermath of Yassin's reaping what he sowed.

One other crucial item remains to be accomplished before the Gaza pullout can successfully take place. To help forestall the expectation – expressed last month by another radical Hamas leader, Muhammad Deif – that the announced departure signals that "Israel's end is nearer than they think," Sharon must also tackle the Lebanese Hezbollah militia. It has inspired, supported and funded much recent Palestinian violence.

Such action risks an all-out war with Hezbollah's Syrian masters. However unwanted that outcome may be, it is assessed by most Israeli officials to be a price worth paying in order to dismantle the growing Shiite army that now occupies the entire border area, in total violation of the United Nation's resolution that led to Israel's rapid withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000. One thing seems certain: more dramatic action looms on the hazy Mideast horizon.

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