Opinion
 

Terrorist's death won't bring peace

Richard Lutz

How could I not write about it? Following their policy of attacking terrorism at its source, the Israeli Defense Forces have finally killed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and leader of Hamas. During his leadership, the Palestinian terror organization murdered hundreds of Israeli civilians, including 28 people killed in the 2002 bombing of a Passover Seder. Their stated goal is to destroy the Jewish state and replace it with a fundamentalist Islamic Palestine. Hamas calls all of Israel "occupied territory" to "justify" attacking civilians inside Israel proper instead of soldiers in the disputed territories. Yassin also opposed the secular genocide agenda of Yasser Arafat, although the two were careful not to come into direct conflict.

When Yassin was executed, Hamas' reaction was both predictably military and surprisingly broad in scope. They threatened retaliation against Israel, including counter-assassinations against government officials. Just to show us they haven't changed, they held rallies in which they burned models of Israeli buses. The surprise was that Hamas also threatened the United States for backing Israel. A few days later, they backpedaled, denying links to Al-Qaida and saying that they would only kill inside of Israel. 

Then on Sunday, Hamas' new leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, declared an ongoing religious war against the United States: "We knew that Bush is the enemy of God, the enemy of Islam and Muslims. America declared war against God. (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon declared war against God, and God declared war against America, Bush and Sharon."

I find Arafat's reaction more interesting. His Fatah faction decried the attack on the terrorist leadership as "an escalation of violence" but also called for an end to fighting. Why?

There are two possibilities. The IDF has declared an intention to dismantle Hamas and has hinted that it may target other terrorist leaders, including Arafat. This would be a break from former policy, which was unwilling to give Arafat a martyrdom. But if the Palestinian chairman is now afraid that his decades of murder are going to catch up to him, he might finally start working for peace.

The second possibility is that this is another ruse. After all, Arafat went to Oslo and promised peace before turning around and buying illegal weapons shipments from Iran. His behavior proves that he's perfectly willing to call for a cease-fire, a truce, peace talks and peace agreements; he's willing to sign his name in blood, but he won't say whose blood it is or why it's on his hands. And he's willing to break his solemn word, if it was a word of compromise.

This won't be the beginning of a new era of peace. It won't even be a moment of respite, because the words of peace are hollow. On Friday, one of Arafat's Al-Aqsa Martyrs prematurely detonated a jeep full of explosives in the West Bank on his way to carry out an attack. Three other Palestinians were shot and killed while attacking Israelis. Worst of all, a Palestinian boy was shot and killed by his own people, who were firing blindly at an Israeli convoy. Maybe the best we can hope for is that someday the Palestinian people will rise up against their true oppressors and destroy the terrorists.

Lutz, a columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at drahcir_j@hotmail.com.