http://www.latimes.com/print/editorials/20010205/t000010660.html
Is Ariel Sharon Israel's
Milosevic?
By JAMES RON, LA Times, Monday, February 5,
2001
If the polls are correct, Israel will elect Ariel Sharon as
prime minister on Tuesday. For left-leaning Israelis, a Sharon
victory will end the peace process. For his supporters, only a
tough ex-general can deliver a lasting deal.
Regardless of Sharon's true agenda, however, his credibility
will be sorely tested by allegations of past involvement in crimes
of war. With today's intolerance for serious human rights abusers,
Sharon's record is likely to cause Israel acute international
embarrassment.
At issue are three incidents in Sharon's past. The first took
place in 1953, when a force under his command raided Qibya, a West
Bank village, killing more than 60 inhabitants. Israeli historian
Benny Morris writes that Sharon's unit received instructions to
carry out "destruction and maximum killing" to retaliate for a
Palestinian terrorist attack originating elsewhere. A
contemporaneous Time magazine report said Sharon's soldiers shot
"every man, woman and child they could find" and then dynamited 42
houses, a school and a mosque. "The cries of the dying," the
magazine reported, "could be heard amidst the explosions."
Sharon's autobiography acknowledges civilians were killed at
Qibya, but he calls the deaths a mistake. Given the historical
record, however, his explanation seems unpersuasive. Under
international law, Sharon could be indicted for crimes against
humanity, which include the systematic and willful killing of
civilians during war.
The second incident took place during Israel's 1982 thrust into
Lebanon, when Sharon was defense minister and chief architect of
the campaign. For three months Israeli forces laid siege to West
Beirut, where Palestinian guerrillas had dug in amid the civilian
population. At the time, a Washington Post correspondent wrote
that Sharon's army subjected the city to "punishment so intense
and indiscriminate that terror was the result."
By Aug. 16, 1982, according to the International Herald
Tribune, Beirut had become a city of "broken concrete, flattened
apartment buildings and death." Thousands of Lebanese civilians
died in the process. Senior Israeli journalists offer compelling
evidence of Sharon's responsibility for Beirut's ordeal. Zeev
Schiff and Ehud Yaari write that in June 1982, Sharon told his
officers that Palestinian neighborhoods in southern Beirut should
be "utterly destroyed," even though they contained 85,000
civilians. "Not a single terrorist neighborhood should be left
standing," Sharon reportedly said. Sharon later argued that the
bombings were necessary to end Palestinian terror and that
Palestinian fighters themselves caused Beirut's civilian deaths by
hiding amid noncombatants.
Although the guerrillas did violate international law by
seeking shelter in a city, the Geneva Conventions also ban the
indiscriminate and disproportionate shelling of populated
areas.
Fifteen years later, the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal indicted
Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic for a similar assault on
Sarajevo, even though Bosnian Muslim soldiers were stationed
throughout the city.
The third case--the famed massacres at Sabra and
Shatila--occurred Sept. 16-18, 1982, toward the end of the battle
for Beirut. The Falangists, an Israeli-allied Lebanese militia,
were ordered by Sharon to mop up armed resistance in Palestinian
refugee camps as Israeli forces stood guard. According to Israeli
military intelligence, Falangist gunmen killed 700 to 800
civilians, but Palestinians sources estimate 2,000 dead. New York
Times journalist Thomas Friedman saw "groups of young men in their
twenties and thirties who had been lined up against walls, tied by
their hands and feet, and then mowed down gangland style." Women,
children and the elderly were also among those slain in the
62-hour assault.
Although Sharon denied responsibility, an Israeli commission of
inquiry ruled in February 1983 that he bore "indirect
responsibility" for the massacres, harshly castigating him for his
role.
In 1985, a U.S. Military Law Review analysis argued that Sharon
had "command responsibility" for the killings. In 1999, former
Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was indicted by the Yugoslav war
tribunal under a similar clause for Serbia's Kosovo crimes.
During the Cold War, men such as Sharon had little to fear from
international legal prosecution. Although signatories to the
Geneva Conventions were obliged to pursue war criminals, few
countries could be bothered. In recent years, however, activists
have changed international legal practice beyond recognition.
Chile's ex-president was indicted by a Spanish judge, Chad's
ex-ruler was arrested by the Senegalese, and Congo's foreign
minister was charged by Belgian authorities. At the same time, the
United Nations' special tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda have
proved increasingly able to catch, try and imprison war
criminals.
After years in the political wilderness, Sharon is now poised
to resume center stage. Yet his spectacular political comeback
coincides with an equally dramatic change in global legal
standards. Whether Sharon really wants peace, his credibility, as
well as that of the nation that elects him, will be undermined by
his troubling past. While waging Israel's wars, Sharon may have
amassed a record too awful to ignore.
James Ron, an Israeli Citizen, Is an Assistant Professor of
Sociology and Political Science at Johns Hopkins UniversityCopyright 2000 Los Angeles Times
