Es ist ein Lehrstück an politischer Dummheit und Inhumanität, was sich derzeit im Nahen Osten abspielt. Amos Elon zieht in der aktuellen New York Review of Books (9/2002) eine deprimierende Bilanz* des gegenseitigen Versagens. Die Politik Israels wird von ihm scharf verurteilt:
The large-scale, punitive „incursion“ of Israeli tanks and armored troop carriers into Palestinian cities and refugee camps in April—ostensibly to crush the „infrastructure of terror“—is likely to intensify the prevailing rage and eventually to increase the attacks by shahids. The incursions have resulted in hundreds of dead and thousands of wounded and homeless Palestinian men, women, and children, mostly children—potential shahids of tomorrow. The Israeli attacks have spread havoc everywhere and caused huge material destruction from Ramallah to Bethlehem and Hebron, aimed, it would seem, at smashing not only the „infrastructure of terror,“ as Sharon has claimed, but the emerging Palestinian state. The purely civilian ministries of agriculture and education and the central office of statistics were maliciously damaged. According to B’tzelem, the Israeli human rights group, the Israeli soldiers committed wanton vandalism in many places. Roads, water lines, and sewer pipes were damaged, trees uprooted, automobiles smashed, and houses razed. Military discipline seems to have sunk to an all-time low. In some places soldiers tried to break into cash drawers and automatic teller machines; they smashed with impunity clocks and artworks as well as furniture, television sets, washing machines, and computers. The pattern of vandalism was too widespread to excuse these cases as exceptions. In Ramallah soldiers broke into the Palestinian television station and started broadcasting pornographic films they claimed to have found in a drawer there. Combat helicopters hovered overhead indiscriminately firing machine guns and missiles into homes and offices.
Wie wird es weitergehen? „In view of the frozen attitudes of practically everyone involved, it is hard to see any other prospect but more bloodshed.“
* Der Artikel ist mittlerweile Teil des kostenpflichtigen Archivs der NYRB.
