The Hole Where The Heart Should Be

'Nothing but good of the dead,' De mortuis nihil nisi bonum est, the old adage has it. Well as I write, Ariel Sharon is technically alive. But I have to record that when the doctors reported that he had a hole in his heart, I thought it must be a mistranslation, and in fact they reported that they had found a hole where his heart should be.

One of the big advances towards civilization this century is that politicians like Sharon, indicted in Belgium for war crimes in Sabra and Shatila,, along with Pinochet, Kissinger and others like Milosevic have begun to check with their lawyers as well their travel agents before setting off on a journey.

Sharon's exit from Middle East politics will certainly have profound effects on the peace process, but only a total amnesiac would assume that it will necessarily be a negative effect.

If you accept the possibility of miracles, it is of course possible that Sharon had a late life conversion to peace,

But nothing in his career, and nothing he has done since the withdrawal from Gaza has ever given the slightest hint of concern for the plight of the Palestinians. The settlements are still expanding, parts of Gaza are effectively free fire zones and life in the Occupied Territories gets worse by the week.

To accept Sharon as a 'Man of Peace,' we have to forget about the massacre at Qibye, the invasion and occupation of Lebanon, the siege of Beirut, and above all, the massacre at Sabra and Shatila. We need to overlook the continuing massive expansion of the settlements in the teeth of Oslo and Road Map Commitments

We have to blank from our minds his provocative walkabout at Al Aqsa mosque that premeditatedly provoked the Intafada, which his friends in the security services then sedulously kept burning by assassination of Palestinian leaders whenever a ceasefire looked feasible.

Of course, Sharon owes a lot to Osama Bin Laden. Immediately after the September 11 tragedy Sharon saw his opportunity and pronounced that he would join George Bush's fight against terrorism, - but against Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian authority.

Under cover of the smoke of the World Trade Centre, he mounted the brutal armed invasion of the Palestinian Authority, and the razing of Jenin. He undertook the massive violation of international law represented by the Wall in the occupied territories, and the worse-than-apartheid humiliation and squalor forced on the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza.

Even Sharon's most recent achievement, the much praised withdrawal from Gaza, was almost certainly more of a cynical ploy to hang on to most of the useful land in the West Bank than a concession to peace. He made it clear for internal audiences that there was no question of returning to the Green line of 1967, and that his vision of Palestinian independence would be like a Bantustan, without, however, the degree of independence the Afrikaners accorded.

In short, nothing he ever said or done right up to his stroke gave the slightest indication that he would accept a peace deal with the Palestinians that they could accept, or which met the standards of international law and United Nations resolutions.

It may have been rational, but it was scarcely 'heroic' to hand over territory occupied in defiance of international law and inhabited by a hostile and increasingly desperate population. No rational Israeli leader would try to hang on to it..

However, no one should doubt the scale of Sharon's diplomatic achievement. By repetition of the magic word 'terrorism,' and admittedly with help from the terrorists themselves, he passed himself off as the good guy and succeeded in switching off international condemnation for behaviour far worse than any previous Israeli administration.

While making it plain that the Road Map conditions only apply to the Palestinians, Sharon was careful not disavow it, allowing the Europeans and others to join the Americans in blaming the victims.

Amazingly, after a few desultory attempts at condemnation, stifled by George W. Bush, the British government and the Europeans have pretty much gone along with his oppressive policies since 2001.

The Europeans have now bought into Sharon's mantra that the enfeebled and besieged Palestinian authority must successfully rein in terrorists, but they make no such stipulations about the Israelis controlling the Settlers doing Brownshirt imitations across the territories.

Of course much of this was derived from the strong personal relationship between George W Bush and Sharon. Bush had announced support for a Palestinian state at the UN just after the World Trade Centre attack. Within months, after a visit from Sharon, the President moved from restraining Israeli attacks to providing diplomatic cover for the attack on Jenin. Would Benjamin Netanyahu have the same influence, not least since he was too rigidly dogmatic to see the pragmatic need to evacuate Gaza?

It is just possible, if not exactly probable, that the removal of Sharon may entail more resistance from the US to Israeli demands, especially if Netanyahu wins. However, in the long run, the basic problem remains. For Israel's long term survival, it has to come to an accommodation with the Palestinians. And as long as Israel's leaders are given a 'get out of jail free' card by Washington and to a lesser extent the EU, then the US and the West will not be able to convince the Muslim world of its good faith.

The best practical solution put forward so far is the two state solution, which will not be feasible on the line of the Security Wall.

Perhaps Sharon's demise will now allow the politicians of the West to take off their blinkers and to see that the deceased had shredded and twisted their cherished Road Map into an Origami dead duck.

They have to chart a more direct course to peace, and enforce international law on all parties to the dispute. Sharon's stroke gives them one less recidivist law breaker to pander to.