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#Post#: 22936--------------------------------------------------
Ariel Sharon dies and Palestinians cheer...
By: RosalindeDreams Date: January 11, 2014, 6:06 pm
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Palestinians widely loathed Ariel Sharon as the mastermind of
crushing military offensives against them in Lebanon, the West
Bank and Gaza.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Ariel Sharon's death Saturday elicited a
wide range of responses from Palestinians, but sadness wasn't
one: Some cheered and distributed sweets while others prayed for
divine punishment for the former Israeli leader or recalled his
central role in some of the bloodiest episodes of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Palestinians widely loathed Sharon as the mastermind of crushing
military offensives against them in Lebanon, the West Bank and
Gaza and as the architect of Israel's biggest settlement
campaign on lands they want for a state.
The intensity of those feelings appears to have faded a bit
because Sharon left the public stage eight year ago, when he
suffered a debilitating stroke and slipped into a coma. Sharon
died Saturday afternoon at a Tel Aviv hospital.
The news traveled quickly in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee
camps in Lebanon's capital of Beirut, where Israeli-allied
forces systematically slaughtered hundreds of Palestinians in
September 1982, three months after Sharon engineered the
invasion of Israel's northern neighbor.
Sharon was later fired as defense minister over the massacre,
with Israeli investigators rejecting his contention at the time
that he didn't know the attack was coming.
"Sharon is dead!" a 63-year-old Palestinian woman in Sabra said,
pointing to a text message from her daughter. "May God torture
him," said the woman who only gave her first name, Samia. "We
should celebrate. We should be firing in the air."
In the Gaza refugee camp of Khan Younis, a few dozen supporters
of two militant groups, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance
Committees, gathered in the main street, chanting: "Sharon, go
to hell." Some burned Sharon pictures or stepped on them, while
others distributed sweets to motorists and passers-by.
Throughout his life, Sharon was at the center of the most
contentious episodes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
starting as a young soldier fighting in the 1948 war over
Israel's creation.
In the 1950s, he led a commando unit that carried out reprisals
for Arab attacks. In 1953, after the slaying of an Israeli woman
and her two children, Sharon's troops blew up more than 40
houses in Qibya, a West Bank village then ruled by Jordan,
killing 69 Arabs, most or all of them civilians.
He fought in the Israeli-Arab wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973. He
launched the 1982 invasion of Lebanon as Israel's defense
minister.
After his dismissal as defense minister, he gradually
rehabilitated himself politically. By the early 1990s, as
housing minister in a right-wing government, he oversaw a
massive settlement drive in the West Bank.
As opposition leader in September 2000, Sharon visited a
contested Jewish-Muslim holy site in Jerusalem, setting off
Palestinian protests that quickly escalated into an armed
uprising.
Less than a year later, he was elected prime minister. In 2002,
after a string of Palestinian shooting and bombing attacks, he
reoccupied the West Bank towns that had been handed to
Palestinian self-rule in previous interim peace deals.
Sharon also placed his longtime nemesis, then-Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat, under virtual house arrest in the West Bank town
of Ramallah.
A close Arafat aide at the time, then-intelligence chief Tawfik
Tirawi, said Saturday that Sharon's death was proof that the
Palestinians will prevail.
Sharon "wanted to erase the Palestinian people from the map,"
Tirawi said. "He wanted to kill us, but at the end of the day,
Sharon is dead and the Palestinian people are alive."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refrained from commenting on
the death of Sharon, whose decision in 2005 to withdraw from
Gaza helped bring the Islamic militant group Hamas to power two
years later.
Sharon pulled out of Gaza without consulting with Abbas, a step
believed to have contributed to the rise of the Hamas forces
that eventually defeated troops loyal to Abbas in Gaza.
Khalil al-Haya of Hamas said Sharon had caused suffering to
generations of Palestinians. "After eight years, he is going in
the same direction as other tyrants and criminals whose hands
were covered with Palestinian blood," he said.
Some Palestinians expressed disappointment that Sharon hadn't
been put on trial or had suffered a violent death.
"I always wished he would be killed by a Palestinian child or a
woman, like he killed children and women," said Mohammed
el-Srour, a Sabra resident who lost his father and five siblings
in the massacre.
In Qibya, the village Sharon's forces raided in 1953, residents
stage a memorial march each year.
Village resident Hamed Ghethan, 65, said earlier this week that
he was sorry to see Sharon and the others involved in the attack
escape punishment. "We were hoping the world would hear our
voice and try them," he said.
The international group Human Rights Watch expressed a similar
sentiment, saying in a statement: "It's a shame that Sharon has
gone to his grave without facing justice for his role in Sabra
and Chatilla and other abuses."
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