Understanding the MiddleEast

Brad Delong talks about Cursed Is the Peacemaker by John Boykin- a biography of American diplomat Philip Habib;

"However, the second-worst impression is left by then-Israeli Defense Minister and now Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Sharon successively betrays everyone he deals with. He betrays the Israeli cabinet at the start of the 1982 war by concealing from them the magnitude of the operation he has planned. He betrays Phlip Habib by breaking ceasefire commitments made to him in the early days, before the siege of Beirut begins. He betrays his boss Menachem Begin by launching large-scale attacks on Beirut on the eve of the final settlement--as Boykin writes (p. 233-4), the "August 12 blitz 'was the straw that broke the camel's back with Begin's view of Sharon', says Lewis. Begin was furious with Sharon about it and deeply embarrassed.... He forbade Sharon to take any further military actions without his approval.... The Cabinet divested Sharon of his authority to activate the airforce..."

Moreover--and this is the coup de grace--Sharon breaks his commitments not to seek to harm Palestinian civilians left in Lebanon. As Boykin writes (p. 271), "As Sharon tells the story [of the refugee camp massacres], the problem was not that hundreds of people got killed. It was just that too many of the wrong people got killed. The Phalangists just 'went too far', he says, killing too many civilians when they were supposed to be killing only terrorists. To Phil Habib and most of the rest of the world, the problem was that no such operation should have happened at all.... Phil Habib... was devastated.... It wasn't just that everything he had worked for all summer had now gone down the toilet. It was that he was the one who had promised the civilians' safety. 'I had signed this paper which guaranteed that these people in west Beirut would not be harmed. I got specific guarantees on this from Bashir and from the Israelis--from Sharon'. He said he 'had been given assurances... that no action would be taken against the Palestinians remaining in the camps.... On the basis of those assurances we had given our word. We had been deceived.... Sharon was a killer, obsessed by hatred of the Palestinians,' Habib said. 'I had given Arafat an undertaking that his people would not be harmed, but this was toally disregarded by Sharon whose word was worth nothing.'" The refugee camp massacres that Sharon masterminded stained the honor not just of Israel but of the United States as well, for it was President Reagan's personal representative who had guaranteed the safety of Palestinian civilians left behind after the PLO's evacuation of Beirut.

Related
Sample Chapter from Cursed Is the Peacemaker: The American Diplomat Versus the Israeli General, Beirut 1982

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