The targeted assassination of Hamas leader, Shiekh Ahmed Yassin, has been the ugliest act of state terrorism by Israel against the Palestinians. Though it did not come as a surprise, the Israeli ministers having made no secret of their sinister plans to murder the Palestinian leader, it sent a wave of anger amongst the Palestinians and throughout the Arab and Muslim world. Even many of Israel’s western supporters could not countenance this abominable act of hers. Spain, a US ally in the war against terrorism, and France voted against Israel in the UN Security Council, while Britain and Germany showed their disapproval of the Israeli action by abstaining from voting on the Arab-sponsored resolution. The United States was the lone supporter of Israel in the Council and saved it from censure by vetoing the resolution much to the dismay of the Arab and Muslim countries.

Nonetheless, Sheikh Yassin’s murder under the supervision of prime minister Ariel Sharon himself confirms, yet again, the terrorist nature of the Israeli state and the unqualified support it has been getting from the United States and other western powers in its continued aggression against the Palestinians and other Arab people.

The Israeli state owes its existence to an international conspiracy against the Palestinian people which was hatched through intimidation, fraud, mass murders and eviction of the old inhabitants of Palestine. There were no political parties but gangs of terrorists working to establish the Zionist state whose main weapons were murder, sabotage and deceit to put the Palestinian Arabs on the run. The Zionist’s chief organisation was Irgun-zvai Leumi, one achievement of which was the blowing up of King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 in which 91 people were killed. That was the first big act of terrorism in the Middle East. Equally deadly was the Stern gang. In a short period of 10 to 15 years by an orchestrated campaign of intimidation, murder, sabotage and mass immigration of Jews, the Arab majority in Palestine was turned into a minority. The entire history of the establishment of the Israeli state is a sordid tale of conspiracies, murders, fraud and plunder. Against all norms of democracy, human rights and international law, Israel was allowed to occupy Arab lands and annex them dispossessing the original inhabitants and building settlements there on for the Jewish immigrants.

The Western powers not only supported Israel’s illegal usurpation of Arab lands but all along censured the Palestinians and Arabs whenever they tried to resist the Israeli aggression and usurpation of their lands.

Israeli’s long term plan of which it has made no secret, is the establishment of so-called greater Israel by evicting the Palestinians from more places. It wants to crush the Palestinians movement and destroy their organisations. But the US and other western powers have been practically doing nothing to stop the Israeli aggression, they are only branding the Palestinian resistance as terrorism.

The Palestinians, in their helplessness and desperation, have taken resort to suicide bombings which has turned the US and other western powers all the more against the Palestinians, though they are the real victims of Israel’s terrorism and aggression. Thus the western powers are wittingly or unwittingly supporting Israel in its atrocities on the Palestinians. Israelis are not sincere about any Middle East peace plan. They have been carrying on a policy of provoking the Palestinians to fight back so as to destroy all resistance and throw them out for good to consolidate the Zionist state.

It must be remembered that the present phase of conflict or Intifada started with Sharon’s deliberate violation of the sanctity of the Alaqsa mosque in September 2000 followed by a series of other provocations aimed at derailing the peace process and making way for a fresh aggression on the Palestinians. The internment of Yasser Arafat, the raids on Palestinian refugee camps, demolition of houses, fencing of Palestinian areas and now targeted assassinations of Palestinian leaders, are all a part of the same sinister plan. Sharon does not want peace. He is out to kill and destroy all Palestinian resistance.