Rachel Corrie and Nuha Sweidan will be forever linked as victims of the extremist Israeli leader Ariel Sharon's relentless war on Palestinians, which is a war on behalf of Israeli settlements and in defense of Sharon's vision of a Greater Israel in complete control of all of historic Palestine.
The escalating assaults on Gaza over the past month indicate that Ariel Sharon is preparing the way for an invasion and reconquest of the Gaza Strip to complement his reconquest of the West Bank last April. With the West Bank now firmly under Israeli control, Gaza has become the sole remaining area of armed Palestinian resistance to Israel. It thus stands in the way of Sharon's imposition of a settlement on the Palestinians that will assign them small, disconnected Bantustans surrounded by hundreds of Israeli settlements. Ariel Sharon was the original architect of the massive expansion of settlements after 1978 and continues to be their main patron and advocate.
Sharon is well known for his cold and calculating tactical acumen, both as a military commander and as a politician. He is also known as a ruthless fighter who has been accused of crimes against humanity for his role in the massacre of at least a thousand Palestinian women, children and elderly people in Beirut in 1982.
The escalating assaults on Gaza over the past month indicate that Ariel Sharon is preparing the way for an invasion and reconquest of the Gaza Strip to complement his reconquest of the West Bank last April. With the West Bank now firmly under Israeli control, Gaza has become the sole remaining area of armed Palestinian resistance to Israel. It thus stands in the way of Sharon's imposition of a settlement on the Palestinians that will assign them small, disconnected Bantustans surrounded by hundreds of Israeli settlements. Ariel Sharon was the original architect of the massive expansion of settlements after 1978 and continues to be their main patron and advocate.
Sharon is well known for his cold and calculating tactical acumen, both as a military commander and as a politician. He is also known as a ruthless fighter who has been accused of crimes against humanity for his role in the massacre of at least a thousand Palestinian women, children and elderly people in Beirut in 1982.