Sharon is well aware of the sympathy Israel has received in response to the brutal suicide bomb attacks over the past few years. He knows that the world is focused on the impending war in Iraq. Thus, he has calculated that the time is ripe to set in motion the reoccupation of Gaza, even if it provokes further suicide bombings, which his government can use as a pretext for even larger actions.

"Live" rehearsals on real people

Menachem Klein, an Israeli political scientist at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv, outlined the logic of Sharon's actions in a recent Christian Science Monitor article (March 13, 2003).

"These raids can be a kind of rehearsal, with the idea to arrest someone, but also to see how to get in and out, what tactics to use. A rehearsal on live people. And the thinking is that if the world gets used to these short-term reoccupations, it will digest the long-term one."

Since his return to power two years ago, Ariel Sharon has systematically escalated Israeli military assaults and assassinations in search of a military solution, despite ceaseless waves of suicide bombings, in order to achieve a clear set of political objectives. At the top of the list has been the destruction of any base of Palestinian political and military resistance to Israeli settlements and permanent control of the land Israel occupied in 1967. Gaza is his last objective.