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Muslims React To Sharon Victory
contributions by Tareq Ayyoub
AMMAN, Feb 7 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Jordanian Prime Minister Ali Abul Ragheb and Lebanon's Hezbollah reacted on Wednesday to Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon's victory in Israeli elections held Tuesday.
Abul Ragheb said it is premature to judge the Sharon and said that Jordan will not hold him accountable for anti-Jordan statements made in the past.
Responding to lawmaker's questions during a Lower House (parliament) session on the Jordanian government's reaction to Sharon's election, Abul Ragheb said that Jordan was in the process of coordinating a response with other Arab counties regarding the issue.
During the session, deputies lashed out at Sharon and demanded the Jordanian government undertake necessary measures to avoid any possible action taken by Israel against Jordan when Sharon officially becomes prime minister.
The deputies also criticized the Israeli people's selection of Sharon as a candidate for the prime minister post, and said that such a step means, "They are against peace making."
"This villain pig [Sharon] believes that he is able to do any thing he wants and that he is the master of this region and Arabs should succumb to his wish and desire," deputy Khalil Atiyah said.
"This pig has repeatedly said that he is able to invade Jordan in hours to topple its regime and establish an alternative homeland [for Palestinians]," Atiyah told his colleagues.
Deputy Salamah Hyari said the Israeli people elected a "bunch of racists and fascists which repeatedly said that they will destroy the High Dam [in Egypt] and shell Tehran with their rockets."
The two lawmakers urged the government to act firmly against Israeli threats and undertake necessary measures that would spare Jordan any possible "outcome of Sharon's un-predicted policy."
Hyari urged the government to launch an anti-Israel campaign in the Middle East to "unveil the true face of the state of the aggression."
But Abul Ragheb played down lawmaker's fears and urged them to wait-and-see Sharon's upcoming policies.
"We are dealing with states and not individuals," Abul Ragheb told the 80-member Parliament.
"There is a peace treaty [between Jordan and Israel]... and the two sides are committed to this accord in line with the international law," the premier added.
Abul Ragheb said that Sharon's anti-Jordan statements were uttered for election purposes to win hardliner votes.
"But we will keep an open eye on his future policies and our reaction will be taken accordingly," he added.
Ahead of his election, the new Israeli prime minister, known for his extreme policies, has repeatedly said that Jordan is the "alternative homeland" for the Palestinians.
Sharon also angered the Jordanian government last month when he said that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat could topple the regime here if he was allowed to establish a Palestinian state.
"There is a risk of Yasser Arafat toppling the Hashemite regime in Jordan and establishing a state in that country," Sharon was quoted by the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot.
"Without a buffer zone, the borders of such a state would stretch from the border with Iraq to the east, up to Petash Tikvvay and Kfar Saba," Israeli towns to the north-east of Tel Aviv, the daily added.
According to the daily, Sharon also said that Jordanians had told him of their concerns, saying for that very reason they wanted Israel to stand firm along the West Bank of the Jordanian valley.
Sharon, a former army general, was responsible for the 1982 massacre in Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon, where at least 5,000 Palestinians were slaughtered by a pro-Israel Christian militia.
In 1954, the Likud leader also headed Unit 101 of the Israeli army, which massacred the residents of a Palestinian village, Qibyah, where tens of Palestinian villagers were killed in cold blood.
Following his landslide victory, Sharon reiterated his positions and said that Occupied Jerusalem will remain the "unified capital of Israel" and rejected the return of 3.5 million Palestinian refugees to British-mandate Palestine, which they were forced to leave during the 1947 Arab-Israeli war.
Meanwhile, Lebanon's Hezbollah said Wednesday Sharon's victory and his history of butcheries will only force an escalation of the Palestinian uprising.
"The crisis will escalate inside Palestinian territories because there will be more Jihad [holy struggle] operations and suicide bombings," Hajj Mahmud Qomati, deputy president of the Hezbollah politburo, said.
"And Sharon's history of massacres and his ability to commit butcheries in retaliation will guarantee that the Intifada will continue and will further increase," he said.
"The Intifada will escalate because neither [incumbent Ehud] Barak, nor Sharon, and especially not Sharon, will ever grant the Palestinians their rights on their own territory and on Jerusalem."
Qomati however said the violence was not expected to spread outside the Palestinian territories, although "we, as Hezbollah, and the Lebanese and Syrian armies, remain ready."
"We think the crisis will remain inside [the Palestinian territories] because of two things: international pressures and Sharon's knowledge of our resistance's capability of striking deep into the violating entity [Israel]."
Hezbollah spearheaded the resistance in southern Lebanon until Israel's May 24th troop pullout after 22 years of occupation.
"Our resistance will continue until the liberation of all our territory and the release of the prisoners" from Israel, he said.
Lebanon and Hezbollah consider Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon as "incomplete" because Israel still detains a number of Lebanese and continues to occupy the disputed Shebaa Farms.
Israel maintains that it seized the border territory, now claimed by Lebanon, from Syria and can only return it in an agreement with Damascus.
Qomati said Hezbollah was "not concerned with the Israeli elections. The arrival of Sharon does not change anything in our policy and our struggle. The Israeli strategy is the same and the massacres that they commit are the same."
"They have different tactics, but they follow the same strategy," he said.
"Both Sharon and [departing prime minister Ehud] Barak are butchers and murderers. The Labor party's war against Lebanon in April 1996 is as savage as when Sharon committed the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982," he said.
In April 1996, then Labor prime minister Shimon Peres launched the "Grapes of Wrath" military offensive which killed 175 people in Lebanon, including 105 refugees who died in an Israeli shelling on a United Nations base.
Sharon, as defense minister in 1982, was found "personally and indirectly" responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres of hundreds of Palestinians by Lebanese Christian militiamen protected by the Israeli army.
Qomati said "Sharon's new post will force him to appear more flexible before the eyes of the world public opinion, especially in America."
"We think that Sharon, who is described as a butcher with a mind obsessed with security, will try to broker security deals, not political agreements, which will only be temporary."
"There will be no resolution to the problems and the crisis will continue and it will increase," he added.
The al-Mustaqbal daily newspaper also quoted a Hezbollah spokesman, without naming him, that Sharon's victory could "freeze the chances" of a prisoner swap with Hezbollah, who abducted four Israeli servicemen in October.
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