By Edmund R. Hanauer

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. Bush's double standard on the cycle of Palestinian and Israeli violence and terror is clear: He says that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is a ''man of peace,'' while Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat should be replaced by a ''Palestinian leadership not compromised by terror.''

Bush's stance has strengthened extremists on both sides, undercut moderates, and given Sharon a blank check to continue Israeli violence and settlement expansion. This makes it harder for Arafat to condemn, let alone prevent, Palestinian violence without appearing to be a collaborator with the Israeli occupation - especially since Sharon is unwilling to make the concessions Arafat needs to curb violence without bringing on civil war among Palestinians.

While Bush denounces Palestinian terrorism and Saddam Hussein for violating the rights of Iraqis, his silence on Israeli violations of Palestinian
rights is deafening. According to B'Tselem, Israel's leading human rights group, Israel has violated 29 of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its treatment of 3 million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

The 200,000 Palestinian Muslims and Christians in Jerusalem suffer ''dispossession [and] systematic discrimination'' under Israeli rule,
B'Tselem has reported.

The Fourth Geneva Convention, which governs Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands, is violated by numerous Israeli policies: exile, torture and beatings, collective punishment, seizure of land and water resources, the settling of hundreds of thousands of Jews on confiscated land, the destruction of thousands of homes as well as olive and citrus trees, and denial of access to employment, medical care, education, water, and food. In December 2001, 114 signatories of the Geneva Convention, meeting in Geneva, reaffirmed that the convention applies to Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands, that Jewish settlements violate the convention, and that Israel should cease ''grave breaches'' of the convention, including ''willful killing, torture, collective penalties, and unlawful deportation'' (''grave breaches'' are defined as war crimes). Israel and the United States, both signatories, boycotted the meeting. Israel, alone, denies the applicability of the convention.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other human rights groups have determined that Israel, under both Labor and Likud parties, has been guilty of war crimes in its treatment of Palestinians and other Arabs. Recognition of the brutality of the occupation has led over 600 Israeli army reservists to declare that they ''shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve, and humiliate an entire people.'' While Arafat's ability to stop Palestinian violence is doubtful - especially given Israel's destruction of Arafat's security forces - violence by Israel's army, Jewish settlers, and prison authorities is the direct result of Israeli governmental policies and could be ended immediately.

Along with demanding that Arafat prevent violence, Bush should insist that Sharon arrest, jail, and prosecute Israeli soldiers who, according to
human rights groups, use ''excessive force'' against Palestinian civilians,
resulting in hundreds of unnecessary deaths, including scores of children. Veteran foreign correspondent Chris Hedges visited Gaza in 2001 and reported in Harper's magazine that Israeli soldiers were killing Palestinian children ''for sport.'' Sharon should also be urged to end the systematic torture of thousands of Palestinian prisoners, and to punish all Jewish settlers who physically attack and shoot at Palestinians, as well as destroy their crops, orchards, and wells. Israeli soldiers and settlers who terrorize Palestinians should receive prison sentences as severe as those meted out to Palestinian terrorists.

Because US governmental support of $3 billion yearly enables Israel to commit these crimes in violation of international law and scores of UN resolutions, the United States is complicit in those crimes and violations. The sooner the United States ties aid to Israel to Israel's respect for human rights, the sooner Israel will withdraw from all the occupied Palestinian lands and allow Palestinians to have a viable independent state alongside Israel.

If the Bush administration opposes all, not some, terrorism, supports
human rights, a strengthened UN, and international law, seeks to undermine, not increase, the appeal of anti-American terrorists, and wants to save Israeli lives by reconciling Israel with her Arab neighbors, then it is time the United States practiced ''tough love'' with Israel.

Edmund R. Hanauer is director of Search for Justice and Equality in Palestine/Israel.

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Reprinted with permission from the January 20, 2003 issue of
The Boston Globe