BEIRUT: While international attention is focused on Israel’s ‘isolation’ of Yasser Arafat, the principal goal of its military offensive in the occupied Palestinian territories is much more far-reaching, warns the leading Palestinian member of Israel’s Knesset Azmi Bishara.

He said: “Its aim is nothing short of ‘breaking the back’ of the Palestinian national movement to enable Israel to impose its political and territorial terms on the Palestinian people in the light of the recent severe Israeli operations against Jenin and Nablus Palestinian refugee camps.

That involves a long-term systematic process of forcibly purging Palestinian society of an “entire generation” of activists which is already under way in the reoccupied cities, towns, villages and refugee camps of the West Bank, and is set to continue and result in the detention or deportation of thousands of people.

Bishara said that in addition to the immediate putting an end to the Palestinian attacks against Israelis that have undermined his credibility Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is intent on “crushing the Palestinian national movement and its ability to resist Israeli dictates” whether they relate to the terms of a political settlement or to stop-gap proposals such as the Tenet and Mitchel plans.

“Of course, the Palestinian national movement is too broad and deep-rooted to be crushed merely by “isolating” Arafat. Crushing it entails purging Palestinian society wholesale”, he added.

The isolation of Arafat is designed to make him “irrelevant” in line with the ‘thesis’ promoted by Sharon some months back. “They are trying to make Arafat irrelevant by disconnecting him from the whole world and from his people. They will do it consistently.

They will go after him and they will isolate him more and more until he is no longer in touch with the outside world “while also seeking to drive him into exile. “But the main process going on is not this”, Bishara remarked.

“The main thing that is going on is in the Palestinian cities. The Israelis are going through not only every neighbourhood but every building, and not only every building but every apartment. They are ‘combing’ the Palestinian areas. This is a ‘combing’ operation targeting whole generation of Palestinians.