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This is new Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's message to the Palestinian people:

To every man, woman and child in the Palestinian territories. YOU are my target; you will be made to suffer; and you shall pay for the original crime of being a Palestinian - and for being there.

Every camp, village, town and city is hereby declared a prison. Instead of arresting each individual and having to build even more incarceration centres and foot the bill for your detention, I shall simply instruct the army to dig ditches and build barricades around your population centres, thus with one sweep rendering your isolation complete. Wherever you are, you're under arrest at your own expense and in your own home.

School children may not reach their schools and college students are to stay home.

Some of you might try to climb over the dirt barriers or walk around the ditches. Take your chances! After hours of misery you might find a tank (or more) lying in wait for you. You might find snipers on your hilltops, or armored vehicles at your crossroads.

Defy the siege at your own peril, and if you die don't blame me. In my book, you're guilty of the subversive act of seeking education. The same applies to your teachers and school administrators, who are guilty of the equally heinous crime of attempting to teach.

Besides, I can't close down all your educational institutions with a military order - that would tarnish my new and improved image in the West. This way, your institutions will collapse by themselves and ignorance will prevail.

All patients seeking treatment are hereby forbidden to reach their hospitals and clinics. You shall suffer in silence and you shall die in silence, for you are guilty of daring to claim the same human treatment reserved for real people - not for subhuman genetic terrorists like you. All pregnant women will deliver in their own homes, or in ambulances and at checkpoints if they dare defy the siege. Should you suffer complications leading to the death of your infants (or to your own death), you have only yourselves to blame. For you are guilty of the ultimate crime of attempting to give birth to even more Palestinian terrorists.

All shopkeepers, tradesmen, industrialists, construction workers, businessmen (and women - we don't discriminate) are hereby forbidden from engaging in any kind of gainful activity. Since you cannot go anywhere anyway, you might as well stay home and watch your families starve even if your warehouses are full of products you cannot market. You too are guilty for attempting to conduct a normal life in defiance of the occupation.

This applies even more directly to farmers and peasants and all those involved in agricultural activity. Is it not enough that we confiscated most of your land to build settlements for those brave settlers who had defied real hardships in New York, London, Moscow and other such hostile places to come to the Land of Milk and Honey? You had no business being there, tilling the land and feeding your children. Now, we have to confiscate even more lands for these settlers to build bypass roads (i.e. to bypass your reality) and to connect them to Israel directly, without having to witness the mere fact of your existence. You call it apartheid? We call it security by the power of the gun.

If our brave settlers used their guns against you, uprooted your trees, destroyed your crops, and terrified your children, that's the least they could do given the hardships they endured in their drive to grab more land.

When will you learn that you do not count?

Let me be painfully frank with you. I blame you for forcing us to besiege you, kill you, shell your homes, assassinate your activists and leaders, and perform other such distasteful tasks.

You are truly exasperating. We made you a generous offer whereby we would annex only parts of your land (including our settlement clusters), expand settlements according to need (and will), annex Jerusalem and keep it under our sovereignty (while trying our best to render it Palestinian-free), and totally deny the Palestinian refugees their right to return. Yet, ungrateful wretches that you are, you persisted in your stubborn refusal. You claim international law and legitimacy? What nonsense! Only our law prevails, and we deem you illegal.

Despite all our attempts at persuasion (our gunships, tanks, sniper-fire and military checkpoints are very subtle means of persuasion), you continued to deny us our rights to your lands. We have to be able to help ourselves to that which is yours - what else is occupation for? What other use of power if not to be unleashed on the weak? I therefore find you guilty and deserving of the utmost punishment.

You are guilty - for holding on to your humanity, for daring to exercise a collective (and individual) will, for refusing to succumb, for daring to claim equal rights before the law, for maintaining your dignity and a stubborn yearning for freedom.

You must not be allowed to disturb our peace or security. We have the right to drive you to desperation, and should you protest or react, not only will you be conveniently branded as terrorists, we will also pound you into submission while calling on you to "stop the violence" and "end terrorism".

So, if you know what's good for you, please behave like good little natives and kiss the hand that beats you. Say yes to peace, my way, and I guarantee you an efficient apartheid system. In the meantime, stop the violence and stop being the terrorists that you are.

As for me, I remain forever a pacifist and a humanist (my way). If only you would see it my way.

Dr Hanan Ashrawi is an academic and a spokeswoman for the Palestinians.

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