He’s very photogenic. Perhaps he has hopes of branching out into acting. Perhaps Golan-Globus will come together and consider him for a remake of the 1981 U.S. thriller "Escape from New York"…now to be titled "Escape from Gaza". Whatever his motivation, Ariel Sharon seems to have read the script.
In "Escape from New York" the American actor Kurt Russell (who, unlike Sharon, usually delivers a believable performance) plays a character named "Snake Plissken". His job is to infiltrate Manhattan Island and rescue the U.S. President, whose helicopter has crashed there. The tough part is that in the 1997 venue of the movie, Manhattan has been converted into a maximum security prison. All the worst criminals in America have been dumped there, without guards, into a melee of criminality. Essential services are minimal and ingress and egress are heavily guarded, with the waters around the island both patrolled and mined. If the prisoners get out of line, one presumes, their food, water and fuel can be cut off.
Right now, Sharon seems to preparing the movie set. And the American media–and even the most liberal of talk shows–fails to point out that much of the current home demolition and slaughter of unarmed Palestinian protesters is for the purposes of building a 36-foot-wide ditch along the Gaza border with Egypt. Suitable and equivalent controls are reportedly planned for the Israeli side of the enclave.
The prison population is already in place. Some 900,000 "extras" have already been brought (herded?) into Gaza, just ready to begin acting alongside the 400,000 longtime Gaza residents. Soon, leading name actors such as Yasser Arafat may join them.
There is, sadly, a possibility that Sharon does not have acting aspirations. In that case–should the Palestinians not "accept" Sharon’s generous peace plan–the region can look forward to expanding conflict. And even countries such as Russia may get fallout from the conflict. According to recent speeches delivered through the American Enterprise Institute, increasing ethnic (read: Islamic) unrest may help to fracture the Russian Republic. Europe and even China could also be affected, since all have sizeable Islamic populations.
