Ariel Sharon has responded to Yasser Arafat’s call for a halt to violence by Palestinians by saying that it’s just a political ploy to garner votes for his opponent. Of course it is. How does that affect anything? Sharon did everything he could to incite conflict with the Palestinians in order to get elected in the first place, and has done nothing but escalate the conflict since he was elected. Yasser Arafat’s call for restraint may very well be a joke, but it should hardly surprise anyone that the Palestinians would reduce the level of violence in hopes of getting rid of Ariel Sharon, who really is a brutal scumbag. Everyone knows that for many of the Palestinian terrorist groups, terrorism is a political tool. Hopefully nobody believes Sharon when he acts like this surprises him. (Especially considering that we’ve all seen how Sharon uses violence as a political tool himself.)