Robert Fisk: This will be the week when we see who runs the US-Israeli alliance

So what's the surprise? Suddenly Israel doesn't want to take our advice. Ex-general Ariel Sharon prefers to go on wrecking the Palestinian Authority, tearing up the Oslo agreement in the name of his Holy War on terror. Why should he worry about the scandalous number of civilian casualties among the Palestinians? After all, didn't America wreak its own revenge – killing thousands of innocent civilians in one of the poorest countries on Earth – after the crimes against humanity of 11 September? I must admit, though, to a grim satisfaction when I heard President George Bush's puzzled, uncomprehending response to Mr Sharon's refusal to withdraw his army from the West Bank.

The Israeli Prime Minister is, after all, the man who sent his army into Lebanon in 1982 to "root out Palestinian terror'' – note the identical rhetoric, as well as the same cast of characters – and whose "elite'' Israeli forces killed up to 17,500 people, almost all civilians. Mr Sharon is the man who then sent Israel's vicious Phalangist allies into the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila, after which they massacred 1,700 Palestinian civilians. For this he was held "personally responsible'' by Israel's own commission of inquiry. Evidence now emerging in Beirut suggests that most of the slaughtered refugees were actually killed in the two weeks following the original massacre – after the survivors had been handed back to the Phalange by Israel's own soldiers