Unyielding
Challenges of the Holy Land
Dr Harry Hagopian, KSL-KOG
We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned;
Yet no clear fact to be discerned.
Meditations in Time of Civil War, by W B Yeats
Prologue
In a key presentation he made in Strasbourg on 11 December 2001, His Beatitude Michel Sabbah, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, threw down the gauntlet to both Israelis and Palestinians. Addressing the issue of violence in the Holy Land, he reminded all believers that dealing with this parcel of land implies dealing with the land of God. God does not accept violence just as he does not accept the death of Abel - whether Abel is Palestinian or Israeli, or whether Cain is Palestinian or Israeli. Jerusalem is a holy city, he added, and the font of peace for humanity. Only those living up to its challenge merit it, can own it and live in peace within it.
These are compelling words! They are also words that
challenge the world in its dealings with the Holy Land - or to put it
differently, with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole. So I would like
to use this article today to highlight some of the challenges of this hallowed
parcel of land, as much as to underline the issues that need further reflection
and action if true peace between Israelis and Palestinians were to be achieved
at long last.
Let me start off my set of seven challenges with a
historical perspective. And let me therefore ask quite bluntly what purpose
does the Israeli military occupation serve? Is it a 19th century
style 'civilising mission' meant to improve the lives of Palestinians living
under occupation? Or is it a 20th century nationalist - and
extrinsically irredentist - agenda that aims to use all methods in order to
clear the conquered land for its own settlers?
Mark Mazower, Professor of History at Birkbeck College
in London, draws an analogy with other 19th century empires when he
suggests that the conquest of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Habsburg troops in 1878 was
conceived - and marketed - as a first step in a 'civilising mission'. Although
this occupation met with fierce resistance, some accommodation was reached once
the Austrians invested massive amounts of money into modernising the region as
an advertisement for the benefits of their rule over that of the Ottomans.
The advent of an era of nationalism in the 20th
century, however, meant that different states used military force rather
differently against civilians in conquered territories. In the Balkan wars,
invasions often led to huge flights of populations and consequential 'ethnic
cleansing'. The French occupation of the Ruhr area after WWI was designed to
consolidate control over the region's economic resources and to guarantee the
payment of reparations. And with Nazi rule across Europe after 1938 - the
classic laboratory case for occupation policy - both the demographic and
economic aspects of conquest came to the fore. Some regions were annexed and
incorporated into the Reich. Most were never intended to form part of Germany
but remained under the control of the Wehrmacht or the SS. The chief goal of
military conquest was to create the enlarged and racially purified state of a
German master race. Non-Germans were driven off land intended for settlement,
while ethnic Germans were encouraged to build a new life in border areas
wrested from Polish or Soviet control. Economies were looted, and food stocks
plundered. The losers starved and mobilised in resistance. In vain,
collaborators such as the Vichy leader Marshal Philippe Petain, King Leopold of
Belgium and Norway's Vidkun Quisling tried to impress upon Hitler the
importance of making military occupation seem not an end in itself but rather
an opening to a new inclusive political dispensation. But not even Benito
Mussolini could make the Nazis recognise the self-defeating character of their
national chauvinism.
Soviet policy in post-war Europe formed a contrast.
Military occupation by the Red Army was a means to a political end but that
end, although no less totalitarian, differed sharply. Military domination
helped the Nazis loot and plunder resources, but it could help much less with
the long-term Soviet goal - the social transformation of the region by planned
industrialisation. Hence came about the demobilisation of the Red Army, its
withdrawal from many territories in Eastern Europe and Moscow's policy of
dominating satellite states less by force than through one-party rule, security
services and the police. Although there were some huge forced population
movements, notably in the Baltic States and Poland, the stress on creating
ethnically purified lands was far less marked than with the Nazis. So whilst
the Nazis responded to armed resistance with a draconian policy of reprisals
and mass shootings, the Soviet strategy was much more akin to a long-run
colonial combination of political warfare and police surveillance, using
regular amnesties and the lure of joining the winning side. As with the
Habsburgs, the Soviets offered those they had occupied the prospect of
modernisation.
So let me come back to my original question! What
purpose does the Israeli military occupation serve? What are the objectives of the Israeli government vis-à-vis
its occupation of Palestinian land? It is certainly not modernisation, and
there is no 'civilising mission' whatsoever! Not only that, but when faced with
armed resistance, the Israeli government expected the Palestinian Authority to
police the territories. When this failed to happen, Israel assassinated its opponents
and used overwhelming military force. But with the effort to turn the Authority
into a surrogate police agency having seemingly flopped, what is the
alternative to the military option?
As in WWII, the Israelis may now be discovering that
overwhelming military power can generate the very opposition it seeks to
destroy. Wartime Poland demonstrated that mass resistance often emerges as an
alternative underground society once an occupying power has destroyed existing
institutions and offered no plausible likelihood of helping build new ones.
Hitler and Stalin used mass population movement and large-scale killing to try
achieving their ends. But we are not in the 1940s now, and those policies are
inconsistent with the ideology of the modern State of Israel or the values of
the international community. Yet, the Sharon-led government is taking the
country down a path that cannot possibly lead to long-term success. After 1967,
the military occupation failed to integrate newly conquered lands into Israel proper.
Now it is also failing to guarantee even the safety of Jewish settlers. These failures underline the glaring
political limitations of military subjugation in the modern world.
One visible result of the recent spate of suicide
bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa is that the Israeli population no longer feels
secure. Its confidence in the process of peace with the Palestinians has also
been battered severely. Moreover, those bombings have abetted Israel in its
attempt to de-legitimise the Palestinian Authority and put the Palestinians
face-to-face with the spectre of civil strife.
An off-shoot of these developments is that Palestinian
public opinion also shifted visibly toward stronger support for the Intifada
and much less in favour of the process for peace between the two parties. When
the Camp David II talks broke off in July 2000, only 24% of Palestinians
believed in this process. When Ariel Sharon was elected Prime Minister of
Israel in February 2001, the support level hit the floor at 11% only.
Parallel to these new developments, new percentages
were already impacting the Palestinian street. This was due to a belief by some
Palestinians that their Authority was failing to manage the conflict through
its negotiations with Israel and that it had equally failed to edify a
democratic and corruption-free society within its territories. This also
translated into some stark figures. As the Palestinian Centre for Policy and
Survey Research indicated in a recent article, the popularity of Chairman
Arafat and Fatah fell to 33% and 29% respectively - compared to 47% and 37%
before the Intifada started on 28 September 2000. Conversely, the popularity of
the Islamic movements rose from 17% to 27%. Further, only 20% of Palestinians felt
that their institutions were democratic. Such statistics translated into a new
feeling within the larger Palestinian society that helped shift the internal
balance of power and nudged ahead a new generation of leaders from within the
national movement.
Israel confronted the dynamics of the Intifada with an
even harsher siege of Palestinian territories and sterner collective
punishments. The measures it adopted have touched most Palestinians by blocking
their freedom of movement and destroying the fabric of their economic and
social lives. But they only managed to deepen the sense of humiliation,
oppression and hopelessness felt by Palestinians who came to consider political
negotiations as pointless, and doubled their support for violent resistance - now
resting at around 80% of the population.
Despite those gloomy percentages and dire conditions,
though, 75% of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza still support a
historic conciliation between the two peoples based on the establishment of an
independent and viable Palestinian state adjacent to Israel. But this flank of
support cannot be nurtured in a vacuum. It needs to be strengthened by the
parties, but this can only be achieved if the negotiations were to be resumed
soon.
With depressing predictability, writes Quentin Peel in
the Financial Times, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict blew up again just as the
US-led campaign in Afghanistan seemed to be reaching its end game. And what a
coincidence too! It had been clear
from the start that the confrontation over Israel was one issue behind the
terrorist attacks and that it would have been dragged into the fallout.
Hardliners on both sides wanted it to be so.
Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, and harsh
military suppression of dissent, has provided Islamic radicals with a fertile
cause for recruitment. That is true even if their mixed and multiple targets
are Muslim autocrats and modernisers alike as well as much of the modern world
rather than just the state of Israel!
On the other side, PM Ariel Sharon and his government are urgently
seeking to ensure that the terrorist threat they face in Israel is seen in
Washington as identical to the anti-US onslaught by Usama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda
network. Sharon wants the US 'war
on terrorism' to become synonymous with his own war against Hamas and Islamic
Jihad. And there lies the
rub! The Middle East is … not
Afghanistan, just as Kashmir is not Afghanistan … either!
The war against Afghanistan has been 'easy' in the
sense that the Taliban regime was a clear target, lacking any significant
international support, and capable of being overthrown by traditional military
tactics. But the future fight against terrorism - against a tactic, not a
target - needs to be delineated clearly.
Let us start with the definition of 'terrorism'. The
United Nations has been struggling to accomplish this task for decades. Last month, its best legal brains
failed again to reach any conclusion!
They could not agree on a request by several Arab states that the
definition of terrorism should allow the concepts of 'self-determination' and
'resisting foreign occupation' to be included as exclusionary loopholes within
it. Indeed, Washington managed to maintain a somewhat arcane distinction between
the 'global terrorism' of al-Qa'eda and what might be termed the 'nationalist
terrorism' of other movements the likes of Hamas, the IRA in Northern Ireland
and the Eta separatists in Spain. This distinction would not be sustained for
long, nor would it stand against the scrutiny of reason.
It is a truism, as much as a political reality, that
one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. For many Israelis,
Chairman Yasser Arafat remains a terrorist since he allows organisations like
Hamas to operate from his territory. However, to many Palestinians - including
those who do not support Hamas, as well as many Arabs in the Middle East - PM
Ariel Sharon is worse. His deliberate use of massive force to counter the
suicide bombers and his extra-judicial assassinations are precisely designed to
cause terror in the Palestinian population. Few people in the Arab world forget
his alleged part in the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatilla
camps in Lebanon in 1982. It remains a moot point whether that makes him a war
criminal or a terrorist in the eyes of Palestinians. But does yesterday's
terrorist who becomes tomorrow's peacemaker still remain an ex-terrorist
nonetheless? Terrorism cannot be defined in black and white - there are many
shades of grey!
I believe quite strongly that terrorism is too
nebulous a concept and cannot be a target in itself. It is primarily a tool of
the disempowered to fight the overwhelmingly powerful. It is most often a
tactic of desperation, espoused no doubt by many who are pathological killers,
but also by others who see themselves as idealists. The danger of declaring
'war on terrorism' is that it implies using the overwhelming power of the USA -
or, in the case of Israel, that country's relatively serious power against the
Palestinians - to crush those organisations espousing terrorism. But that will
not remove the tactic of terrorism from the armoury of the desperate. If
anything, it will reinforce its use as the only possible weapon - a
self-evident point that was demonstrated by the bloody spate of Palestinian
suicide bombs.
The answer, - and it is inevitably long-term and hard
to acknowledge - is to seek and tackle the causes of terrorism rather than
merely its manifestations. For prognosis and diagnosis to correlate, and for
settlement and resolution to twin up, it is vital to go for the cause roots
rather than doctor the symptoms alone!
But this is not a very popular strategy in Washington today. For a
start, it sounds too much like condoning terrorist acts. It also seems far too
impractical for those who want nice and clear policies to deal with obvious
problems. But if we treat terrorism as an end in itself - a target in itself -
that can simply be snuffed out by the use of force, we run the risk of stoking
up an ever-growing peril.
Despite the fact that Usama bin Laden is still
taunting the free world with his videotaped pronouncements, it seems to me that
the West has largely won the war in Afghanistan. But what about the Middle East
- from Iran to the Arabian Gulf - where the players on the chessboard of
diplomacy often tend to checkmate each other?
The contrast between Afghanistan and the Middle East
is quite crisp, and the players of the war on terrorism are somewhat harder to
identify! Iran appears to be slowly abandoning its revolutionary past. The Gulf
States no longer enjoy the potency of oil and are under intense scrutiny for
responsibility in the outburst of international terrorism. Israel enjoys clear
military superiority over all its neighbours put together. The outline for an
arc of stability against fundamentalism - possibly comprising Turkey, Iran and
Israel - is not too far-fetched a scenario.
But is it possible to achieve such larger goals when the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not yet been resolved? How vulnerable does
Israel remain today? Palestinians from their end perceive Israel as a colonial
oppressor. So, they often imagine that Israelis will eventually leave the
territories. Israelis on the other hand - partly because of their own
historical experience of horrendous suffering, but mainly because any
occupation corrupts - are too often blind to the suffering they inflict upon
others. Even if one rejects a moral equivalence between the systematic murder
of Israelis by suicide bombers and the collateral damage inflicted on
Palestinians by the Israeli army, it cannot be denied that the bombers'
fanaticism is as much a product of despair as it is of indoctrination. Both sides today have reached a
critical phase where they need to face some uncompromising truths and make some
painful choices. But can they?
As Dominique Moisi of the Paris-based Institute of
International Relations asks in a recent article, why must the situation in the
Middle East get even worse before it gets better? Why does the international community persist in exhausting
all alternatives before coming to the conclusion that it must intervene - and
massively so! True, the violence
and hatred have gone too far. However, the new diplomatic environment created
by 11 September 2001 - a rapprochement between the United Nations and the USA,
the positive approach of Russia and the growing diplomatic role of Germany
within Europe - creates an opportunity that both PM Sharon and Chairman Arafat
seem unable to seize for now. The international community, on the other hand,
can - and therefore must! The conflict is not only costing far too many
innocent lives; it also represents a source of permanent tension between the
western and Islamic or Arab worlds.
This is why I view with extreme sorrow the US veto of
the proposed United Nations Security Council Resolution of 15 December 2001.
This was the third aborted attempt by the UN in a year to establish a
monitoring force in the occupied territories. The wide-ranging resolution
received support from twelve members of the Security Council while Norway and
Britain abstained. Yet, the UN remains the sole international body with legally
binding powers that can be instrumental in constructing peace. The
establishment of a UN monitoring presence is a concrete and positive step that
the international community ought to take seriously. It would foster a calm and
non-violent atmosphere that could well help put an end to the dangerously
escalating cycle of violence and draw both parties back to the negotiating
table.
A spine-tingling statement issued on 2 December 2001
by the Israeli peace movement Gush Shalom following the horrific suicide
bombings began with the chilling statement 'We expected it - which doesn't make
it less horrifying'. The statement added that 'every new round of blunt
aggression is more cynical and blind'. Talking about the escalating rounds of
violence, the statement ended with an almost resigned sigh, 'And you re-iterate
- also on such a day - that it is the occupation which is the root cause, that
the cycle of bloodshed cannot be broken without an end to the occupation, or at
least a clearly visible step in that direction'.
In a short article entitled 'The Chanukah Miracle',
Rabbi Michael Lerner raises a similar question. He refers to the Talmudic
rabbis who were worried during the ancient times that the celebration of
Chanukah would miss its mark by focusing too much on the victory of the
Maccabees. He then pursues with his analogy and states that 'we have not learnt
that the anger which brought the attacks of 11 September 2001 had everything to
do our insensitivity to the pain of people around the world. He adds, 'the only
path out of this is for Israelis to open their hearts to the Palestinian
people, and for Palestinians to do the same for Israelis. But both sides have
the fantasy that power is what will save them'.
Intransigence, coupled with an obsessive Israeli hold
on territory contrary to the principles of international legitimacy, should
yield to an understanding that no people can be dispossessed of their land and
then forced to sue for peace.
In his Christmas message to the world a few days ago,
HH Pope John-Paul II said he was bearing in his heart the tragedy of the Holy
Land, and that his mind was on the Bethlehem of yesterday and the Bethlehem of
today.
Ever since the Second Intifada started, Israel has
been strangulating the Palestinian territories with closures that have almost
crippled the Palestinian society and economy. A recent report released by the
United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) - responsible for providing many
of the services in the West Bank and Gaza - makes for grim reading and offers
some dismal facts:
An excerpt from an earlier report in the Olive Branch
on the decimation of a whole infrastructure pointed out that:
This devastating reality is one that is sowing the
seeds of further radicalisation within ever-increasing sectors of the
Palestinian population. The statistics I used earlier in this article are not
created in a parthenogenesis that is barren from logic or wisdom. Rather, they are the product of a
serious erosion of confidence in a process that has metamorphosed the hope for
peace into a reality of war. To succeed, the hope for peace should be coupled
with an improvement of the living conditions of those living in the territories
- otherwise, it is a redundant hope. Placing Palestinians in pseudo-cages
unfortunately makes an equal mockery of those in the cages as much as those
holding the keys to those cages.
A statement last November by the Presidents and
Bishops of the Catholic worldwide grassroots movement Pax Christi laid down the
challenge for the future. Quoting the prophetic words of the late Pope Paul VI,
it reminded its constituents that 'if one seeks peace, one has to work for
justice'.
This document referred to the legal and political
foundations of a future peace-anchored regional vision that embraces both
peoples. Its main recommendations included an acknowledgement of the right of
self-determination for Palestinians as much as the right of Israel for
recognised and secure borders. It also re-iterated the need for an Israeli
withdrawal from the territories it occupied in 1967, the right of return for
refugees and the respect for human rights by both parties. The document then
called for a show of goodwill by all Christian, Muslim and Jewish religious
leaders in order to 'smash the walls of hostility and division, and to build
together a world based on justice and solidarity'. Finally, the report included an appeal to the USA and the EU
to become more actively engaged in the quest for peace and the implementation
of those [Mitchell Report] steps that would encourage the peace-builders within
both communities to labour for peace.
This document from Pax Christi resonated well with
another document. Entitled 'A Proposal Regarding Peace in the Middle East',
authored by Bassam Abu-Sharif and dated 11 December 2001, it called for
confidence-building measures and misconception-clearing steps that will begin
to heal the hostility and mitigate the grudge that have become prevalent within
both communities. To achieve this, it suggested drawing up a vision of the
solution from the end game and then working out the means and mechanisms that
could translate this vision into reality.
In a nutshell, the process will be initiated by
Israeli and Palestinian public figures. They will sign a charter together
spelling out their vision for peace. They will then appear together, and meet
the media together, to promote their vision to the Israeli and Palestinian
populaces. Their primary focus - that of psycho-political counsellors as much
as initiators - will be to arrest the festering animosity that has slithered
into the hearts and minds of both peoples.
The main components of the putative charter will
include:
Implicit in the five points are the following
necessary pre-requisites:
Epilogue
As an Armenian Christian from Jerusalem, I have shared
many of the highs and lows of both peoples, but I have also experienced the
stark imbalance of power between the two parties. There is a frightening
asymmetry in the variables of the conflict between both peoples. Justice is on
the side of the Palestinian people - it is their land that is occupied, their
identity that is marginalized and their rights that are violated in different
ways every day.
It is true that both peoples are suffering the
consequences of this conflict, and I deeply mourn the grief of many Israeli
orphaned children and widowed partners who have been blown away in a heinous
show of inhumanity. But I also
deeply mourn the grief of many Palestinian orphaned children and widowed
partners who have been killed in an equally insidious show of inhumanity.
Neither is good for either people!
Two wrongs do not make one right!
In his 'Dimbleby Lecture 2001' in London earlier this
month, President Bill Clinton spoke eloquently about the struggle for the soul
of the 21st century. Referring to its future shape, and using the
Israeli-Palestinian dimension as one yardstick, he alluded to the global
challenge for a common humanity that transcends global differences. Quite true!
But such a challenge inherently exacts an honest revision of the way we view
the conflicts of the world. There has to be the leading will for political
action to tackle some of the long-standing problems that are like tinderboxes
waiting to go up in flames - over and over again! An attempt to struggle for the soul of the new millennium,
and the zeal to define a common humanity, can only become possible if vested
interests were replaced by a more just view of the world.
Can we perhaps find within ourselves the courage,
sagacity and resourcefulness to take up the gauntlet thrown down to us all by
HB Patriarch Michel Sabbah in Strasbourg some three long weeks ago?
We must be the change we wish to see!
M K Gandhi
© harry-bvH @ 29 December 2001
The author is an International lawyer,
as well as Ecumenical, Legal and Policy Consultant to the Armenian Apostolic
Church, in London. He has been
deeply involved for many years with the religious and political aspects of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This article is an edited version of a
lecture presented at the Middle East Strategic Forum in Washington DC.