Skidding Out of Control?
·
Concerns & More Concerns!
I was watching
on TV the gut-wrenching pictures of the asymmetric war between Israel and the
Palestinians when the camera zoomed in for a few seconds on a number of
Christian clerics standing at the checkpoint that separates Jerusalem from
Bethlehem. I recognised the face of the Latin-rite Roman Catholic Patriarch
Michel Sabbah, alongside those of Anglican Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal, Syrian
Orthodox Mar Swerios Malki Murad and Lutheran Bishop Mounib Younan. They, and
many other Christians, were trying to cross into Bethlehem to pray at the Church
of the Nativity - the traditional birthplace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ, but also a recent battleground between warring Palestinians and
Israelis! These people of faith had decided to defy the political odds and
strive to cross into Bethlehem in solidarity with its besieged people - knowing
full well that their endeavour was futile.
This attempt to
‘cross’ into Bethlehem coincided with an Appeal by the Patriarchs and Heads of
Churches in Jerusalem in which they expressed horror and distress at the
suffering and destruction in the Holy Land, and voiced their readiness ‘to
serve as mediators between both sides’. Pope John-Paul II followed on with his
own moral call for all believers to build a more just humanity. Dedicating
Divine Mercy Sunday [7 April 2002] as a day of prayer for peace in the Middle
East, the Holy Father said, ‘It seems that war has been declared on peace! But
nothing is resolved by war, it only brings greater suffering and death. Nothing
is resolved through reprisal and retaliation’. Dr George Carey, Archbishop of
Canterbury, appealed for Israelis and Palestinians to step back from ‘the brink
of catastrophe’. He continued that ‘it is the ordinary citizens of both
countries who are paying the price of political failure. This cannot continue.
It is the duty of political leaders to work for a sustainable way forward, not
towards a dead end’. Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, President of the Catholic
Conference of Bishops in England, stated that ‘it is imperative that the international
community redouble its efforts to assist in this search for a just peace’. He
added that such a peace should recognise ‘the rights of the Palestinians to
live in a state of their own, free from domination and military repression, and
the right of Israel to peace and security’. Bishop Nathan Hovhannisian of the
Armenian Orthodox Church in Great Britain reflected his ‘deep concern for the
way in which the conflict was consuming the whole region and compounding the
unjust and undue suffering of innocent peoples’. Pax Christi International
requested the deployment of ‘an international presence, either in the form of
international peacekeeping mission or monitors’.
·
Analyses & More Analyses!
In an interview
this week with BBC2, former US mediator Dennis Ross expressed his alarm that
the war of attrition between Israel and the Palestinians ever since September
2002 had now turned into an all-out war. Whilst underlining his belief that the
USA should apply a hands-on approach towards the conflict, Ross endorsed the
Israeli need for security from the devastating suicide bombings that have
targeted largely civilian populations. But he also linked that sense of
security - in first-time clear American terms - with the need for a
simultaneous political process that will tackle the root cause of this
conflict. The root cause, he averred, is an Israeli occupation of Palestinian
lands.
Bernard
Wasserstein, Professor of Modern History at Glasgow University and author of
‘Divided Jerusalem’, wrote an editorial in the Evening Standard on 3 April 2002
in which he expressed serious doubt as to whether terrorism could be eradicated
by military means. Disagreeing with the notion that Sharon’s war targeted
merely Chairman Yasser Arafat as part of a personal vendetta, he identified
seven aims behind PM Ariel Sharon’s latest military attacks. He adduced that
the Israeli goals consisted of much broader - albeit in his opinion unworkable
- aims.
·
Crush the
Palestinian Authority so that it can no longer exercise effective independent
political action;
·
Sweep aside
the last vestiges of the Oslo process inaugurated by the legal framework of the
agreement in 1993;
·
Restore
Israeli security control over the whole of the West Bank and Gaza;
·
Negotiate a
‘long-term interim agreement’ with ‘compliant’ Palestinians that will provide
for some form of Palestinian autonomy - perhaps including nominal statehood on
a restricted area of the West Bank and Gaza;
·
Continue in
the meantime with the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories;
·
Stimulate a
‘creeping transfer’ of Palestinian Arabs away from their land;
·
Reinforce the
Israeli hold over the east Jerusalem.
Earlier in the
week, Gideon Levy wrote an article in the Ha’aretz Hebrew-language daily
entitled ‘No Holiday There, No Holiday Here Either!’ His demographic analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
led him to conclude that the crux of the problem lay with the [rapidly
expanding and illegal] Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.
Levy traced the
origin of ‘the settlement enterprise’ to Rabbi Moshe Levinger who established
his first pocket of settlers in Hebron on the eve of the Jewish Passover in
1968. He added that ‘the great success of Zionism has so far realised its major
historic purpose of thwarting any prospect of reaching a peace agreement with
the Palestinians. Today, the
200,000 settlers are the major stumbling block to an agreement, and they are
also an obstacle to the achievement of security in Israel’. He blamed the
successive Israeli governments for ignoring this aspect of the problem, noting
wryly that no one ignored it at his peril more than former PM Ehud Barak who
added a record 6,045 building projects in the settlements. Gideon Levy
concluded his article by warning that ‘the violent, lordly, provocative
behaviour of some of the settlers, together with the unjust division of natural
resources and civil rights, have compounded the Palestinians’ just feelings of
bitterness and hatred’.
·
Designs & More Designs!
But what are PM
Ariel Sharon’s true designs? According to Professor Wasserstein again, Sharon’s
intentions must be seen through the prism of his actions since he came to power
over a year ago. Last December, he wrote, Arafat dowsed Palestinian suicide
bombings awhile but Sharon retorted with targeted assassinations. And last
week, he added, when the bloodbath in Netanya spared Israel from the need to
address the pan-Arab peace plan, he elected a military course.
I agree with
Wasserstein that Sharon’s seven-point grand design is disputable and is
unlikely to achieve its long-term goals. Instead, as with Lebanon, Sharon has
plunged the country into a morass. Eventually, again like Lebanon, Sharon’s
over-stretched imperial edifice will succumb to the force of gravity. It might
push the conflict toward a dangerously higher peak, but it is also likely to
leave human, political and physical debris strewn over a wide area.
So what design
can possibly redeem Palestinians and Israelis alike from another chapter of
human misery and suffering? What will provide peace and security for both
Israelis and Palestinians? What is going to shield Israelis from the age-old
tactics of further suicide bombs? What will spare those hapless civilian men
and women from acts of desperation that go back as far as biblical times when
Samson tore down the pillars of the temple at Gaza?
·
Positions & More Positions!
There is
mounting consensus in Europe that the key to this conflict lies in an Israeli
withdrawal from the occupied territories and the creation of a viable Palestinian
state alongside a secure and recognised Israel. Responding to a recent
statement by President Bush that there will never be peace in the Holy Land so
long as there is terror, Dr Bernard Sabella, Executive Director of the
Jerusalem-based MECC Department for Service to Palestine Refugees explained,
‘there will never be peace so long as there is occupation’. However, the fact
remains that the US is the only power with enough leverage to achieve this
overarching aim. Yet, many accusations are being levelled at the Bush
Administration that it is ‘asleep at the switch’ and that it is now being
dragged back into the conflict kicking and screaming! So, what is the reason for this US bias towards Israel and
its obvious reluctance to become involved in the conflict?
Writing in the
Financial Times on 3 April 2002, Gerard Baker offered three main reasons for US
policy-making.
·
Many
lobbyists in Washington derive their unequivocal support for Israel from the
Christian fundamentalists in the southern states of the USA. These Christians
perceive no problem with the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories,
and quote from the Old Testament to claim that God gave the Promised Land to
the Jews.
·
The
neo-conservative flank of the US Administration (known as the ‘neocons’, and
including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Minister Donald Rumsfeld)
views Israel as the strategic ally for America in the region. For them, Israel
is the bulwark against any anti-American Islamic militancy from the
Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea. In this regard, General Powell, US Secretary
of State, is the most iconic object of their contempt.
·
Following 11
September 2001, many Americans bracket the terrorist hijackers who hit New York
and Washington with those suicide bombers in Haifa and Tel Aviv. They equate
suicide attacks with homicide ones and are not ready to draw distinctions
between terrorism and freedom fighting. Criticism of Israeli policies is
immediately equated with support for terrorism, and they justify their attitude
through President Bush’s oft-repeated statement that ‘He who is not with us is
against us’ - a reminder perhaps of Vladimir Lenin’s own revolutionary
writings!
·
Questions, More
Questions!
In an article
entitled Sharon’s Easter War, Yisrael Shamir writes that ‘[PM] Sharon’s troops
invaded Palestinian towns where they effectively eliminated the Palestinian
self-rule and carried out intensive searches, mass arrests and cold-blooded
executions’. He further adds that the Palestinians did not offer any serious resistance
to the invading army because ‘the disparity of force is too big for the poorly
equipped Palestinians to take on the third strongest army in the world and
because it is backed by its tame American Juggernaut’.
However, Shamir
also adds that a second [largely unspoken] reason is that the Palestinian
Authority has not become a credible national symbol worth dying for and that
‘life under the PNA remained life under Jewish rule’. I have heard this
argument put forward by a number of intellectuals and activists. I might even
agree that the Palestinian leadership has not pulled up its socks and made a
full effort to improve the daily lives and livelihoods of its people.
Nevertheless, this does not give any third party the right to make the choices
for Palestinians. Internal accountability, house cleaning and political change
would become imperatives only once the Israeli occupation is over. It cannot
happen now when the Palestinians have been ‘offered’ ghettos of autonomy with a
serviceable Authority that enjoys no independence and is severely limited in
its self-rule. In fact, this arrangement is not far too different from the
‘enlightened’ solution proposed to the Jews around Lublin, an area in Poland
with a big Jewish population, by Germany during WWII.
·
Suggestions & More Suggestions!
So what can be
done to close the current chasm between the two conflictive parties rather than
extend it? How can Palestinian and
Israeli pain be metamorphosed into Palestinian and Israeli gain? On 4 April 2002, the Holy See issued a
statement on the Middle East crisis and re-affirmed five points which combined
tactical and strategic aims.
·
Unequivocal
condemnation of terrorism from whatever side it may come;
·
Disapproval
of the conditions of injustice and humiliation imposed on the Palestinian
people, as well as reprisals and retaliation, which only make the sense of
frustration and hatred grow;
·
Respect for
the United Nations resolutions by all sides;
·
Proportionality
in the use of legitimate means of defence;
·
Duty for the
parties in conflict to protect the sacred places [which are] very significant
for the three monotheistic religions and the patrimony of all of humanity.
Further, and in
a television interview with Channel Four on 3 April 2002, Senator George Mitchell
- author of the Mitchell Report - stressed that the present high levels of
violence and raw emotions necessitated a next-phase high-level US initiative
that married the political process with the security plan. He admitted that a
cessation of violence in itself was unsustainable in the absence of any
credible political process. To my mind, his thesis translates into a simple
proposal! If the world comity subscribes to the principles of international
legality enshrined in the UNSC Resolutions, Israel should then withdraw from
territories it occupied in June 1967. ‘Land for peace’ - as the pan-Arab plan
suggested at the Arab League Summit in Beirut - still constitutes the most
valid and cost-effective principle for peace.
Despite my
shuddering abhorrence at the wanton violence that has claimed so many innocent
lives from both sides, I believe that occupation remains the root of the
problem no matter what gloss or spin we apply to it! I always recall Patriarch
Michel Sabbah’s mantra that Israel can easily realise its ultimate goal of
security by giving the Palestinians their land back. The security on the land,
he often said, comes when people enjoy peace in their hearts. But in the sorry absence of a culture
of non-violence in the Middle East that could emulate the South African example
of yesteryears, it becomes obvious that a viable and determined third-party
mediation alone can extricate the parties from this impasse.
So it is perhaps
high time for the USA to stick to this ‘ethical’ script and play a more just
and proactive role for peace and reconciliation between the two parties. As
General Colin Powell packs his bags to travel to the region on Sunday
[tomorrow], he should perhaps remind himself of the American popular saying
that ‘It is okay talking the talk, but you’ve got to walk the walk’. Otherwise,
this unholy conflict shows every sign of skidding out of control.
I am worried about a deterioration that has no
end-point! (Dennis Ross, 2 April 2002)
© harry-bvH @ 6 April 2002