Israeli terrorism in the Middle East
Isn't this terrorism?Photo: AFP
ONE wonders where the concept of the responsibility to protect has taken refuge when Israel's devastating three week long offensive in Gaza left about thirteen hundred Palestinians dead and wrought destruction that may cost up to two billion dollars to rebuild. Israeli Wild West attitude towards the sentiment of the greater part of humanity and her disregard of international law on occupied territory could only have been possible because of the support of the great powers. The Arabs are bending backwards to satisfy Israel by offering collective Arab recognition in exchange of Israeli withdrawal from the territories it occupied in 1967 war; establishment of an independent state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital; and a just solution of the Palestinian refugees. The most recent Arab Summit in Kuwait has brought into focus the sharp division between the moderates and "hard liners" among the Arabs because of mounting public pressure on Arab leaders due to Israeli intransigence. Yet, Harvard Professor Jessica Stern's remark that the United States too often ignores the unintended consequences of its actions, disregarding for example, the negative message sent by Washington's ongoing neglect of Afghanistan and the chaos of post war Iraq, strikes a sympathetic cord among thinking people of the world. Western obsession with security and war on terror, horrific though the al-Qaedist acts are, has caused sharp divides in the world. Therefore, despite unquestionable American pre-eminence, the most important conflicts of the future, predicts Samuel Huntington, will occur along the fault lines separating civilisations from one another. Huntington may prove to be prescient after all if one considers intra-European controversy generated by the invitation extended to Turkey by the European Council to start negotiations for admission into the EU. One is therefore tempted to wonder if the threshold of European tolerance for Christianity is so high then why is the threshold so low for Islam? The canard spread about the link between terrorism and Muslims in general has been debunked by Professors John Mearsheimer of Chicago University and Stephen Walt of Harvard University (Israeli Lobby and US Foreign Policy). The paper is an astounding reading on the extent of influence that can be exerted by lobby acting on behalf of a foreign government by twisting the policies of the home government that often went against the national interest of the latter. As an example, Mearsheimer and Walt argue that Hamas and the Hezbullah do not threaten the US except when the US intervenes against them in favour of Israel. And the Palestinian rage against the West is an expression of prolonged and illegal occupation of West Bank and Gaza that is morally obtuse and acts as a handicap in the US capacity to negotiate Middle East pace agreement. Since 1982, the US vetoed far more UNSC resolutions that were critical of Israel than the number of vetoes cast by all other permanent members combined. In 2004, 52 former British diplomats urged then Prime Minister Tony Blair to correct the one-sided and illegal Middle East policy stating that Israel-Palestine conflict had poisoned relations between the Arab and the Muslim worlds. Recently British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told a Yorkshire Muslim gathering that the British government made mistakes in invading Iraq, and added that Islam is an enemy towards no one and friends towards all. Islam is a creed of peace and it is vital that we all work to narrow gaps that can divide us across religion, geography, or race. Western criticism of so-called terrorism by the Palestinians is largely deflected by the statements of various Israeli prime ministers. For example, David Ben-Gurion once told the president of World Jewish Congress that if he were an Arab leader he would never make terms with Israel; Golda Meir dismissed the existence of Palestinians; Israeli scholarship had admitted that the establishment of Israel in 1947-48 involved explicit acts of ethnic cleansing by the Jews; Ehud Barak once admitted that had he been born a Palestinian he would have joined a terrorist organisation; Yitzhak Shamir argued that neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. Osama bin Laden's terrorism is a display of some wayward Muslims whereas the one daily practiced by Israel has robbed the world of peace and development for the last half a century. Professor Francis Boyle of the Illinois University, giving the example of Namibia, had argued that League of Nations award to Great Britain had provisionally recognised Palestine as an independent nationa recognition that was still valid under the UN Charter and is thus binding upon member nations to accord such recognition. Acting on his advice, the Palestine National Congress garnered recognition of Palestine by 110 states. Since a Muslim renaissance is unlikely to come through the barrel of a gun, the fight against Israel has to be fought through diplomatic and intellectual superiority of the Islamic ummah.
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