The Bush administration’s decision to restore full diplomatic relations with Libya is a reminder that realism, patience and diplomatic engagement remain the best way to find a solution to the ongoing Iranian nuclear puzzle, and thus to prevent a return to unilateralism and conflict. It offers a glaring example of how a pariah state can be transformed peacefully into a crucial partner in the war against international terrorism without recourse to coercion and militarism.
Negotiations are invariably frustrating and time-consuming. One needs look no further than the Middle East to realize this. Peace talks dragged for years due to Israel’s intransigence and unwillingness to abandon its lust for territorial aggrandizement, relinquish sovereignty over East Jerusalem and facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic, social and psychological rehabilitation of Palestinian refugees lingering in squalid and overcrowded camps across the Middle East. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians are forced to endure intolerable forms of injustice in the occupied territories ranging from impoverishment, home demolitions, land expropriation, curfews, arbitrary detentions, indiscriminate killings, collective punishment and almost daily bombardment.
Israel has attempted to impose an apartheid solution on the West Bank and Gaza. Its theft of lands and livelihoods continues unabated, leaving Palestinians confined in economically unviable cantons. Noam Chomsky has described Israel as America’s offshore military base, a client state which serves the purpose of quelling Arab aspirations. Jeff Halper, coordinator of Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, has lambasted Israel for manipulating the US saying that it is irrational for the US to support Israel in a post-Cold War atmosphere because it alienates the Arab and Muslim world.
Israeli policies are often hidden from Western media. Palestinians are portrayed as having no conscience. People in the West have consistently been far more concerned with the far fewer Israeli deaths resulting from Palestinian suicide bombings than the far higher number of Palestinian deaths from attacks by the occupying forces on defenseless civilians.
The West seems unwilling or unable to empathize with the Palestinians in their plight. Perhaps their passivity is related to some historical sense of guilt for the persecution of the Jews and wedded to a racist-colonial attitude that cherishes the aspirations of non-Western people only when they serve Western interests.
What the US, and to some extent European governments fail to grasp is the fact the Palestinian resistance is fuelled by the inability of the West to question the agenda set by successive Israeli governments, to oblige Israel to keep its troops within internationally recognized borders and work toward the implementation of international law and the International Court of Justice’s ruling to tear down its apartheid wall that comes at such human cost, and last but not least, to pressure Israel to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and open its nuclear facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Shirin Ebadi, a Nobel Prize Peace laureate and an unflinching advocate of human rights has reiterated a question which millions around the globe have been asking themselves for the past couple of months: “Why is it that some decisions and resolutions of the UN Security Council are binding, while some other resolutions of the council have no binding force? Why is it that in the past 35 years, dozens of UN resolutions concerning the occupation of the Palestinian territories by the State of Israel have not been implemented promptly, yet, in the past 12 years, the state and people of Iraq, once on the recommendation of the Security Council, and the second time, in spite of UN Security Council opposition, were subjected to attack, military assault, economic sanctions, and, ultimately, military occupation.”
Palestinians voiced their objections to what they see as outright and unwavering support of successive American administrations for Israel to carry out its ethnic-cleansing plans against them.
They frequently ask: Does the life of a Palestinian weigh less than the life of a Jew? Why does the world remain silent in the face of Israeli atrocities?
The indifference of the international community is mind-boggling. It is an indication that they have not learned the lessons of the Holocaust, or at least it is an admission that the Holocaust was/is still unfairly exploited to create an artificial state in the heart of the Arab and Muslim world?
It is vital to recall David Ben-Gurion’s words to Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress: “If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: We have taken their country. We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”
In light of these salient facts and in a land scarred by bloodshed, death, fear and misery, it’s heartening to see how people are still convinced that diplomacy can be firmly pursued to persuade warring parties to meet international obligations and responsibilities that would bring about the end of belligerent nationalism, and the possession of weapons of mass destruction.
We have witnessed how Ronald Reagan dealt with the potentially mortal danger the Soviet Union’s weapons once posed: Not by unleashing military invasion but by patient diplomacy backed up by economic incentives.
We have suffered from a long catalogue of bigotry, double standard, false promises and meaningless intimidation. We just need to shiver at the deepening quagmire in Iraq that has swelled the ranks of terrorists, ask ourselves is the world a safer place to live in now and step in to end the injustice.
— Dr. Munjed Farid Al Qutob is a London-based journalist.
