Monday, December 31, 2001

Year-ender 2001

IT WILL BE an understatement to assert that the world changed during the year 2001. If anything, the winds of change that swept the globe were unprecedented and brought about a new set of rules to life on the planet.
No one was spared the effects, direct and indirect, of the attacks on Sept. 11 when suicide hijackers took over four American airliners, slammed two of them into New York's landmark twin World Trade Center towers and one into the Pentagon in Washington; the fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers resisted the hijackers and fought with them in the cockpit.
The Sept. 11 events were the most devastating terrorist attack in history; more than 3,000 people died New York alone. Equally stunning was the fact that the United States, which had been spared terrorism — spare the Oklahoma boming of 1995.
How did the assaults change the world?
It would be a gross overstatement that a clash between religions is taking place now. But it is true that the orchestrated campaign by the Western media to smear Islam has been intensified in the wake of Sept. 11. The campaign has been going on for decades. It could be easily seen that the Western media were largely successful if only because of ineffective, misguided, misrepresented or half-hearted approaches to correct the image and portray the realities of the Islamic faith.
It would take many years before the true image of Islam takes hold in the West, again because of the negativism that has been bred by the media there. It needs a broad and well-planned strategy that takes in the realities on the ground to tackle the issue. Any campaign that sidesteps the Western public mindset would fall short of the mark.
That is the challenge that the Sept. 11 events pose to the Islamic World.
For sure, Arab-Muslim relations with the US would never be the same again.
Within the US, the attacks in New York and Washington have brought in a completely new dimension to the way the United States looked at the rest of the world. They prompted the administration of President George W. Bush to declare and wage a war on global terrorism, starting with Afghanistan's hardline Taliban regime, which refused to hand over Osama Bin Laden, whose Al Qaeda network was accused of carrying out the attacks.
With the large-scale military phase of the war against the Taliban over, the US is shifting focus to other countries it accuses of sponsoring terrorism.
In political terms, Sept. 11 was a wake-up for all governments regardless of whatever definition and outlook they had for terrorism. They had no choice but to adopt measures to counter any action that could be construed as terrorism under the parameters set by the US and fight whatever means were being used to finance terrorism.
There is no ambiguity over Bush's stand: He is determined to see this through and he has the kind of people around him to accomplish it, be it Defence Secretary Ronald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell or National Security Advisor Condaleeza Rice.
The equation is simple: Any country which does not fall in line with the US-led war on terrorism will have to pay the price. Bush made it so clear when he said, "either you are with us or against us."
The impact the US approach has on international relations is one of the most important changes heralded by Sept. 11. The US-led military campaign against Afghanistan (regardless of whether Osama Bin Laden was caught dead or alive) clearly sent a strong message to the world that the US position is uncompromising. There could no longer be any wavering on any country's stand on terrorism. Indeed a highly welcome development.
But the catch remains with Israel. As long as the US refuses to accept that Israel's brutal oppression of the Palestinians is not state terrorism, US credibility in leading the war against terrorism will remain weak.
Adding insult to injury to the Arab and Muslim worlds is the US labelling of Palestinian resistance organisations as terrorist.
For the moment and indeed for the foreseeable future, it is difficult to make any dent on the US stand. It is as simple as that. Any country trying to apply any pressure on Washington over this particular issue will incur US wrath and risk being labelled along the same lines as terrorism-sponsoring states.
The US is taking aim at Iraq as well as Somalia in its drive; at this point it is not known whether it intends to re-enact a military campaign similar to the one in Afghanistan in any other country.
Brought into focus by the US drive against international terrorism are the problems in the Indian sub-continent over Kashmir and the crisis in the Philippines.
But the Kashmir and Philippines problems do not have a direct bearing on American life, and as such the US approach could not be expected to be as strong as the case was with Afghanistan.
Another major fallout of the Sept. 11 events is the shift in the US approach to immigrants, legal or illegal.
Arabs and Muslims have come under hate attacks and they continue to live in fear. Life has undergone a major change for them in the US. In due course of time, neighbourhoods might tend to forget the negative aura that the Sept. 11 events created for Arabs and Muslims in the US, but the administration and powers that be would not.
Arabs and Muslims living in the US for decades now say that they feel like aliens or being treated like aliens with little regard for their blemishless record as law-abiding citizens of that country.
Many of those detained as "suspects" since Sept. 11 are Arabs or Muslims, and they face an uphill task to convince the authorities of their innocence. The approach of the authorities contradict the age-old system of justice -- innocent until proven guilty -- since it is now based on guity by association or thought until proven innocent.
Hundreds of Arab students have opted to leave the US and try to pursue their studies elsewhere, preferably in Europe.
Hundreds of thousands of aspiring immigrants are living in the US at various stages of legalising themselves as residents of the country. The rule of the thumb, if you will, until Sept. 11 was an assumption that even if you are an illegal resident of the US, you did not risk being caught until you commit a capital crime or be deliberately pinpointed as an illegal. There are "illegals" in the US trying to rectify their status for decades while making a living there and, for all practical purposes, having "Americanised themselves."
Today, that situation has changed. They are no longer safe with the belief that if they stay away from entangling with the law in the US.
There is a well-orchestrated campaign under way in the US to identify illegal residents and take appropriate action against them. For many, the administration's offer to help them legalise themselves if they provide information on "terrorism" might be an attractive proposition, but then that opens a Pandora's box.
For the nationals of the oil-producing Arab countries, obtaining a visa for the US was relatively easy. Today, they face a screening process.
The US is no longer a preferred destination for Arabs and Muslims. Even Europe is being shunned now.

Sunday, December 23, 2001

The ultimate responsiblity

PV Vivekanand

SIX young Palestinians were laid to rest on Saturday, the latest victims of the crisis in Palestine. The bullets that killed them might have been fired by Palestinian policemen, but the ultimate responsibility for the deaths of the six rests with Israel. It was Israeli pressure on the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat that was behind the clashes between PNA policemen and Hamas activists that killed the six.
Indeed, Israel is responsibile for the killings of the more than the 1,000 who died in the Palestinian Intifada in the last 14 months as well as for the hundreds of thousands of others killed since 1948 when the Jewish state was created. It was Israel's expansionist designs that sparked the crisis in the Middle East and continue to do so today. Its refusal to accept the legitimate territorial and political rights of the Palestinian people and its brutal oppression of the Palestinians living under its occupation since 1967 have bred so much of frustration and fury that Israel would not be able contain despite its military might.
But the Palestinians are also willing to take another chance at peace.
Signs emerged on Saturday of a gradual shift in mood against armed resistance against the Israelis, with Islamic Jihad members deliberately staying away from carrying weapons at the funeral of the six in the Gaza Strip one day after Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, announced the suspension of suicide attacks against Israelis in Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would not be a happy man at all. After all, things are going wrong for him.
Arafat's call for a halt to attacks against Israel and the implicit adherence to the call by Hamas and apparently by Islamic Jihad are slowly pulling the rug from under Sharon's argument against resuming peace negotiations. The hawkish former general known for his hatred for the Palestinians now finds himself cornered. And that is a dangerous situation since Sharon has a record of breaking out of corners with sheer military brutality. That definitely implies provoking the Palestinians into actions that he could call violations of the truce called by Arafat and apply more pressure and continue to defy international calls for a calm atmosphere conducive to peace.
We would have hoped that Washington recognised the seriousness that the Palestinians showed in taking up Arafat's call. They are fed up of strife and bloodshed, but that would not mean that they are willing to surrender their rights. They yearn for life in freedom and dignity but not on Israel's terms.
Washington's demand that Arafat make sure that the Palestinian resistance groups be dismantled completely so that they would not be able to resume armed resistance is meaningless with Israeli assurances guaranteed by the US that the basis for a peace agreement would be the legitimate Palestinian rights. It is not enough for the US to say that it has not abandoned its vision of a Palestinian state. It has to spell out clearly the shape of the state that it envisions. The Palestinians are not demanding the elimination of Israel; they have accepted the reality of Israel's existence. They are seeking the rights granted to them under international law and UN resolutions. But the US is stopping short of endorsing those rights by declaring that it is up to Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate peace.
Isn't it clear that the Palestinians are the weaker party in the negotiations under the current geopolitical realities of the region? But they have international legitimacy behind them and all they are demanding is the enforcement of that legitimacy in their land where they are unable to bring about a military solution. Nor would Israel be able to impose a military solution.
Instead of ensuring that international legitimacy is the foundation for peace, the US is imposing conditions on the Palestinians that would deprive them of their option to wage armed resistance to regain the legitimate rights from an occupier who has shown every sign of seeking impose own terms for "peace."
The inter-Palestinian clashes since Wednesday were most unfortunate. They were definitely not in the interests of Palestinian unity. The bright side that emerged on Saturday was the declaration by Islamic Jihad that it would not undertake anything that would undermine Palestinian unity. It shows a clear understanding of the Israeli game to pit Palestinians against each other in the name of "security" for Israelis. Thankfully, that understanding came before more Palestinian lives were lost.
But the Palestinian sacrifices would amount to nought if Israel does not recognise the immense effort and willpower that the Palestinians have to undertake to suspend armed resistance despite Israeli provocations. The Palestinian lives that were lost would have been lost for nothing if Israel continues to insist that Arafat is not doing enough to check armed resistance and demand more from the Palestinian National Authority. The West Bank and Gaza are staying on the brink of another explosion, and Israel would be playing with fire if it persisted on its intrasigence and arrogance.
Let Sharon not forget that it is much easier for Hamas and other groups to reverse the decision to suspend suicide attacks than maintaining it against provocations. And this time around, if Sharon does not move to change his mindset, then he could expect every Palestinian to be a walking human bomb ready to explode itself against Israeli targets until Sharon and company realises the futility of relying of military power as the answer to all of Israel's problems.

Thursday, December 13, 2001

Palestinian Intifada - the key

PV Vivekanand

SOMETIME in September 1987, as the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Executive Committee held another of its routine meetings in Tunisia, and, as usual, demanded international action to help the Palestinians regain their land and rights, a veteran political observer commented: "They (the Palestinian leadership) could shout and scream at the top of their voice, but any real change in the Middle East equation could come only when the people who live under the bitter reality of Israeli occupation rise up and resist the occupier and make the occupied land impossible to be ruled."
It was as if he was claivorant. Less than three months later, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza rose up and launched the Intifada, catching by surprise even the PLO leadership. What had started as scattered stone-throwing at Israeli soldiers, and indeed at every sign of Israeli occupation, turned out to be one of the most bitter resistance struggle ever waged without weapons.
The PLO leadership struggled to get the revolt organised, but was not until several months later that Khalil Al Wazir, who headed the military wing of the PLO, was able to assert with any conviction that the organisation had gained partial control of the uprising. By then it had to reckon with the emergence of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, and other groups such as Islamic Jihad which refused to line up under the PLO umbrella and waged their own revolt with little co-ordination with the PLO groups.
The Intifada led to Jordan renouncing its pre-1967 territorial claims to the West Bank in July 1988, and this cleared the way for the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the then parliament-in-exile of the Palestinian people, to meet in Algiers and adopt the declaration of independence on Nov. 15, 1988. In a way, that declaration was also an effort by the PLO leadership to let the world know that it was in control of the Palestinians.
Quite clearly, throughout the years the Israelis saw Arafat as the "moderate" among the Palestinian leaders.
Between the declaration of independence and January 1991, Israel systematically "eliminated" several PLO leaders — including Khalil Al Wazir (Abu Jihad) and Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) — who were seen as tougher than Arafat in the Israeli eyes. Perhaps that was its way of ensuring that Arafat could be singled out and pressured into accepting an Israeli deal as and when the time was right; and that is what happened in September 1993 with the signing of the Olso agreements.
But it was the Palestinian children who kept up their "revolution of stones" who pressured Israel into considering for the first time making even the Olso deal with the Palestinians. The Intifada let the Israelis know for the first time how it was like to be confronted by an unarmed people fighting for their rights with conviction and determination.
"Break their bones" — ordered the then Israeli army chief, Yitzhak Rabin in his allout effort to quell the Intifada.
Israeli soldiers killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, broke thousands of bones, and threw thousands in prison. But the Intifada continued.
The Israelis were alarmed. And the new element of non-violence was introduced into the Intifada by Palestinian American Mubarak Al Awad, who took a leaf from the Gandhian approach and called on the Palestinians to boycott Israeli goods and not to pay taxes. That approach was more terrifying to the Israelis; the captive Palestinian market represented nearly $2 billion in annual business for Israeli manufacturers (They could not wait to get rid of Awad on technical grounds, but it took them some time to do it).
As the Intifada hit its peak, forcing the the US administration of Geoge Bush Senior to search frantically for some way to contain the situation. Then came the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, throwing disarray into the Arab ranks.
By the time a US-led coalition evicted Iraq from Kuwait in February 1991, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's support for Iraq in the crisis had dealt a major setback to himself and, by extension, to the Palestinians although the Bush administration had promised the Arab World that the US would take the lead in trying to resolve the Palestinian problem once the problem in the Gulf was over.
The elimination of Iraq as a potential Arab military power capable of challenging Israel set all the elements right for an effort for Arab-Israeli negotiatons, where Israel was only interested in finding an end to the Palestinian Intifada by engaging the Arabs in talks and gain legitimacy in the region while giving little in return.
The right-wing regime that ruled Israel went to the Middle East peace conference and a ceremonial launch of peace talksheld in Madrid in September under pressure from Washington.
But the talks got nowhere, but the intensity of the Intifada declined, as hopes remained high among the Palestinians for peace.
It was not until the Likud was ousted from power by Rabin's Labour that some movement was made on a realistic ground. Obviously, Rabin had learnt from his army days that without offering something substantial to the Palestinians, the Intifdada would not stop. Sure enough, the Intifada was suspended in September 1993, when the PLO and Israel signed the Oslo agreements, which were negotiated in secret by senior PLO and Labour Party officials.
But Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and several component factions of the PLO remained opposed to the Oslo agreements and vowed to wreck it since they saw the accords as a sell-out of the Palestinian cause.
Undaunted, Arafat made a triumphant entry to Gaza in July 1994 and set up the interim Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and went about consolidaring his authority while continuing negotiations on the "final status" of the Palestinian territories Israel occupied in the 1967 war.
Rabin was assassinated in 1995, when it appeared to Israeli righ-wingers that he was ready to give "too much" to the Palestinians, and the peace process went into disarray.
Arafat dealt with three Israeli prime ministers after Rabin — Shimon Peres of Labour and Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) and Ehud Barak (Labour) — before ending up with his long-time foe Ariel Sharon in the saddle of power in Israel.
By then the damage to the peace process was already done by Israel's steady refusal to implement signed interim agreements and insistence that Arafat control Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups which opposed the Oslo process.
The five-year interim period for negotiations and a final peace accord expired in 1998, but the Palestinians held back, hoping for a breakthrough.
But all their hopes were shattered in the summer of 2000 when it became clear that Israel had no intention to respect the Palestinian rights to Arab East Jerusalem and the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees. Adding insult to injury was the truncated shape of the land that Barak, the then prime minister, was offering to return to them.
Sharon's defiant visit to Islam's third holiest shrine, Al Aqsa Mosque in Arab East Jerusalem, and his declaration that Israel would never give up the Holy City broke the proverbial last straw for the Palestinians; and the Intifada was relaunched.
Today, we see Israel unleashing its firepower against the Palestinians at will, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad staging suicide attacks. Arafat is caught in the middle.
Throughout the five decades since Arafat entered Palestinian resistance operations (he became chairman of the PLO in 1968), he has survived by sheer wits.
Indeed, the Al Khithyar (old man), as Arafat is called by many close to him, is the symbol of the Palestinian struggle. But he finds himself between a rock and a hard place.
On the one hand is his conviction that a peace accord could be worked out with the Israelis with international backing. On the other is the rejectionist camp led by groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as some of the PLO component factions.
Obviously, Israel had hoped that it could use Arafat and the PNA to crack down on Palestinians who reject the Israeli version of peace and then pressure the Palestinian leadership into accepting its terms.
Now that it is abundantly clear that Israel could not hope to use Arafat as its policeman, Sharon is considering alternatives.
Arafat had been trying to strike a balance between the two, but has alienated his own people in the bargain. While he remains the symbol of the Palestinian struggle, his ability to muster the Palestinian ranks behind him has been put to question, if only by Israeli actions that have systematically eroded the Palestinian belief that he could strike a hard but successful bargain with Israel in favour of the Palestinian territorial and political rights.
But Israel will be risking a bloodbath in Palestine if it tries to "take out" Arafat with the hope that it would be easier to strike a deal with his successor.
But Arafat is finding the situation the biggest challenge in his life.
Wednesday's suicide blast, which killed at least eight Israelis, has shot tension to its heighest-ever peak in Palestine. The Israeli options are clear: Sharon could not be expected to see the situation with logic and reason and comprehend that the first step in containing such actions is a clear-cut declaration that he is willing to accept the Palestinian rights as the basis for peace. For him, accepting that would not only be politically unpardonable but also a "humiliating" compromise in his "tough posture" and rejection of "negotiations under fire."
But it only means one thing: Sharon is politically immatured to see realities as realities and lacks the pragmatism to accept the "peace of the brave."