Immoral and illegal

The judgement was entirely predictable. Humanists, liberals, and democrats everywhere endorse it. The grand larceny of Palestine by a conspiracy between European Zionists and British Imperialism is an open and shut case of its own kind. Since one carries no mental baggage of having oppressed Jews for centuries, as most Europeans and Americans do, one sees Israel as committing a political and moral crime against Palestinians. Nor has one ever shared the European liberals' bad conscience and the anxiety to somehow recompense Jews at someone else's expense at the start of the 20th century. Most of the third world saw the collusion with Zionists that ultimately resulted in Israel's creation as a highly immoral act of seeming generosity by Anglo-French imperialists with a sly eye on self-aggrandisement in the Ottoman Empire areas in the Middle East where nature has put so much oil under the ME sands and many other resources. The US concurred in that moral crime.

Anglo-American powers' influence in 1945-48 made the newly-born UN accept what had nearly been made a fait accompli by the unavowed Anglo-Zionist partnership in Palestine. But be it noted that world opinion as such, and more particularly in the third world, regarded the creation and acceptance of the State of Israel in a well-recognised Arab territory was a monstrous wrong. Inside the UN no one had left the so-called big powers in any doubt by Pakistan as much as all other Arab states. Israel is severely criticised every year in the UN General Assembly by a huge margin.

What happens next? It is easy to predict. The Palestinians and their many friends will make the UN General Assembly pass a resolution to implement the judgement. It will go next to the UN Security Council which would pass it but for the US veto. The latter has killed innumerable UN GA resolutions criticising Israel. It is a regular drill. The US tells the world that law, morality and reason stop where Israel's security begins. Israel has thus got away with hundreds of targeted killings of marked men in addition to creeping annexation of a lot of the land said to be reserved for the Palestinian State under the two-state solution accepted by the US, Israel, and President Yasser Arafat of Palestinian Authority. Israel always gets away with all its transgressions, land grabbings and plain murders thanks to the US support. It looks the pattern will hold for the immediate future.

In terms of realpolitik, Palestinian Arabs, being totally defenceless, will have most of their nominally marked land for their state in West Bank areas taken away by Israel under various guises and ruses. Maybe if Israelis do discover any residue of fairness and generosity in their collective conscience -- if any such thing exists -- the Palestinians may find some small bits and pieces of Israel-controlled West Bank areas to be packed in them like sardines -- for pressure cooking perhaps -- with no real economy or state. The way Israel politics has steadily moved to extreme Right is frightening for its potential because the process is continuing.

One says this because no one with a conscience can ask the Palestinians, the rightful owners of all of Palestine areas of Ottoman Empire over which Britain had acquired control, not to resist the clearly aggressive Israeli actions to aggrandize at the expense of Palestinians. Like any freedom-loving people, facing an all-devouring enemy close by the door, Palestinians have the right to resist. It is their inalienable birth right. But it is true a vicious cycle of violence has been set in motion: Israel takes ever more aggressive stops, usually taking over more land from the locals, one had almost said aborigines -- for setting up ever more settlements. Palestinians, under military occupation for 37 years, think that they can resist only through actions that are terroristic, for nothing else impresses their oppressors. But two or three facts may be noted.

First, Anglo-American power in the field of communications has erased all distinction between freedom fighters and simple terrorists who act violently to make individual gain. All violent acts are terror acts for them. Period. A frightening number of governments are succumbing to this self-serving view of great powers whose actions invite resistance in many parts of the world. It is important that impartial Humanists continue to uphold Palestinians' right to resist. But looking at the concrete reality, they must think of ways of putting real pressure on Israel and the US to relent and accord some recognition to Palestinians' rights.

Secondly, the Palestinians themselves have to rethink and review their strategy. Suicide bombings, their last resort, has shown that it only invites greater and more vicious retaliation from Israel that commands a greater range of means to deal with them. True, Palestinians are between the Devil and the deep blue sea. Mere constitutional means do not really exist for them: a constitutional struggle can only succeed if the opponent recognises the civilized values of human equality, human rights and the necessity to stay civilized. An overview of Israeli actions since 1948 does not create an impression that a civilized discourse on respective rights can carry the Palestinians anywhere. Still, a resort to violent terroristic-looking resistance produces only more counter violence. Israel in fact deliberately provokes so as to invite a violent response -- like targeted killings of prominent individuals with a view to wreaking havoc and advance what is Israeli right wing's Final Solution of the Palestine Problem. It is probably to occupy all the Palestinian land with no Palestinians on it.

Nevertheless, world's conscientious citizens cannot leave the Palestinians alone to endlessly suffer. But first thing first requires that all Palestinian actions must aim at putting them on a high moral ground. Their earlier non-violent Intifada was more effective; it had put Israel on the defensive. Palestinians will be well advised to adopt more Gandhi-like tactics, adapted of course to local conditions. Filling Israeli jails by non-violent infractions of Israeli occupation's rules and orders should be more effective. They should themselves articulate a solution of Palestine Problem that can somehow be acceptable to left-leaning Israelis who do recognise Palestinians' rights at least in abstract. Palestinians must also recruit more international support. Can't world NGOs unite to send a really big non-violent International Brigade to protest Israeli intransigence and to support the new one-state alternative Oslo solution produced by a prominent Israeli left winger and a respected Palestinian?

Thirdly, old and tired notions like pan-Islamism or even pan-Arabism of the earlier monarchical kind need to be thrown overboard. One look at the OIC and its record since 1969 will show that Suhrawardy was right when he repeated that zero plus zero plus zero -- will still be zero. Is there one walk of life where the 46 or so potentates assembled in OIC and a few elected leaders came in two versions: one was the galaxy of hereditary rulers, all blue-blooded toadies, ready to dance to imperialists' tune. They hate the Palestinians and are reluctant to support any refugee from Palestine on their own soil, though they might discreetly give some money for the cause once in a while. The second version comprises Nasserite Arab Nationalism that briefly had a honeymoon with Baathist Syria which lasted a few years. There were other dictators supporting the cause like Qaddafi and Saddam Hussain. Advice to Palestinians can therefore be not to depend on pan-Islamic or pan-Arabist support: they all are, in some way, subservient to the US and tied to its coattails.

Outlook for the Palestinians is dark indeed. They have to stand on their own two feet, as best as may be possible in these dark days. There is going to be no real foreign support. The only support they can count on is from freedom-loving individuals that takes the form of world opinion which can in a few cases be financial. But it would be for the most part verbal. Their old standing friends, qua individuals and groups, have to unite and wage a worldwide campaign that should equal the protests that are being made against G8, WTO, IMF, World Bank etc. The Palestine Question must be brought on the international social movements' agenda, especially in the US and leading European countries. The non-warlike International Brigade must somehow be funded and start protesting wherever possible in Palestine or in areas close by as possible.

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.