Sami Nair
We have known it now for some time: it is possible to try to destroy an entire people with the silent complicity of the whole world. It happened to the Iraquis, victims of a devastating embargo for the twelve years 1991-2003; today it could be what is in store for the Palestinians. In the midst of a huge, overwhelming silence. But as human hypocrisy knows no limits, those who today are silent in the face of this crime will tomorrow lecture us on human rights and the duty of memory. Before our eyes, the Palestinians are smashed by the bombs of one of the greatest contemporary military powers. Successive Israeli governments have won a victory, not against the Palestinians, who continue to resist, unfortunately often using insane methods. It is a victory against the governments and public opinion of the entire world. The current Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, supported by the Labour Party, is able to use his bombers to destroy cities, his missiles to murder Palestinian leaders, his soldiers to kill women and children in the streets, and his shells to spread death across the Palestinian beaches. And nobody complains! Is it because Israel has flouted international law for so long that it has succeeded in exhausting any possibility of indignation? It is surely helped by the double complicity of the United States and the Arab regimes which the US has at its service. In Europe not a single condemnation, not a word, not even a whisper, nothing. Europe prefers to defend abstract law, abstract democracy, abstract justice.
How else can we interpret this silence? It cannot spring from an intrinsic hostility to the Palestinian cause. In Europe there is, independently of preferences for one or other of the protagonists of the confict, a generally agreed belief in mutual recognition and the existence of two states, the Israeli and the Palestinian. But this position has been rejected by Israel, which will not accept a Palestinian state, and is no longer accepted by the Palestinians: Hamas repudiates the statement of recognition of the state of Israel by the PLO. Moreover, the one great power involved in the conflict, the United States, the only country in a position to oblige its ally Israel to accept international law, refuses to do so. And most recently, the Hamas victory has further weakened the European position, since the aid it gives to the Palestinians has now to be administered by a government which does not officially share its position. The result is that Europe, which does not exist as a political power, and has no influence over the US, Israel or the Palestinians, finds itself reduced to the role of moral witness. But the extraordinary thing about the situation is that it has even renounced this role! This is a strategic turnaround of historic importance. Does it mean that Europe accepts the Isareli-United States assertion that the only strategy that counts is military force? Or that it wishes to punish the Palestinians for voting for Hamas? In either case, it is a risky strategy. For there will never be a purely military solution, and the leaders of Hamas can now see that Europe has nothing to teach it about democracy, since it plainly does not respect the outcome of the popular vote. Hamas has been elected freely and in accordance with democratic rules. Europe has rejected this outcome, making demands on Hamas which it does not make on Israel. In order to maintain relations with Hamas it requires that Hamas abandon violence and recognise Israel's right to exist. Fine. But why does it not make the same demands of Israel: that it renounce state violence and accept the existence of a Palestinian state on the territories it has illegally occupied since 1967? Is not exactly this the wish of the whole international community? There is a double standard here.
And the Arab regimes? Most of them are too busy crushing their own people. The Arab press, naturally, is bursting with anger, and the regimes allow the press to whip up public anger in a cynical manoeuver to hide the fact that they are not lifting a finger. What of world opinion? Impotent. So, what is left? The worst of all outcomes: a spiral of blind Palestinian violence confronting the cold, rational and industrial violence of the Israel military. Because this is what is happening: the present Israel government has decided to take all of the Palestinians as hostages, after a band of lunatics took one Israeli soldier hostage. All of the Palestinians: women, children, old people, men. It is the principle of collective punishment, condemned both by the most elementary rules of humanitarian behaviour and by the Geneva Convention on the laws of war. But it seems that in this era of international law, some nations are above the law; apparently no human right, no principle of justice, can be allowed to interfere with their interests. The United States in Iraq and Israel in Palestine are above the law. This is how it is possible for the Israeli government, since the election of Hamas, to detain ministers, government officials and others whose guilt it alone decides. And it acts even more freely than before because the election of a Hamas government has disrupted the world's frame of reference. Nevertheless, Hamas was helped by Israel, at the start of the 1980's, in order to weaken the essentially secular Al Fatah movement and convert the Israeli-Palestinian war into a war of religion. The Israeli right and extreme right, at that time in power, and the Palestinian Islamists, supported by the Ayatollah Khomeinei, took advantage of this. Because each, as much as the other, have a fundamentalist view of the conflict. This is why 20 years later - after Sharon, helped by Arafat's lack of a strategic vision, tore up the Oslo accords - Israel and the Islamists have become the protagonists of the conflict. The governments of the US and Israel have decided that "Islamism" is a threat for the world. Taking as hostage an entire people because it has voted for an islamist government is seen as legitimate. And the trap has closed around the Palestinians. They are on their own. And this crime has been carried out in a festive atmosphere: it's football that interests the world right now.
This is the reality of our time. We are left with the consolation that some of the most honest criticism of the conduct of the Israeli government has come from newspapers in Israel itself. Yediot Aharonot is apalled by the destruction of infrastructure (power stations, water supplies, roads); Haaretz accuses the government of having "taken leave of its senses", and, in its editorial of July 6th, writes "Once again public opinion has yielded to the attraction of the rhetoric of security, even though over the 40 years of the occupation this formula has failed completely. At moments like this it is essential to say, and to repeat, that in the long run the only option open to us is to put an end to the occupation and withdraw from the territories. And to end the occupation should be the aim behind all of our tactics in the current crisis". The following day, the Israeli government restated its refusal to change tactics. No matter --- the doubts of informed public opinion in Israel are a call of hope. If only the world's governments were as brave as the Israeli editorialists! Who will help the Palestinians to escape from this hellish cycle? What coalition of powers will finally announce that in this unending conflict peace must be imposed by an International Conference involving all interested parties? Who will have the courage to reaffirm the rule of law and the respect for the lives of civilians on both sides of the conflict? How glad we would have been, had Europe done this; for Europe embodies an ideal of civilisation of which we would like to feel proud. But Europe is shamefully, horrifyingly silent.