Washington | By George S. Hishmeh | 02-11-2001
U.S. President George W. Bush, whose naivete in foreign affairs was the butt of jokes during the presidential election campaign, received overwhelming praise - some may argue prematurely - from Arab leaders for having endorsed Palestinian statehood, the first Republican President to do so.
At the end of a meeting on October 2 with Congressional leaders at the White House who were being briefed about the ongoing war against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida in Afghanistan, the President told the press: "The idea of a Palestinian state has always been part of a vision, so long as the right to Israel to exist is respected."
He was reacting to media reports of the previous day that prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks here the Bush Administration was planning a peace initiative that would have included U.S. support for the creation of a Palestinian state.
The Bush remark, positive as it may have sounded at the time, was nothing compared to the pace-setting Balfour Declaration, enunciated by Great Britain after World War I, which 40 years later led to the establishment of the Jewish state in British-ruled Palestine, courtesy of the United Nations.
The commitment, made by Arthur Balfour, the then British Foreign Secretary, on November 2, 1917 read: "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
According to George Antonius, the celebrated Arab author who chronicled the rise of the Arab national movement in his famous book, The Arab Awakening, the Zionists were actually "pressing for a statement of policy accepting the principle 'of recognising Palestine as the national home of the Jewish people'."
The difference between the two versions, Antonius explained, "was one between a limited Jewish national home in Palestine, and an unlimited one."
Philip Mattar, Editor of The Encyclopaedia of Palestinians, believes that the Balfour Declaration affected the modern history of Palestine - if not the Arab world - "to an extent matched by perhaps no other document."
Britain had several reasons for issuing the controversial declaration. Mattar wrote in the encyclopaedia that Britain "needed the help of American Jews to hasten American entry into the (first world) war ... (and) Russian Jews' assistance in keeping Russia in the war, given the revolution shaking that country in 1917."
Moreover, Britain's war cabinet "was seeking Jewish financial support as well as it wanted to make an appeal to world Jewry before Germany did."
At the time, the Palestinian Arab population, dismissed derisively in the British declaration as the "existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine," numbered about 90 per cent of Palestine's population. They were not even consulted on the British commitment-in-the-making.
The "overture to the tragedy," as it has been described by one British journalist, was thus the work of Lord Balfour but the UN General Assembly added insult to injury when it voted in November 1947 to partition Palestine into two states, one for the Arabs and the other for the Jews, who by that time had numbered 600,000, up from 50,000 in 1917.
Francis A. Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois, argues that "it was clear that from a reading of the covenant of the League of Nations and the mandate for Palestine (awarded to Britain in 1922) ... that all this land was intended as a state for the Palestinians."
Moreover, he emphasised, the mandate for Palestine was a "Class A mandate" which, in his opinion, "meant the Palestinian people were well prepared for independence and should be moving off towards independence as soon as possible."
Professor Boyle's reasoning, documented in a lengthy memorandum submitted to the PLO, constituted the legal backbone for the Declaration of Independence taken by the Palestine National Congress in Algiers in November 1988.
Nowadays - 84 years after the declaration - the majority of Palestinians live either in exile or under Israeli occupation and a few (about one million) as second-class citizens in their own towns and villages under Israeli rule.
And this belated Bush position, which comes 13 years after the U.S. administration opened talks with the Tunis-based Palestine Liberation Organisation, does not have any meat; more likely an empty gesture sceptics say intended to pacify the Arab and Islamic worlds in the "war on terrorism."
In fact, all early indications are that the Bush administration may have shelved its idea for a new initiative on the Middle East, unlike the British government whose Prime Minister, Tony Blair, agreed after recent talks in London with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat that their ultimate aim is "a viable Palestinian state as part of a negotiated and agreed settlement which guarantees peace and security for Israel."
Considering the snail-pace of American diplomacy, it may not be surprising if the 118-word pledge by Lord Balfour may take an equal number of years before a two-state settlement may emerge in the Holy Land - a likelihood that the new Arab League Secretary General, Amr Moussa, decried. "The Arab World cannot wait another 10 years," he said during in between talks with senior U.S. officials this week. (Gulf News)
A clear violation of all international principles
| By Duraid Al Baik | 03-11-2001
A former political advisor to the late Syrian President Hafez Assad, Dr George Jaboor, said the Balfour Declaration, named after its author, Arthur James Balfour, British Foreign Secterary during World War I, was a violation of international law. It clearly violates all international principles that govern relations among countries.
"It came from an authority that at that time had no relationship to Palestine, which was still under Ottoman rule."
Jaboor, professor of international law at Aleppo University, said the United Kingdom in 1917 had no legal right to give Palestine or part of it to anyone. "Like any other country, Palestine belonged to its people, i.e., the Palestinians."
By the same token, the Zionist movement had no legal claim to Palestine either. "If Zionism claimed Palestine on religious grounds and this claim was supported by the United Kingdom, this means the UK had approved Judaism, which contradicts the secular principles of modern states," Jaboor said.
The modern European state was shaped largely by the Peace of Westphalia signed in 1648, he said. "As Mahatma Gandhi once said, Palestine is to the Palestinians as England is to the English and France to the French.
"Gandhi also said that it is a crime against humanity to impose Jews on Arabs in Palestine and I totally agree with him," he said.
"When we talk about the Balfour Declaration, we must remember that the sole member of the British Cabinet to oppose it was Lord Montague, who was Jewish."
Lord Montague based his opposition on the belief that Jews should be assimilated into the society in which they live, contrary to Zionism's policy of separating them from those societies.
Jaboor said the Balfour Declaration was illegal and it spawned many crimes against humanity, including genocide.
In a recent statement, British Prime Minister Tony Blair sort of apologised for the Balfour Declaration. "Blair hinted that British policies were partly responsible for the tragedy in the region," he said.
What is needed from Blair now, he said, is a clear statement of apology as demanded by a group of Arab, British and international human rights activists. "The group has called for an explicit apology from the British government that may partially compensate for the Balfour crime," Jaboor said.
"In my opinion, a balanced British policy towards the Middle East should start with a reconsideration of the Balfour Declaration. This will definitely contribute to international efforts to solve the Palestine question which was revived following the September 11 terrorist attack on the U.S.
"These political efforts should continue until a just solution is reached. Otherwise, allowing the conflict to fester unchecked will result in more bloodshed, a growing urge for revenge and a rising feeling of hate among people in the region," he added.
Violations
Dr. Yusef Progler, Professor of Social Sciences at the Zayed university campus in Dubai, said of the Balfour Declaration: "The fact that it was drawn up by a superpower of the time did not mean that it had a legal basis. On the contrary, it violated all international laws and created diplomatic problems the world is still grappling with today.
"However, the Zionists have used it to legitimise their efforts to conquer Palestine, but that doesn't mean it was a legal action on the part of Britain," he said.
"The declaration issued on November 2, 1917, raised two fundamental questions: the legitimacy of the authority (the British government) that issued it, and the fact that the declaration was enforced selectively by the Zionists to ensure the establishment of a Jewish state at the expense of the original owners of the land – the Palestinians.
"The declaration was the same as going to your neighbour's house and selling it to someone else without asking your neighbour's permission. This would not be legitimate under any law. Balfour's promise to Lord Rothschild of the Zionist Federation was used later by the Zionists as a legal instrument that resulted in the establishment of Israel after World War II. It illustrated how an illegitimate act by a superpower could become a powerful political means to change realities," he said.
Eighty-four years since the declaration, it is clear that Balfour's promise to the Jews has been accepted as fact by some of the world's most powerful players.
Analysing the realities resulting from the Balfour Declaration, he said another question would arise as to why it has not been implemented fully.
He said the 118-word declaration devoted only 25 words in its second section to the problem of the non-Jewish community in Palestine. "The declaration states: 'It is clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine'," Progler said. But this statement has never been implemented.
The level of prejudice inflicted on the Palestinians in the 52 years since the establishment of Israel and the denial of their basic human rights by the Israelis has not been accounted for.
Neither the Jewish state nor the international community that created it is interested in securing the rights of the Palestinians in their own land. This callousness is inexcusable, he said.
"I still remember the textbooks in New York where I lived and studied. They taught the students about how Israel was established, referring to the Balfour Declaration selectively. They stuck to the first part and made no mention of the second part that dealt with the Palestinians."
He said the Zionists had a slogan to encourage migration to Israel – "a land without people for the people without a land."
"After I grew up, I came to know through my wife's family that her grandmother lived there and was one of millions of Palestinians who were driven out of their own country."
Now the legitimate question is, if Israel is a legitimate state, what about the people who originally lived there? Arabs should launch a drive to reach a consensus on how to answer the second part of the Balfour Declaration, he said.
Mistake
Dr Fatima Al Sayegh, Professor of History at the UAE University in Al Ain, said: "I think we must remember this day with great determination and resolution to pressure those who committed this mistake to correct it."
Al Sayegh criticised Arab governments for their lack of an effective strategy. Although 84 years have passed since the declaration, Arabs still have no unified stand. "The lack of Arab determination and unification has resulted in the acceptance of the Balfour Declaration as a reality even though it is illegal and unjust," she said.
"Since the declaration was issued and Israel was established, Arab governments have failed to draw up a unified policy towards their enemy and the countries that created the new entity," she said.
"The declaration is an ideal example of a promise by someone who doesn't own it to a group that doesn't deserve it. It was a violation of all international law and has no precedent in history," Sayegh said.
Sayegh believes that Arab governments should commemorate the Balfour Declaration by launching action to end the 82 years of attacks against the Palestinians. "Arabs should be capable of exerting pressure on the UK to withdraw the declaration.
"The UK should admit clearly and publicly its moral and financial responsibility to the millions of Palestinians who lost their lives and those who lost their property or were affected in one way or another," she said.
A holocaust is unleashed daily against the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis. "The UK, the USA and the blood-thirsty gangs in Israel are those responsible for these crimes," she added.
Dangerous
Nasrin Murad, Chairperson of Political Sciences at the UAE University, said the declaration comprises two parts. One involves a promise of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The other is related to the status and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities. These aspects have never been safeguarded.
"The result is the creation of a new state for people who had no land and the loss of a de facto Palestinian state by the people who had it."
Now the situation is very dangerous, especially since Ariel Sharon was elected prime minister of Israel, and following the September 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. These events made the world realise the need for a permanent peace in the Middle East.
Tony Blair's invitation to Yasser Arafat to go to London and discuss the future of a Palestinian state is regarded by some analysts as British redemption of the Balfour Declaration. At the same time President George W. Bush expressed American concerns and understanding of the Palestinian need for an independent state.
Murad said political experts in the Middle East see the British move as a bluff. "It is the need for support in the war (against terrorism) that prompted the British move. Furthermore, Britain has a history of unfulfilled promises and the Balfour Declaration is one example.
"Britain promised Sharif Hussein, King of the Hijaz during World War I, to help establish a united Arab state if the Arabs sided with the Allies against the Ottomans. Instead, the region was divided into small countries under the Sykes-Picot Treaty signed by Britain and France on May 16, 1916.
"What concerns Arabs now is that Israel is tightening its grip on the occupied territories, suffocating the Palestinians with an iron blockade and systematically attacking them to destroy the community, the economy and the infrastructure of the Palestine National Authority," she said.
The Palestinians have seen no sign of reconciliation or a sincere effort to reach a political settlement. "As usual in this part of the world there are hypotheses and contra-hypotheses. But as the man in the street usually says, let's wait and see. The situation remains too somber and we can only wait," she said. (Gulf News)
Say it loud: no more support until Israel agrees to pull out
Afghanistan may not be resolved unless Palestine also gets justice
Polly Toynbee
Wednesday October 24, 2001
The Guardian
The little town of Bethlehem does not lie still in deep or dreamless sleep. Instead a Palestinian altar boy was machine-gunned to death in Manger Square when Israeli tanks stormed in and occupied six Palestinian towns, leaving many others dead in their wake. Israeli hit-squad assassinations of suspected Palestinian terrorist leaders have now reached over 40 dead.
But six days into Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, there is still no response from George Bush. A state department spokesman did call for Israeli withdrawal and behind the scenes pressure is being applied. But what is needed urgently is the same thunderous and threatening language the president applies to the war in Afghanistan. Spell it out - no more money, no more support, no sympathy for future attacks until Israel withdraws and talks start at once on building the promised independent Palestinian state.
Israel does not get the new global message, does not see how little patience its old friends have for Sharon's dangerous hard line. That is partly because the message has still not been delivered by presidential megaphone so that the whole world hears, announcing an end to the double standards of the west's treatment of Palestinians. As the war progresses in Afghanistan, the quid pro quo must come for Palestine. It will not wait: Afghanistan may not be resolved unless Palestine gets justice at the same time.
When I wrote recently about the need for Israel to withdraw back to its 1967 borders and dismantle its aggressive settlements, a sea of email accusations of anti-semitism swept in from all the over the world. Anyone calling for Israeli withdrawal gets these - and if they have a Jewish-sounding name it sometimes comes with the added insult that they must be "self-hating Jews".
Confident that they could always twist the arm of any president or Congress by threatening the Jewish vote, Israel has not needed to confront the way the world sees it until now. But the moment of truth came when Israel stopped being a lone victim of Islamic terrorism - all the west are victims or potential victims now. It is in danger of finding itself as alone as South Africa after the fall of communism. Ugly Israel is the Middle Eastern representative of ugly America - and though it is not the sole cause, Palestine is the rallying cry for the terrorism that hurled itself at the World Trade Centre. Once secure as the west's best friend, overnight Israel's failure to make peace has turned into a lethal liability.
Why, the Israelis ask angrily, should the world turn against them - victims acting in self-defence - instead of directing all anger at the perpetrators of suicide bombings and deliberate massacres of innocent Israeli civilians? Because, as Israel itself keeps pointing out, they remain one of us, ours, our people, partly our creation. The west that sustained and protected it in its fragility for all these years is also morally responsible for its behaviour and must take the blame for its abuses.
For the left, Israel was once Jerusalem the Golden, Zionist banners fluttered on Aldermaston peace marches, young idealists worked in summers on socialist kibbutzim, full of all the earnest hopes described in Linda Grant's excellent novel about early Israel, When I Lived in Modern Times. Now the left feels all the more betrayed by Ariel Sharon, war criminal, igniting the intifada by striding into the al-Aqsa mosque and using the trouble he caused to seize power.
The race-biased, them-and-us reporting of Israel/Palestine conflict works both ways. Consider the media coverage of death - how western audiences are invited to feel the agony of Israeli teenagers slaughtered in a disco or two poor 14-year-old Israeli boys bludgeoned to death in a cave, as if they were our own children. Palestinian deaths are rarely made so graphic or memorable: they are anonymous people, counted as numbers, bodies aloft among depersonalised funeral crowds.
Obituaries of murdered Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi described a real man - obnoxious, rabid, but a rounded man with a history, a hinterland, a family. In comparison obituaries of Abu Ali Mustafa, the 63-year-old head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine blown apart at his desk (for whom Zeevi was shot in revenge), mainly concerned the politics of his movement and what his death might presage, with no humanising idiosyncrasies.
If Israel succeeds in annexing our emotions, it also means Israelis reap a fiercer indignation when they do wrong - because the west feels angrily implicated in their crimes. The Palestinians may be the prime perpetrators, Hamas might be relentless in its wicked fantasy of sweeping Israel into the sea, but maybe our innate racism regards their alien sins as a political problem while emotionally demanding far better behaviour of our Israeli cousins. Palestinian terrorists are not right, but the miserable history of mutual blame and victimhood has to end now.
The map of Palestine is pock-marked with new Israeli settlements. The provocative concrete occupying the desert shocks the eye, while the frontline danger to which settlers deliberately expose their children horrifies. In 1998 Sharon urged them on: "Everyone has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... everything we don't grab will go to them." Peace Now, the Israeli protest movement, says 25 new settlements have been established since Sharon's February election. Israel seems not to understand the fury these cause, not just among Muslims (though that must be decibels greater) but among Europeans who feel implicated in this mortgaging of future peace. Once there, how are they ever to be removed? By fighting? By Massada-type suicide protests? The festering Palestinian refugee camps must close too.
After Zeevi's death Ariel Sharon declared war on Arafat. Toppling the one faction that at least recognises Israel and seeks peace (and who would be certainly replaced by Hamas), is a revolutionary strategy designed to create a hyper-crisis to drag in the west. Hamas is as intent as Sharon on cataclysm. Sharon calls Zeevi's murder "our September 11", which it was not. He calls Arafat "our Bin Laden", which he is certainly not. But since the will to peace is not there, only the US can force its indebted client to see sense in time.
Indignation about injustice only flares up when the searchlight of public events falls upon that particular seething corner. Why care about Palestine now and not last year? Because it matters now, like the Taliban matters now. There is a right time for dealing with long-running oppressions - Serbia and Kosovo, or East Timor. Whatever the reason, when the chance comes it has to be seized and Tony Blair must urge the president to act loudly and decisively now, so all can see some good come of this.
A Palestinian vs. a Zionist - On an American Ballot
By Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret of Freedom Institute
01/11/2001
If Taliban leader Mullah Omar has been an embarrassment to the Muslim world, Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA) has been an embarrassment to America. It was with extreme delight, therefore, that I learned from a CBS Sunday Morning report last weekend that a Palestinian-American named Maad Abu-Ghazalah is running against him on the Libertarian ticket. The great beauty of American democracy is that you can get rid of tyrants peacefully.
Let me remind readers why Lantos is such an embarrassment to those of us who truly believe in Truth, Justice and the American Way:
Recently, Layla al-Maryati, then a member of the International Religious Freedom Commission, appeared before a Congressional committee on which Lantos sits and identified Israeli human rights abuses committed against Muslim and Christian Palestinians that make American support for Israel seem hypocritical. Lantos dismissed her concerns, asserting that he was disturbed by a view that confuses "protection against terrorism" with "religious persecution".
When the U.N. Racism Conference in Durban was held earlier this year, it was Lantos who went to represent the U.S. while America's first black Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was told to stay at home. What perfect irony. The great general-turned-diplomat sat on the bench like a token member of the George W. Bush team while Lantos, cheerleader for Israeli apartheid, made himself spokesman for the U.S. delegation. As expected, America withdrew its mid-level delegation in protest over the refusal of the conference attendees to ignore Israeli persecution of Palestinians.
Unsurprisingly, this friend of apartheid and apologist for Israeli terrorism, also weighed in against the American civil liberties by supporting the new counter-terrorism bill mislabeled the "Patriot Act of 2001". Lantos, a survivor of the Nazis' persecution of the Jews, who makes facile distinctions between attacks on Palestinian civilians and attacks on Jewish civilians, is unconcerned with the detentions of hundreds (soon to be thousands?) of Muslims without charges on secret evidence. We are fighting terrorism, don't you know?
So who is Maad Abu-Ghazalah? This Palestinian-American made a very positive impression on CBS's television program. He knew how to handle tough questions in the seemingly infinitesimal time allotted for sound bytes. And we know he will be true to on a Libertarian platform on the issues of most importance to Muslims: ending foreign aid (almost all of which goes to regimes with records of repression against the Islamic resurgence - primarily Israel, but also Egypt, Turkey and, to a miniscule degree, the Palestine Authority) and defending civil liberties at home.
I had never heard of Maad before the news story, so I checked him out on the Internet. It turns out that he is the author of a dictionary (Abu-Ghazalah 2000) aimed at assisting people trying to understand the terminology at the "Zionist News Network," as he calls CNN. A few choice examples:
Siege (n.) You are "under siege" when you blockade a civilian population and bombard them with anti-tank missiles. In order to be truly under siege, your own population must be virtually isolated from any violence and must continue to work and play as normal while the population that is besieging you must be cut off from all phones, electricity, gas and other amenities and have their population picked off one by one by snipers (the snipers thereby being "under siege").
Reservist (n.) A person who is paid to infiltrate civilian populations and execute individuals in cold blood...as long as he is not dressed in fatigues.
Crossfire (n.) 45 minutes worth of bullets fired by a sniper at a cowering, defenseless child.
U.S. Media (n.) [publishers of m]aterial considered too hawkish for Israeli media.
Gunman (n.) a 10 year old boy walking to school.
Settler (n.) a person who steals land, kills its occupants and burns their olive trees...all in the name of God.
Clash (v.) an encounter in which snipers shoot at children who retaliate by attacking the bullets with their bodies.
Middle East Expert (n.) Israeli who can speak English without an accent.
Israeli Right (n.) Israelis who want all Arabs to fly away.
Israeli Left (n.) Israelis who want Arabs to stay and do the dishes.
Headline (n.) Anything uttered by an Israeli official, e.g. Three Lost Israeli Reservists Lynched by Palestinian Mob
Footnote (n.) Anything stated by eyewitnesses, usually appearing in the last paragraph of a long article, e.g. "...Palestinians claim that the reservists were actually part of a death squad and claim that it would be impossible for a person to end up in the middle of Ramallah by accident since that would require crossing an Israeli checkpoint, a Palestinian checkpoint, and traversing about 20 cross streets."
Honest Broker (n.) A country that provides $4.5 billion in aid to one side, and admits to having a "special relationship" with that side.
Obviously Maad has a sense of humor, and he's going to need it. When asked by a reporter whether it was going to be an uphill battle to run as a Libertarian against Tom Lantos, Maad replied that as a Palestinian, he's been in an uphill battle all his life. Go get'em, Maad.