The Tyranny Of Disequilibriated Diplomacy
By Iqbal Alimohamed
01 June, 2010
Countercurrents.org
I am going to say it, as it is: quick and dirty. No diplomatic niceties, no shenanigans. Far too much is at stake, the lives and futures of millions of fellow human beings, across the global divide.
Yesterday, an unconscionable, brutal attack took place in international waters.. The attackers were Israeli commandos, the victims innocent, unarmed civilians on ships destined for Gaza with sorely-need humanitarian aid; aid which has been consistently denied to suffering Palestinians by the Israelis since the latter’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. This event violated all norms of international civil conduct, maritime and humanitarian law: piracy, kidnapping, murder and looting were committed, with impunity, in international waters. It would be a sheer travesty of international diplomacy, if the Israelis were once again allowed to talk their way out of their errant and abhorrent behavior.The bodies of all the dead should be forthwith returned to their families. all people on board the flotilla of ships released and returned home, and the the cargo duly released to the care of the Palestinians. An investigative panel, under United Nations auspices, comprising, among others, the Heads of the major UN and other international humanitarian agencies, should be set up, to deliver its report within a strict time frame and the transgressors put to justice.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, mired for over 60 years in dissension, political rhetoric and posturing must be recognized, once and for all, for what it is; Israeli hegemonic ambitions to occupy all Palestinian lands and to subjugate the Palestinians. Israel has been supplied with enough weaponry and has nuclear arsenals (hush, hush) at its disposal to enable them to thumb their noses at their closest allies; because, at the end of the day, given the complete dominance, by the Jews of all sectors of the American economy and the major international institutions, and its own military might, Israel believes the USA needs it more than it does the USA. The time has come, before any major new calamitous events take place, that the international community engage with the Israelis, in brutally serious, no-nonsense fashion to do the following posthaste, for starters: cease its occupation of all, repeat all, occupied Palestinian lands including Jerusalem, stop building new settlements and dismantle all existing ones. In this day and age,when the days of empire have vanished, no country can claim a divine right to other peoples’ lands, and to seize it except at risk of creating total international anarchy. The Palestinians were generous enough to agree, albeit unhappily, to let the wandering Jews, persecuted everywhere for 2000 years, to allow them a homeland on their land. It is now a situation that the hand that fed the Jew has been bitten. The strident clamor of “never again” in the wake of the Holocaust is now nothing more than a platitude. It is just as well to remember the eloquent words that Shakespeare put into the mouth of Shylock in his play”The Merchant of Venice”, to wit, “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a jew hands, organs, dimensions, affections, passions, fed by the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases............ as a Christian is?” Substitute Arab for Christian and recognize the irony in what the Jews are willingly, if not wantonly, inflicting on the Arabs in their own ancestral lands.
The Western community of nations must now wake up to the fact that the Al-Quaidas and the Talibans of the world did not spring up overnight: these were born out of a sense of retaliation against threats to the dignity and self-respect of their fellow Arabs and Muslims. President Obama came to the Oval Office with much hope to build a rapprochement between the Western bloc and the Islamic world. His brilliant speech to the Muslims was received with thunderous applause. What has happened since he came to Office? Iraq , Afghanistan, remain quagmired, Pakistan dangerously poised to get further engulfed in fundamentalist fervor, and George Mitchell’s tireless shuttle diplomacy and attempts at proximity talks in the Israeli-Palestinian morass , have seen no light of the day. And the Iranian nuclear “bogey” with its all-encompassing Middle East outreach has potential to be a major new flashpoint. On the other side of the world, on the Korean Peninsula, fears abound of an emerging war scenario if restraint is not exercised. Clearly, neither the international community, especially the powers that be , nor the United Nations through its Security Council , seem capable of resolving these protracted conflicts, either out of benign neglect or sheer ineptitude or, more likely, political inertia born of fear of upsetting a balance of power of vested interests. Be that as it may, one thing is certain: if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not resolved with despatch, the chasms between the Western and Islamic worlds will deepen so irreparably, there will be consequences for the whole world - no victor, no vanquished, but immense suffering all around. History alone will judge if and by whom true statesmanship was exercised to avert this likely catastrophe. Ironically, as Harry S. Truman once declared: No two historians ever agree on what happened, and the damn thing is they both think they're telling the truth."
Iqbal Alimohamed is a former senior UN official, a Canadian citizen, living in Geneva, Switzerland
