| December 4, 2001 | Tuesday | Ramazan 18, 1422 |
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China’s sound advice
Teachers’ untenable stand
THE three Hamas suicide attacks that followed one another in quick succession over the weekend and left at least 28 Israelis dead are an ominous warning of worse things to come in the Middle East. While the condemnation of the attacks by the Palestinian Authority was swift in coming as Yasser Arafat declared a state of emergency in the Palestinian controlled areas, the Israelis’ bitter rhetoric grew stronger and more threatening. Ariel Sharon, on a visit to Washington, held the Palestinian Authority directly responsible for failing to curb the extremist Palestinian elements, again, without realizing that he and his 10-month old militant government must share the blame for what is happening. If Hamas and other militant factions within the Palestinian resistance groups are terrorists targeting innocent civilians, so is the state of Israel. It has always been a terrorist state, more so under Ariel Sharon. The number of innocent Palestinians killed in cold blood by Israel in the course of the 14-month old second intifada far outnumbers the Israeli victims of the conflict.
Unilaterally, the Palestinian Authority has done more than its bit to stop the violence in recent months. Arafat went on record last month to appeal to his people not to attack back the Israelis even if the latter attacked their homes and killed civilians. This way he hoped to save the ceasefire agreed upon between the two sides. Earlier on, he had outlawed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the guerilla outfit that claimed responsibility for the October killing of Reehavam Zeevi, the racist Israeli tourism minister. Hundreds of suspected militants still languish in Palestinian jails, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for Arafat to justify these detentions, especially when Israeli’s war machine keeps killing Palestinians every day. Several Palestinian towns and refugee camps remain under Israeli blockade and the Middle East peace process lies virtually dead under the burden of Ariel Sharon’s intransigence.
In the wake of the recent suicide attacks in Israel, the UN has sounded alarm bells, saying it fears an all-out war between the Palestinians and Israeli forces. As for the Palestinians, they have been facing all the horrors of an undeclared war against them for the past several months, with Israeli tanks rolling into their cities and towns, children being killed in the crossfire and helicopter gunships carrying out indiscriminate raids on civilian targets. All this while the world watched as Ariel Sharon got away with his brutal tactics, aiming all along to have the Palestinian leadership declared international terrorists. It is this dangerous Israeli mindset that does not wish to see the peace process move forward and the Mitchell Commission report implemented. Unless this criminal state policy denying the very idea of a Palestinian nationhood changes there is little hope for any ceasefire to hold. The vicious cycle of violence cannot be stopped single-handedly by Arafat, the presence of General Zinni in the Middle East and American pressure on the Palestinian Authority notwithstanding.
CHINA has wisely joined the ranks of countries opposed to an extension of the US-led war against terrorism beyond the borders of Afghanistan. Recent statements by President Bush and other senior US officials have raised fears that Iraq may well be the next target once the dust settles in Afghanistan. One ominous sign of American intentions is the renewed US demand that Baghdad allow UN arms inspectors to enter Iraq to investigate whether the country is developing weapons of mass destruction. The spate of statements about extending the war against terrorism has been sending shock waves through many world capitals. While Beijing has supported the current campaign in Afghanistan, it has expressed serious reservations about giving the US a carte blanche to widen the scope of its anti-terror campaign. A foreign ministry spokesewoman in Beijing stated on Thursday that the fight against terrorism should, “follow the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, the relevant norms of international law, and should be based on concrete evidence.”
This is sound advice that the US would do well to heed. Even staunch US allies, including Britain, France and Germany, are extremely nervous about allowing the US to target other countries. However, the greatest sense of alarm is being felt in Arab and Muslim countries, which are deeply disturbed about the repercussions of a renewed attack on Iraq. They believe that such a move could prove extremely dangerous and could split the world coalition against terrorism.
Many Muslim countries are already reeling from the angry response from sizeable sections of their populations to the bombing of Afghanistan. They fear that if Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Somalia or Sudan — all incidentally Muslim countries — are now singled out for punishment, there could be an an angry backlash which could even topple a few regimes in the region. Many Muslim nations, already bitter about the one-sided US policies on the Palestine issue, will be right to ask why only Muslim countries attract the ire of the US while countries like Israel are allowed to literally get away with murder. Such double standards only serve to strengthen the hands of radical Islamic groups across the Muslim world which are able to depict US actions as part of a crusade against Islam. It is time the US heeded the advice of major powers such as China and its own closest allies, before taking any action against Iraq or any other Muslim country. Extending the war against terrorism would be an act of immense folly and could destabilize an entire region.
HUNDREDS of teachers holding bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education staged a two-day strike across Sindh last week. They did this to protest against a decision by the education department requiring them to take a written test to become eligible for a pay increase. Various teachers’ associations of the province have said that the government had no right to do this, because normally the submission of documentary proof was more than enough to get an increment. They also said that being made to take a test was tantamount to ridiculing the teaching profession and that in developed countries teachers were not subjected to such tests. We would be inclined to side with what the education department has done. True, the department has its share of shortcomings, but a decision such as this needs to be supported.
One wonders why the teachers are so worried about taking any kind of test that certifies their competency and skills. After all, if they do have the requisite skills and knowledge, through which they got their bachelor’s or master’s degrees, then there should be no cause for worry. The argument that taking a test ridicules what they are doing is flimsy, to say the least. Perhaps the reason why teachers in developed countries are not tested in similar ways is that a professional degree there has some worth. Unfortunately, in Pakistan that is not the case, and in the past we have seen countless cases of not just teachers but doctors and engineers getting jobs on the basis of degrees that later turned out to be fake. In addition to that, we have extremely well-documented cases of thousands of government teachers existing only on paper, drawing salaries but never putting in a single day’s work. Teachers who go on strike like this, and then justify their actions through arguments that make little sense, are the ones in fact who are letting their profession down.