IN the wake of Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948-49 about 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes or were encouraged by Israel to leave. Some were forcibly ejected from their villages which were then demolished. James McDonald, the first Ambassador of the United States to Israel, described the plight of the refugees thus: they are ‘a huge and pitiful multitude, uprooted, exploited and helpless’. This was just the beginning.

Now that the Palestinian problem is fast moving towards final solution the world helplessly watches the endgame as it did 60 years ago when an attempt at another final solution was under way in the Nazi-dominated Europe. There is, however, some difference. On the previous occasion the world did, temporarily and for good reason, feel helpless but was not in a state of morbid paralysis. The authors of the previous attempt at final solution had to pay a very heavy price as the collective wrath of almost the whole world descended upon them, and continued unabated till they were destroyed.

The present scenario is totally different. This time round those who can intervene are in no way helpless, but are in every way unhelpful. In fact there are many among them who, under the influence of a potent brew of racial and religious antipathy, have chosen to take a passionately dispassionate view of the fate of the Palestinians.

This antipathic indifference to the fate of the Palestinians has a long tradition, but let us go no further than the Balfour Declaration (1917) that officially and formally committed the British government to the ‘establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’. Its author, Arthur Balfour, justified the new covenant with the Jews, and resiling from the old with the Arabs, with this magisterial pronouncement: ‘The four great powers are committed to Zionism, and Zionism, be it right or be it wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land’. (Emphasis added)

Arthur James Balfour, whose mind worked in rather devious ways, had just the right credentials to make that kind of pronouncement. While he supported the creation of Israel for a people who lived elsewhere, he was an implacable opponent of home rule for the Irish whose rights there had an ‘age-long tradition’. In fact as chief secretary for Ireland he suppressed the insurrection in Ireland with such ruthlessness that he came to be known as ‘Bloody Balfour’. One would like to add that he was kept aloft in politics by an indulgent electorate for an interminably long period of 50 years, due undoubtedly to the fact that the British public has always been rather suspicious of politicians who sound intelligent or clever.

That the Palestinians don’t matter or don’t even exist has been a constant theme in the Zionist lore. Vladimir Jabotinsky, one of the leading lights of the early Zionists, argued that the Palestinians were ‘aliens’, and their ‘transfer’ if not accomplished voluntarily would have to be achieved against their will.

Then there was that curious case of a popular book, From Time Immemorial by Joan Peter, massively promoted by the Israeli lobby, claiming that there were no native Arabs before the Zionist immigration into Palestine. His book was shown to be a colossal fraud by Norman Finkelstein, himself a Jew and the son of Holocaust survivors. Again, as late as 1969, when asked about the Palestinians in an interview with The Sunday Times of London, Golda Meir brushed aside the question with contempt: ‘They do not exist’, she said.

Having talked for a while about what exists and what doesn’t, we are, I hope, prepared to face a question in the same vein that hasn’t been asked at any time since 1948: Does Palestine exist? The short answer is: Palestine doesn’t exist. In fact it ceased to exist within a few days of its birth as there was no legal or political authority, or organization, to take control of the state demarcated by the British under the partition plan.

Consequently, there was a scramble for land among the neighbouring countries, and the contenders took whatever they could. Egypt took the Gaza strip (bigger than the present one); Jordan (then Trans-Jordan) occupied the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem; and Israel took the rest, the most and the best. In the next phase (1967) the Israelis ejected the Egyptians from the Gaza strip and much else, and the Jordanians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israeli occupation of the whole of Palestine (and Golan Heights in addition) was, thus, complete in 1967.

Leaving aside the Gaza strip (140 sq. miles), one has only to look at the map of the West Bank (2,200 sq. miles) to see that it is a rather complicated mosaic, consisting of five different kinds of areas: areas under the Palestinian control; areas under a joint Israeli-Palestinian control; areas under the Israeli civil and security control; areas consisting of Israeli civil and military facilities; and the Jewish-Israeli settlements (175 so far) scattered all over the place.

The word ‘area’ can be misleading as none of these five kinds of areas is in one piece. Each of the different kinds of areas consists of numerous bits and pieces. Areas under the Palestinian control, for example, consist of enclaves joined by roads that are under the Israeli control. Now that the Palestinian Authority has been dismantled, even this confusing, fractured and erratic Palestinian control over the designated bits and pieces doesn’t exist anymore.

Thus, the best kept secret of our times is that Palestine doesn’t exist, and Greater Israel has come into existence. In fact, Greater Israel has been there since June 1967. But why, one may ask, Israel doesn’t tell the truth by formally inaugurating Greater Israel? Well, there is a problem. The problem is that while Palestine doesn’t exist, the Palestinians do. There are more than three million of them in the areas that are supposed to constitute Palestine, and about a million in Israel itself.

Even if the Palestinian refugees in the neighbouring countries (2.3 million) are not allowed to return, there would be 4.3 million Palestinians (Jews 5.5 million) in the Greater Israel. Hence the existence of Greater Israel will be acknowledged only when the Palestinians are reduced to a small minority. This is what Ariel Sharon in now trying to accomplish through ‘one-way ticket’ not only to Yasser Arafat but to as many Palestinians as can be persuaded to leave in the years to come. The Israelis are in no hurry. They are the best at any game of patience.

Meanwhile, we should get used to the fact that the Israeli forces will not withdraw from the West Bank or Gaza strip; the Palestinian Authority won’t be resurrected out of the rubble; the Palestinian refugees won’t be allowed to return; and the Jewish settlements in the West Bank will not be dismantled, but would continue to proliferate.

This, then, is a brief, perhaps the briefest narrative of the continuing Palestinian diaspora, pain and suffering begun more half a century ago. In the course of their travails they have been attacked and slaughtered by the Jews (Palestine), by the Christians (Lebanon), by the Muslims (Jordan), and expelled (Kuwait) from what they thought was a sanctuary. At the present moment when even their young girls have been driven to acts of extreme despair; when their leaders are being surrounded, pursued, captured, tortured and branded as terrorists; when their houses are being bulldozed; there is no relief in sight. No country or group of countries is going to launch a rescue operation any time soon. They stand alone and forsaken.

But even in this darkest hour of their history, the Palestinians do have an option: they should renounce violence in all its forms and manifestations, accept the reality of the existence of Greater Israel, and declare themselves to be its citizens.

THERE was once an emperor. He hired a tailor to make him some new clothes for his birthday. The tailor ensconced himself in a workshop for many weeks, supposedly preparing the new clothes.

But whenever the emperor went to check on progress, he could see nothing. The tailor convinced him that where he saw nothing, there was in fact the most beautiful set of new clothes. Not wishing to appear a fool, the emperor too started expressing admiration for the clothes. And not wishing to contradict their ruler — rather to please him — his courtiers went even further in expressing their admiration.

The end-result was that the emperor led a public procession to celebrate his birthday wearing the new clothes. The public too remained silent. Only a small boy had the courage to point out the truth: that the emperor was naked.

The story of the emperor’s new clothes is being re-enacted in Pakistan, albeit with some modifications. No prizes for guessing who is playing the lead role of emperor. His new clothes are the universally admired and legitimizing robes of democracy. His courtiers are drawn from across the spectrum — governors, nazims, politicians, journalists, even a former TV personality-turned-convict.

All are engaged in a race to outdo each other in the depths of sycophancy to which they can sink. The hero of the story — the small boy — is a judge of the Balochistan High Court. Sadly, unlike in the storybooks, in this real version the emperor will not listen to the small boy and realize his mistake. Encouraged by his fawning courtiers, he will continue to delude himself that his clothes are beautiful.

But that is the ending: any good story should start at the beginning, with the emperor. Pervez Musharraf ascended the throne in October 1999. His ouster of the gluttonous king Sharif was not democratic, but had massive popular support. The new emperor began his reign with laudable pledges to transform the land, to rid it of the evils of corruption and mismanagement, and to bring prosperity to all his subjects. He also claimed to have no personal ambition — to simply be performing a duty by serving the masses. He sounded sincere — probably was — and many people believed him.

But power corrupts. It is addictive. Taste it and you want more. Taste it and you don’t want to lose it. This is what has happened to our emperor: he does not want to give up his throne. Of course, he can never admit that, and hence he has to find a justification to stay on it. Pervez Musharraf has come up with several.

The first is to point out the evils of rule under his predecessors and main challengers, ex-king Sharif and queen Benazir. Both looted the national treasury to enrich themselves and their cronies, while their subjects suffered. Those subjects have still not forgotten the tyranny of their rule, which is why — even after two and a half years — one sees hardly any popular agitation against Pervez Musharraf. Whatever his faults, there is a national consensus that he is infinitely preferable to the exiled alternatives.

The second is to point out the many benefits that have come to people under Musharraf’s rule, and to stress that further benefits will only materialize if he stays on the throne. Without him there will be a return to the corruption and mismanagement of the 1990s. With him, there will be relief from poverty and prosperity for all.

Both the above justifications have considerable merit. Pakistan’s fractious and self-interested political class have — in more than two years — failed to come up with a clean and credible alternative to the Sharif-Bhutto duo. While the PPP cannot contemplate a future without its life chairperson (something that of course does not in anyway undermine its democratic credentials), the PML sans Sharif is a party ‘full of chiefs but no Indians’. The other ‘leading figures’ on the political stage — Imran Khan, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Tahir-ul-Qadri, etc — have yet to prove their grand claims to popular support. Until a credible alternative emerges, Musharraf is the best man to lead the country.

The reform process initiated by his government has still to prove its effectiveness. Statistically, Pakistan has climbed several rungs up the ladder: forex reserves are up, the fiscal deficit is down, the debt burden has lightened. But practically, few Pakistanis would claim to be better off now than they were before October 12, 1999 — indeed, many would claim that price hikes have left them with less in their pockets. It is too early to judge the success of the Musharraf programme, but one could give him the benefit of the doubt and accept that — given time — it will yield real benefits.

These two justifications alone were sufficient to secure Musharraf’s throne. They could have made up for the non-democratic route he took to power. It would have been quite easy for him, come October, to persuade the newly elected assemblies to endorse his presidency, in accordance with the Constitution.

But Musharraf was not satisfied with that. In a classic case of ‘have your cake and eat it’ he wanted absolute power (including the position of COAS). And the stamp of democracy. Normally this would be an irreconcilable contradiction. But in Pakistan there is a tried and tested way to overcome it: create the illusion of democracy, rather than democracy itself.

Real democracy involves giving people choices. Real democracy involves free will. Real democracy involves following the procedures laid down in the Constitution. Real democracy involves taking risks. None of those apply in Pakistan today.

The referendum is not an exercise in democracy. To present people with a question they cannot answer ‘no’ to — who would say they don’t want democracy? who would say they want sectarianism and fundamentalism? — and then infer from that, that they support Pervez Musharraf staying on as president for five years, is simply an exercise in manipulation. A journalist in last week’s press conference dared to pose the question: ‘What if you lose?’ He was wasting his breath: there is no way our ‘calculated’ risk-taking leader can lose.

As mentioned above, there is no shortage of fawning courtiers willing to go to ridiculous lengths to back their emperor in his claim to be acting democratically. Those unwilling to go along with the democratic farce are being coerced into doing so. How many of the thousands thronging to hail the emperor in Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan, etc came purely to see him? — Not because of pressure/persuasion from nazims, political parties, employers? The use of state resources to promote the referendum is blatant — on a par with the abuses of power that characterized the Bhutto-Sharif years.

Come April 30, Musharraf will get his new clothes. He will strut around in his ‘democratic’ outfit, and the Tariq Azizes, Khalid Maqbools and other sycophants of this country will assure him of how well it fits. The person they — and all the people of Pakistan — should be admiring is Justice (resigned) Tariq Mehmood — the only one who spoke the truth.

PAKISTAN and the United States have signed a memorandum of understanding to set up a joint forum following a meeting between finance minister Shaukat Aziz and the US treasury secretary Paul O’Neil. The forum can institutionalize the means for increasing economic cooperation between the two countries. This is one more step for larger cooperation following the lifting of various sanctions after September 11.

Such forums have been set up between Pakistan and many other countries, big and small, in recent years. But they have not done a great deal of good to Pakistan in terms of its exports. The reasons for that need to be explored. But if such forums have not done great good to Pakistan, they have not done any harm either. But when Pakistan and another country want to step up their economic cooperation, there is already a mechanism through which it can be realized. The pattern has become rather universal in the modern world.

The memorandum signed with the US states that it would be reviewed after two years in the light of its performance. That means Pakistan has to make good use of the forum in a manner beneficial to both.

Meanwhile, President George Bush has asked Congress to provide 145 million dollars more as additional aid to Pakistan, raising the total aid for the current financial year to 746 million dollars. And the US has emerged again as the largest direct foreign investor in Pakistan in the first nine months of this financial year ending March 31 out of the total foreign investment of 287.4 million dollars, which is a small sum compared to our large targets.

The bulk of the new aid is for security measures, to combat terrorism and contain narcotic trade. But the kind of assistance sought by Pakistan for larger market access to the US has not been forthcoming as the ‘mighty trade representative’ was not represented at the Washington meeting. That means that commerce minister Razak Dawood has to continue his parleys with the US commerce department or the trade representative to overcome Congressional opposition to large market access to Pakistani textiles in view of the textile crisis in the US.

What is clear is that the US fights its economic wars seriously regardless of who is on the other side — a friend or a foe. It is now fighting a steel war with Europe by imposing a heavy tariff on steel imports from Europe. And Europe is hitting back with a series of sanctions on US products including fruits and T. shirts.

The problem with Pakistan’s exports is that two-thirds of them are cotton and textile products. After that comes rice which is way down and more countries are growing rice, and improving their quality. After that comes leather in which there is tough competition.

Clearly Pakistan has to diversify its exports with a great deal of earnestness and persistence and it has to make its exports, particularly textiles, value-added. It is not enough if a handful of exporters do that or others do that half-heartedly. It has to be an ever-rising national objective with the workers too participating with due diligence and each worker feels it is his national obligation to improve the quality and raise the image of Pakistan’s products abroad consistently. It is not the raw materials but the quality of the workmanship that makes the difference and gets higher prices.

In this regard the producers have to give increasing importance to brand names and the qualities associated with each brand. They have to invest in their brands and make them better all the time instead of having a fluctuating quality.

Standardization of cotton has become a major issue in Pakistan. When we have to export our cotton we have to maintain international standards. In this age of globalization and the World Trade Organization, we cannot allow our village values to prevail in the area of cotton production, storage and transportation. We have to follow international standards. Instead, because of the admixtures in our cotton and impurities we get 6 to 8 cents less than New York prices.

Now Razak Dawood, who has been fighting a battle to get our cotton standardized is determined to come up with the requisite legislation. An ordinance is to come into force next month. The implementation of the ordinance may have its teething troubles; but implemented it must be absolutely to get the right price for our cotton.

The argument that the simple farmers may not have the means to standardize their cotton or employ the right technology for it does not hold good in the globalized world when we want to export more and more of our agricultural products. Leaders of each production groups have to guide their people towards better and more valuable output instead of both the producers and the nation losing because of slackness in this respect on the farms.

Corporate farming has been suggested as one of the solutions to the agricultural export problem or getting lower prices for our agricultural items. If we have to compete in the world with our agricultural products we have to opt for corporate farming more and more, and in the absence of that taking to co-operative farming with real earnestness. The small farmer and world trade are two different things and the gap between them has to be filled.

Fishing is one area where Pakistan has regressed instead of making progress. Some years ago it figured in the table of significant fishing nations. It has vanished from that table because of its small catch and smaller exports. While small countries like South Korea, Chile and Iceland are major earners in this trade Pakistan with its long sea coast is nowhere in the fishing map of the world.

Instead we make negative headlines like the Karachi Fish Harbour being the dirtiest fish harbour in the world, or the fish processing facilities being unhygienic. At the same time we have not been able to put the Korangi Fish Harbour to the best use.

The problem with us is not lack of resources or absence of facilities to earn more but the absence of the will to put what is available to the best use and profit the utmost. In a highly competitive world we cannot afford to put our economy in reverse gear in many areas.

Lack of education and training of our peasants and industrial workers is a major handicap. We have to make up for that quick through adult education and retraining for workers in the industrial sector.

The competitiveness of our industry has to increase. And their prices have to come down. That can be achieved through increasing production at one end improving productivity of the workers at the other. That would call for replacing old machinery with the new and adding new components to the existing machinery. The government and the banks have to be helpful to the industrialists in this regard by lowering the interest rate as well.

A foreign investor asks how he can use workers on an assembly line who cannot read the manual. The worker who can read costs more. When we talk of the low wages in Pakistan, foreign investors talk of the low productivity of the workers and how they have to employ many workers here in place of one abroad. And they talk of the too many holidays along with the disruption of work caused by strikes, protests, hartals etc without due notice.

Now while a Pak-US Joint forum has been set up to promote larger economic cooperation between the two countries, the US importers want “performance bond” before opening their LCs for buying Pakistani products. Some of the restrictions imposed after September 11 on ships carrying Pakistani goods to the US are still there and that makes our exports more costly and less competitive.

US importers are also uncertain about imports from Pakistan arriving there in time because of the continuing violence and killings in the country. If the cold-blooded murder of Daniel Pearl and the killing of two American women in Islamabad church increased the US apprehensions about Pakistan, the continued killings of doctors in Karachi and the sectarian murders make the situation far worse.

Razak Dawood says the global recession related bar on our exports has receded as the global situation has got better, but not only the US investors desiring to come in are affected by the lawlessness in Pakistan but also those who want to place large orders for import of goods from Pakistan.

FINANCE Minister Shaukat Aziz was in Washington last week for the World Bank-International Monetary Fund spring meetings and discussions with United States officials on Pakistan-US bilateral economic relations.

Mr Aziz denied that any political issues were raised in his meetings with Treasury, State Department or White House officials. If the minister is to be believed, it will be considered as surprising that no one from the American side should have tried to get from Mr Aziz some kind of political context for the future of Pakistan’s economic reforms in view of the situation created by the impending referendum.

Did no US official ask about the danger of General Pervez Musharraf losing his favourite “silent majority” because of the referendum shenanigans? It appears from reports in Pakistani newspapers that this majority, many of whom had overcome their natural resistance to military rule to approve of the steps taken by Gen Musharraf in recent months against extremism and welcomed his January 12 speech, is sceptical of the April 30 exercise. One would have expected someone here to ask the minister about the danger of political instability if there is a backlash against the referendum.

The minister seemed quite undisturbed when he was informed of the two recent strong anti-referendum editorials in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Perhaps the minister was only reflecting the attitude of complacency that may have been bred in the military regime as a whole because of the waffling statements made so far by US officials on the referendum issue. The closest the US has come to distancing itself from the referendum is to suggest that the process should be open to review by the courts, a review that is now in progress. The regime does not appear to feel that comments in the US press may be articulating the views at least of some people in the American establishment and on the think-tank circuit.

The Bush administration is keen not to say anything publicly that might put strains on its relationship with Pakistan. Nor would or should any Pakistani advocate US interference in Pakistan’s internal political affairs, which are something for the country people and political parties to sort out. But unfortunately the US has been and is so intertwined with both our foreign and domestic policies that what Washington says matters, and indeed there so much that we have had to do at America’s behest, especially since September 11.

Therefore, any signals from this source about developments in Pakistan cannot be ignored. If the referendum turnout is low and if it is seen as fixed, with the help of district nazims and military men, the regime’s credibility will inevitably suffer in Washington and other world capitals that matter; if the October elections are unfairly managed, are put off, or their results are widely questioned, then the US might find it extremely difficult to sustain its present ambivalence and convince Congress and the press that the administration’s existing wholehearted backing for Gen Musharraf should be maintained.

Even if the US support continues, because Washington may find that it still has no choice except to back the general, the demands on Pakistan are likely to become harsher and more pressing and the pretence of respecting Pakistan’s domestic political and legal compulsions may have to be discarded in matters such as dealing with militant and extremist groups.

Pakistan might also then discover itself under greater pressure to meet Indian demands on blocking “cross-border terrorism”. An immediate test of the military regime’s intention to stop infiltration already looms with the setting in of spring and the opening of routes into Kashmir. Ties between Washington and New Delhi are already described by observers here as closer than at any time since President John F. Kennedy went to India’s aid during its 1962 border war with China.

Dennis Kux, author of a much acclaimed book on US-Pakistan relations and a senior policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, points out in an article in a magazine that the war on terrorism has greatly strengthened political dialogue between the US and India and enhanced cooperation on sensitive issues such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The new status of Indo-US ties, Mr Kux says, has been most visible in security relations, where Washington and New Delhi have had few dealings for nearly four decades.

The two governments have for the first time in many years started discussing a variety of possible arms sales from the United States to India, Mr Kux points out, and since the publication of his article, the head of the Indian army, General Padmanabhan, has been to Washington on a mission to increase military-to-military cooperation with the US.

It is, therefore, pointless to pretend that we are not conscious of the fact that the government domestic political agenda has a US and regional dimension, and it will be idle for Islamabad or the GHQ to suggest that such a dimension does not exist. The military is banking on an extended US engagement in Afghanistan, necessitating Pakistan cooperation, in trying to reshape Pakistan political structure and institutionalize its own role.

But if popular disenchantment sets in, the Bush administration will find it hard to persuade the Congress to loosen the purse strings or authorize military sales to Pakistan or provide greater market access for Pakistani exports —- and government leaders in Islamabad may not find it so easy to lift the telephone and talk to people in the White House or the State Department. Their standing may suffer. It is time we thought things out a little more carefully.