| November 7, 2002 | Thursday | Ramazan 1,1423 |
Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)
Stinging indictment
IT IS only clear-eyed political observers and commentators who seem worried about the current situation in the country. The major political players appear not only unconcerned, but actually in quite a jolly mood. Each day’s papers bring new pictures of the leaders — Maulana Fazlur Rahman, Amin Faheem, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, Chaudhry Shujaat and a horde of others — with wide smiles on their faces, cupping hands to greet one another, and generally exuding an impression of being in high spirits. Government ministers also go about their business, predicting long-term policy goals, as if nothing has changed and they are there for the long haul rather than on their way out. Only the Balochistan cabinet has had the good sense to resign. Asif Zardari, in detention for several years on various accusations of corruption and all but forgotten by the press and even his party colleagues, has suddenly emerged as a key figure, and is daily reported to be holding consultations from his hospital bed with various luminaries. There is much to-ing and fro-ing, with everyone making the mandatory call on the redoubtable Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, but no one enlightens us on the broth that is cooking in Islamabad’s back-room cauldron.
On Tuesday night, the state-controlled television suddenly interrupted a play to flash an announcement that the major parties had all asked for the first session of the newly elected National Assembly due to be held on Friday to be postponed. This was also reported in sections of the press the next day, but it was also said the PPP had denied that it had endorsed any such move. The PML(Q) is definite that the session should be postponed to give more time for consultations on government formation, and the stalwart of another PML rump, Mr Hamid Nasir Chattha, has among other reasons said the convening of the session on the first Friday of Ramazan will mean that oath-taking will not be completed in time for Friday prayers and if it were held in the afternoon, it would not end by iftar time. It’s a wonder he didn’t ask for Ramazan to be postponed. The interesting thing is that a formal notification calling for the assembly to meet had not been issued till all this new confusion and speculation broke. The PML(Q)’s demand came after it had bravely claimed that it had assembled a working majority and in the immediate wake of the announcement of an agreement between the ARD and the MMA on crucial nominations. If the PML(Q) has a majority, shouldn’t it be interested in having the assembly meet at its earliest so that it can show its strength and also attract some of the floating vote in the bargain?
Behind all this seems to loom the hovering shadow of what is called the establishment. How to find a way for the military to stay on and yet not give the impression of doing so? It seems to be assailed by second thoughts on almost all fronts, only some of which can be tackled through the convenience of issuing new ordinances. Does it want the PPP in and the MMA out or vice versa? It is taking an extraordinarily long time to learn to live with the reality that only so much can be regimented, not all or everything. How many guarantees does the army want for the acceptance of a president in uniform and a National Security Council with all the three bemedalled service chiefs sitting on it? There is much too much humbug and hypocrisy around, and a dash of deceit for good measure. All this, as we begin a month of fasting that is meant to cleanse the soul.
TRUTH has a way of making itself known. The international community had long suspected that Israel had committed massacres in the West Bank last summer. However, Tel Aviv and sections of the western media had made every attempt to suppress the Zionist state’s war crimes in April-June, especially those perpetrated in Nablus and Jenin. Now Amnesty International has come up with a revealing report that catalogues the Israeli defence forces’ war crimes and violations of the Geneva conventions during their reoccupation of the West Bank. The report says the IDF killed civilians, including women, children and men over 55 (in Nablus alone 80 people were slaughtered), tortured Palestinian prisoners, destroyed homes, and blocked medical and humanitarian aid to the survivors. More revoltingly, the Israeli authorities used human beings as shields. Calling some of these actions as war crimes and violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the AI report has demanded an inquiry into the Israeli atrocities.
The report has not merely held the soldiers who massacred civilians responsible for the crime; it has held all those involved in the line of command culpable. Significantly, the report has implicated those who ordered, condoned or covered up crimes, including “the highest authority of the state because they are politically responsible — that would be the prime minister.” This is nothing new, for Ariel Sharon is a confirmed war criminal. His hands are red with the blood of Palestinian men, women and children, including the refugees in Sabra and Shatilla in Lebanon in 1982. Incidentally, this war criminal has appointed as defence minister another war criminal, Shaul Mofaz, who as chief of staff presided over the massacres in the West Bank last summer.
Incredibly, a UN report released by Secretary-General Kofi Annan last August had found no evidence of a massacre, even though Israel had blocked a UN investigation. The Amnesty report thus not only exposes the Israeli war crimes, it also constitutes an indictment of the United Nations. The human rights watchdog body regretted that “a proper judicial investigation” into the crimes catalogued in its report had not yet taken place. It correctly observed that without a UN team’s visit to the site of the crimes, the UN report could not be considered a substitute for “a full, independent, impartial and thorough investigation or inquiry.”
It now remains to be seen whether western governments and the media will take notice of the Amnesty report and ask Israel to hold an enquiry as demanded by that body. More important, will those who spend sleepless nights over supposed human rights violations in China or Iraq have the moral courage to press for a trial and punish the guilty Israelis? Also, some of the most powerful western governments cannot escape responsibility for encouraging Israel in its atrocities and massacres. For reasons of geopolitical expediency and historical prejudices, most western governments keep quiet over Israeli crimes and put more emphasis on such issues as a reform of the Palestinian Authority and a change of leadership. These are non-issues. Blood will continue to flow in the holy land unless the basic issue is solved and that issue is Israel’s complete withdrawal from the occupied territories and the establishment of a Palestinian people’s state on land that belongs to them.