| June 2, 2003 | Monday | Rabi-us-Sani 1, 1424 |
Heading for a ‘strategic’ showdown?
Hot enough for June?
WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush’s decision to hold a summit meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders stems from Washington’s desire to force progress on the so-called roadmap for peace in the Middle East before the next presidential elections due in 2004.
The roadmap, presented to the Palestinians and Israelis, calls for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state by 2005 in return for Arab guarantees for peace with Israel.
The plan for a final and comprehensive settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict by 2005 was first presented in President Bush’s speech of June 24 last year and was endorsed by the EU, Russia, and the UN in the July 16 and Sept 17 Quartet Ministerial statements.
The draft says that a two-state solution to the conflict will only be achieved through an end to violence and terrorism, when the Palestinian people have a leadership acting decisively against terror and willing and able to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty.
The success of this plan will also depend on “Israel’s readiness to do what is necessary for a democratic Palestinian state to be established, and a clear, unambiguous acceptance by both parties of the goal of a negotiated settlement,” the draft says.
The Quartet, which includes the United States, Russia, EU and the UN, will assist and facilitate implementation of the plan, and arrange direct discussions between the parties as required.
President Bush followed up on the plan by announcing another plan on May 8 for the establishment of a US-Middle East free trade area for encouraging peace through economic development.
And his decision to hold the summit in Jordan on June 4 reflects his desire to show some progress on this front before he goes back to the American voters in 2004 to seek another term.
But sceptics do not see why this roadmap should be more successful in bringing peace to the Middle East than the Oslo peace process, which collapsed in violence after raising hopes for a peaceful settlement to the conflict.
The Bush administration, however, says that the situation in the Middle East has changed drastically since US forces captured Iraq, giving hope that a negotiated settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict may finally be possible.
The sceptics do not doubt President Bush’s ability to coerce an approval of the roadmap from both Israeli and Palestinian leaders but still see little sign of a real peace in the Middle East. They say that it is too ambitious to seek an end to such a long-drawn conflict in two years.
The White House publicly released the roadmap a month ago, but Israel has shown little restraint in dealing with the Palestinians. Military actions have continued and so have the night raids and the demolition of homes in Palestinian territories.
Palestinian suicide attacks have not stopped either and militant Palestinian groups like Hamas have already rejected the new peace plan.
But the Americans hope that once President Bush is personally involved, they will be able to bring enough pressure on both Israelis and Palestinians to make them change their attitudes. They say that they have learned from the mistake of President Clinton and are not going to repeat them.
They say that the Israelis are trying to score as many points as they can before President Bush commits himself to the plan. Once he is involved, they will not risk alienating the US administration.
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tested his nation on one of the key issues on the roadmap, the dismantling of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In a calculated move, Sharon — the father of the Greater Israel movement that treats the settlements as part of the Israeli state, “referred to the Israeli presence in those areas as an occupation.”
As expected, his speech caused an uproar across Israel, allowing Sharon to show to the world, particularly to the Americans, how the Israeli people react to proposals like this.
The move and the reaction had the expected impact on Washington.
The Bush administration promptly assured Israel that there would be no talk of dismantling large Israeli settlements or of the status of Jerusalem during the summit. These issues will be reserved for “final status” talks in 2005, Washington said.
Additionally, Washington is also supporting the Israeli condition that Palestinians must give up their demand for a “right of return” for more than 3.6 million Palestinian refugees living outside the occupied territories.
As Arab media have pointed out, such developments are already undermining the ability of the Arab and Palestinian leaders to sell this package to their people.
“By allowing Israel to keep the settlements and taking away the right of return from the Palestinian refugees, the Americans are only strengthening radical Arab groups already opposed to the roadmap,” says a report in the Arab press.
The unconditional US acceptance of the Israeli demand that PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat be kept out of the peace process is also undermining the roadmap. Mr Arafat challenged the validity of this demand by announcing that he and not Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas would be the chief architect of the Palestinian position in any talks.
Observers point out that without Mr Arafat’s support, Mr Abbas would not be able to deliver whatever promises he makes on behalf of the Palestinians.
It is obvious that Mr Arafat still is the most respected and the most powerful Palestinian leader but the Bush administration wants to keep him out because the Israeli prime minister does not want to deal with him.
But the Israelis are not happy with Mr Abbas either. They say that he still seeks guidance from Mr Arafat and that the Palestinian Authority has pushed him forward to present an acceptable face to the world while Mr Arafat pulls the strings from behind the scenes.
This reflects a familiar Israeli pattern: Put forth some demands, such as a new Palestinian leader, protection for large Israeli settlements, and when these demands are met, ask for more.
Such attitudes in the past have only hardened the Palestinian resolve to fight on.
The chances are that both sides will stick to their guns when President Bush meets them in Aqaba, Jordan, this week. There’s no doubt that the United States has the strength to force them to change their attitudes. But it is still not clear how would the United States use this strength.
If the US continues to push the Palestinians to give one concession after another without forcing the Israelis to reciprocate, the roadmap for peace may meet the same fate as the Oslo agreement and dozens of other peace plans for the Middle East that failed to end the bloodshed in one of the world’s most violent regions.
PREDICTABLY, the MMA has upped the ante once again. With a perfect sense of timing, it has struck with its Islamization weapon just when everything was to have been packaged in a deal with all their demands incorporated.
The NSC was to have been introduced not as a constitutional amendment, but by an act of parliament. Article 58-2(b) was to have been amended to allow the president powers to dismiss the cabinet and not parliament. The powers to appoint the armed forces chiefs were to rest with the president. The LFO was to have been brought to parliament for approval. And the president was to have been allowed to keep his uniform until October 2004, unless of course he wanted to get rid of it earlier. And in return the MMA was to have been given the slots of leader of the opposition in both the houses of parliament.
The rest of the opposition, mainly the People’s Party Parliamentarians and the PML-N, had accepted the fiat accompli and had decided to vote against all this in case the LFO was brought to parliament but without disrupting the system.
After having signed and sealed this deal, Musharraf was to go to the US where he was invited to meet President Bush at Camp David, a venue where only close friends and allies are allowed to set foot. And in his meeting with President Bush at this historic venue Musharraf was to have asked for the very moon both in terms of economic assistance ($10 billion) and in dealing with India on Kashmir, warning his friend Bush that unless he went back home with the moon, the government-in-waiting ( he opposition led by fundamentalists) would take over his country and with it they would also control the nuclear button.
But the MMA by asking Musharraf to agree to Islamization in return for its support for the LFO and his uniform has thrown a monkey wrench in the works which Musharraf had so painstakingly put together. The religious alliance has seemingly given Musharraf a choice to pick either them or the US. And that too before his departure for the US. He cannot now be in both the camps at the same time. The MMA knows that he cannot go to the US if he accepts their Islamization demands before his departure and they also know that if he refuses to accede to their demands before his departure, he cannot have a deal with them which he badly needs to show to President Bush that he is still in charge in Islamabad.
The timing of the MMA is indeed perfect. Musharraf stands totally isolated today from the mainstream political forces and the civil society on the issues of the LFO and his uniform. The King’s party, popularly known as the PML-Q, seems to be cracking up after the tiny opposition in the Punjab Assembly gave the party of the massive mandate a run for its money last week.
Despite the insignificant presence of the combined opposition in the province, the Punjab government, led by one of the two politically most powerful Chaudhrys in the country, had to fall back on coercive methods to get a couple of laws passed from the assembly. And when the court intervened, the assembly had to be hastily prorogued. But not before it had earned, in the absence of the opposition, the distinction of being the only elected assembly in the whole world to have endorsed continuity of an un-elected president in military uniform.
One had thought that our elected representatives would never repeat the ignominy of 1985, when they passed an amendment incorporating the name of a person in the constitution and that too a military dictator, allowing him to remain the president of Pakistan for five years without having to go through the election process as envisaged in the same constitution. A first and perhaps last in the history of parliamentary democracy.
But the resolution passed by the Punjab assembly last week appears to be even more ignominious because in 1985, it was clearly done under duress and as a trade-off. But there was no such pressure or compulsion or even a give-and-take in the case of the resolution passed by the Punjab Assembly. It seemed to have been passed totally voluntarily. But panic was clearly in evidence in the wording of the resolution and in the speed with which it was passed.
But then this is not the first time that the elected representatives in Punjab have earned the distinction of creating ‘democratic’ history. Even if one ignored the birth of the Republican Party which came out of the womb of the then ruling Muslim League overnight, there is the recent democratic milestone when in 1993 almost the entire Punjab provincial assembly left their elected chief minister Ghulam Haider Wyne high and dry and got the then speaker Manzoor Wattoo elected in his place just because the then president Ghulam Ishaq Khan had shown the door to prime minister Nawaz Sharif who was also his party chief then. And when the Supreme Court restored Nawaz Sharif, the same people de-camped to Islamabad and camped at a five-star hotel for weeks together confident that Nawaz would get back the provincial assembly which he could not and in fact lost his own job once again in trying to wrench it back from Wattoo.
Clearly, the Chaudhry brothers are losing their grip on the party. Otherwise, they would not have pushed the panic button and used police to suppress the opposition and passed the landmark resolution. In Sindh where it is a junior partner of the MQM, the PML-Q has actually cracked up already. It has no presence of any significance either in the NWFP or in Balochistan. So, it is losing its validity for President Musharraf. And the choice for Musharraf is now very clear: he either goes along with the MMA and burns his boats vis-a-vis the US or proves correct those who have been predicting a collapse of the system before June 24.—Onlooker
WAY back in 1985, we elected, or were made to elect, a non-party assembly here in the Punjab and elsewhere in the country. Now members of this so-called assembly began to behave in a manner not expected of people whose business it was to make laws. “Sick and tired of the goings on in the ‘August House’, I wrote a piece which was sharply critical of the way the legislators were behaving. It was immediately shot down by my editor. He said that lame and maimed it was an assembly we were having after many years. Such as it was, therefore, we should be a lot more tolerant and let it be. The assembly, my editor said, would learn by experience. That was never to be. The house lingered on till it was dissolved by its own architect.
Now we have yet another assembly but with the difference that it was elected on the basis of the multi-party system. Moreover, it has a lot many more women than there were in 1985. These ladies have brought neither grace nor poise to the house. For three days running last week, the Punjab Assembly was a veritable fish market. Mercifully, it never came to physical violence or there might have been a casualty or two. And to think that all honourable members are graduates! Should I take it to mean that democracy and degrees don’t go together?
I WRITE these lines on Sunday, June 1. That means that I have lived through another May. It has been a strange month. It was as if summer had not yet decided whether to be oppressive or give relief to the people. There were days which were as pleasant as late spring. There were nights when the fan was not needed. Mild duststorms brought the temperatures down to within manageable limits. In office, too, I needed the air conditioner for only one day and then I had to put it off after a while.
As the sun rose on June 1, there was every indication that the weather might not be as benevolent as most of May. Sunday afternoon, it was hot enough for June. Nature, it appeared, was determined to get its own back. But let us not talk of the weather. We are not Brits, are we?
THE Statesman — An Anthology (1875-1975) is a collection of selected writings which appeared in the paper during its first hundred years.
Apart from other things, the anthology also traces the history of the paper’s technological development over the years. On July 16, 1907, the paper proudly told its readers:
Today we issue The Statesman in a new form in which it will, we hope, continue to receive the support of its present readers and gain the favour of a still larger constituency. For newspapers as for individuals there is no escape from the great law of life which gives an inexorable choice between going forward and going back. To stand still is impossible. The conditions of journalism are always changing; partly in response to the altered tastes of the public; partly because new facilities come into existence and old methods become obsolete and inadequate. The journal which seeks to be progressive must adapt itself to these new circumstances, and the resolve of the proprietors of The Statesman is, as it has always been, that while the policy and general character of the paper shall remain unchanged, no effort will be spared to keep it abreast of the times, both in journalistic alertness and mechanical equipment. On the present occasion they may claim to have gone further than this. There is a point in the history of every successful enterprise when the decision lies between a modification which will suffice for the needs of the moment and a bold transformation which will anticipate the requirements of the future. This stage was reached in the history of The Statesman.
New machinery of the kind familiar in India might have sufficed, after a fashion for immediate necessities, but to provide for the continual increase of available news and for the expansion of a constantly advancing circulation modern presses of a character and a magnitude hitherto unknown in India had to be introduced. There can be no doubt that the demand of the twentieth-century reader is for news, and the facilities for satisfying this demand have grown enormously since The Statesman was founded, upwards of thirty years ago. The greater cheapness of the cables and of telegraph has now made it possible for newspapers in India to report with reasonable fullness the events not of three weeks ago, but of the day before, in Europe and all parts of the world, as well as throughout the vast Indian Empire. Again, an increased interest is being shown in local occurrences. The activities of a great city like Calcutta, which is at once the seat of Government, a wealthy and busy commercial centre, and the home of a million people, naturally and inevitably demand yearly a larger space. Now, to give promptly a full supply of the news of the day a newspaper must have presses capable of printing rapidly and efficiently as many pages as may be required. This is the determining factor, and having realized its importance, the proprietors of The Statesman have equipped their office with presses which may be said to represent the very latest development of printing machinery and plant, and which will print at one and the same operation a paper containing as many pages as may be required, up to a maximum of 32. The ordinary issue of The Statesman will henceforth consist of twelve pages; but an issue of sixteen pages will frequently be published, and still larger papers if needed.
Our readers would scarcely credit the amount of careful foresight which has been expanded in providing against adverse contingencies of all kind. The labour and anxiety have been undertaken because we believe that The Statesman has a mission to fulfil; and we shall feel rewarded for our efforts if the increase which we anticipate in the usefulness and influence of the paper is realized. From the first The Statesman has been an independent journal. On the one hand it has, whenever necessary, criticized the Government frankly and fearlessly, though always in a spirit of loyalty. On the other hand, it has consistently endeavoured to secure just and generous treatment for the people of India and a sympathetic hearing for the educated classes in whom our English Universities have implanted a desire for a greater measure of liberty and a closer association of the people with the system of administration under which they live. That The Statesman has played the difficult role with some degree of success is shown by the many kind messages which we have received from representative men.
July 16, 1907