AL QUDS: He has alarmed the settlers whose homesteads he forged and financed, annoyed the right-wing party that pushed him to power and baffled erstwhile foes by calling for the end of Israeli “occupation” and pushing for a Palestinian state.

Perhaps most of all, however, he has bred a deep uncertainty over his intentions: Is Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon intent on bringing peace to his troubled homeland — or is he playing a savvy political game to buy time?

Long before he wore neckties and barrelled through corridors of power, Sharon was a soldier and a farmer. But now, under pressure from the United States, the aging leader is hinting that he might exchange both military control and land for a historic peace with the Palestinians.

The trouble is, nobody can figure out whether the famously enigmatic Sharon is sincere in his push for peace. And the prime minister isn’t clearing things up.

“The Sharon riddle wasn’t solved this week,” the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported on Thursday.

From the earliest whispers of the most recent round of peace talks, Sharon has undergone a series of whiplash reinventions. Consider the events of a single recent week: He made history by cajoling the Cabinet to endorse a peace plan that calls for a Palestinian state. He set off what former Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called an “ideological earthquake” by telling his Likud Party that it was time to end the “occupation.”

But the Sharon who swore he’d beat the Palestinians with might and never negotiate under fire was still around. In the course of the same week, the Israeli leader vowed to keep a grip on East Jerusalem and publicly reassured an irate Jewish settler that his family could grow and flourish for generations to come on occupied Palestinian land.

His friends say even Sharon is wondering what Sharon will do.

“He has a debate with himself,” said Eli Landau, the former mayor of Herziliya who was an army buddy and aide to Sharon and remains a confidant. “But he has to decide. Because everything is on his shoulders, and he knows it.”

Even in this small country, a land where politicians appear to have nine lives, the rebirth of Sharon as Israel’s peacemaker is a peculiar phenomenon.

The son of hard-bitten Russian immigrants who pioneered land in what was then Palestine, the 75-year-old Sharon has been fighting for Jewish nationalism longer than Israel has existed. He was still a teen when he took up a gun and joined the paramilitary Haganah to fight British occupation.

Ever since, throughout his controversial military and political career, Sharon has pounded away at two projects: fighting Arabs and building a network of Jewish townships throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip. For years, he dismissed Palestinian nationalism with an edged quip: Palestinians already have a state, he’d say — it’s called Jordan.

Some analysts are convinced that Sharon has undergone a sort of ideological change of life. The prime minister wouldn’t be the only Israeli to conclude that demographics, economics and public opinion are stacked against the occupation.

In the tradition of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin — like Sharon, a former soldier — many Israelis have concluded that the Jewish state’s best hope for survival is to make peace, pull out of Palestinian territory and draw a hard border between Israel and a Palestinian state.

“I really believe this is his strategy,” said Ephraim Yuchtman-Yaar, head of a peace research center at Tel Aviv University. “I think he came to terms with the idea that in order to achieve peace and security, Israel has no choice but facilitate the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

And there are those who believe Sharon just might make peace — but only because the United States wants him to.

For better or worse, Sharon has cast his lot with the Americans.

The United States helped write the so-called roadmap to peace, which set out phased steps to Israeli security and a Palestinian state.

And when Bush, fresh from shattering Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, turned his attention to the Middle East and took up the push for the languishing roadmap, Sharon had little choice but to go along. “I don’t believe it’s a matter of Sharon converting, and it certainly doesn’t mean Sharon is playing tricks,” Palestinian pollster and analyst Khalil Shikakiaki said. “It’s more than that — he is seeking survival. He doesn’t want to confront the US president.”

Many skeptics on both sides believe that’s all Sharon will do — take slow, reluctant actions to appease the United States and wait for Palestinian militants to give him a reason to abandon the peace plan.

“If this is a trick,” said Menachem Klein, a political analyst at Bar-Ilan University, “it will end quickly with the help of radicals.”

Observers on all sides agree that the true test will come if Sharon is obliged to destroy the settlements he laboured for years to create. The roadmap orders the abandonment of about 60 outposts of the settlements and a construction freeze in the rest.

“I am very skeptical whether the father of settlements will make them orphans,” said Yossi Sarid, a veteran lawmaker from the far-left Meretz party.

The far-right members of Sharon’s coalition believe Jewish settlers must “redeem the land” of the West Bank and Gaza. God gave the sun-washed terrain of olive groves and ancient limestone ruins to the Jewish people, they argue, and it would be a sin to relinquish the land to the Palestinians who now call it home.

Sharon, although something of a Bible student, sired the settlements mostly out of strategic impulse. He believed — and might still believe — that Israel should be insulated from Arab states by a buffer zone of turf.

Sharon’s views on security intersected neatly with the spiritual desires of Israel’s religious parties. And when the leftist Labour Party shunned Sharon this winter, he joined ranks with the far right instead.

Already, the marriage is uncomfortable. Settlers have condemned Sharon’s roadmap endorsement as an act of treason. “If he does not resign willingly, his party must distance itself from him and fire him,” settlers advocate Yisrael Harel wrote in a Haaretz opinion piece.

Analysts agree that Sharon’s first concern has always been national strategy and security, not religious ideology. “He doesn’t stop on the red light; he has no moral or ideological inhibitions,” said Israeli journalist Uzi Benjamin, who has been covering Sharon for years. “If he comes to the conclusion it’s time to make peace, or that he has no choice, he’ll be more ready than any other Israeli politician to abandon his views to yield to the circumstances.”

Some Israelis believe the hawkish Sharon has softened, that as he draws to the end of his career, he has become intent on going down in history as the father of Middle East peace.

Landau recalls motoring across the Sinai desert with Sharon three decades back. As the men toured the Egyptian countryside, Sharon was struck by the ancient hieroglyphics wrought in towering rock.

“He said, ‘Do you think that one day my name will be carved on stone like this, telling the story of my life?”’ Landau said.

“He has the feeling,” the friend of Sharon added, “that he’s part of history.”—Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Los Angeles Times.

WHERE else would you find such a disturbingly calm coexistence of two completely diverse worldviews? Which other country that has banned Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses on the one hand would allow Adolf Hitler’s memoirs to be sold at its state-controlled railway station bookshops, memoirs that say the nastiest things about its very own people? Which country other than India?

There are numerous ways to describe India’s religious foibles. But it would have been difficult not too long ago to conceive of India at par with Iran. And yet we cannot forget that it was India in 1988, not Ayatollah Khomeini as widely believed, that first banned the Satanic Verses. Imam Khomeini issued his controversial fatwa on Rushdie only in Feb 1989.

Remember also that it was Indian parliamentarians, not Saudi Arabian or Iranian leaders, who overturned the verdict of their own Supreme Court, to rob a helpless Muslim woman of her right to alimony, to assuage rightwing mullahs. Most neutral observers regard these as examples of a state brazenly leaning towards an intrusive religious fundamentalism, and they are probably right.

It may seem contradictory then that India is hurtling towards Hindu revivalism of a fascist variety. Indeed, the country has shown in the past a canny ability to excel in any area of fundamentalism if it suits the administration of the day.

To be fair to Hindu fundamentalism, which has produced the current crop of India’s dominant leadership, it is not very different from the Christian genre practised by the current US administration. The commonality between the bigotry of the officially patronized American preacher Franklin Graham, who sees Islam as an evil religion, and strikingly similar views aired by an Ashok Singhal or a Praveen Togadia of the Hindu right may be of more recent origin.

But long before the Hindu and Christian right could even imagine closing ranks to target Islam, the Christian and Hindu right was applauding anti-Semitism. The Jews and their faith were then in bad odour. From William Shakespeare’s caricature of Shylock to Lutheran rage at the sight of a Jew, Europe was seething with anti-Semitism, which reached a peak in the Third Reich.

India was not far behind. “To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races — the Jews,” wrote Hindu right leader Guru Golwalkar in 1939. “Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by.”

One of the founders of India’s Hindu right was Prof B.S. Moonje, who later wrote the preface to Golwakar’s book, “We, Our Nationhood Defined.” Moonje met Mussolini in 1931 and wrote how Indian leaders should imitate the youth movements of Germany and the Balilla and Fascist organizations of Italy.

“I think they are eminently suited for introduction in India, adapting them to suit the special conditions. I have been very much impressed by these movements and I have seen their activities with my own eyes in all details.”

Moonje and Golwalkar could be excused for getting carried away by the social and political convulsions of their times. Their admiration for Adolf Hitler stemmed from a movement that had cut a deep swathe through much of democratic Europe. But it is truly alarming when the headmaster of Delhi’s prestigious St Stephens College admits that the new crop of students when asked to identify their social idols have been naming Hitler alongside Mahatma Gandhi as their main icons.

India’s increasingly garbled sense of history is neither unique nor surprising. The syndrome comes easily to people who switch sides in a momentous discourse, their move prompted by a single-minded self-interest no matter what the moral cost. What could be considered frustrating though is that an entire crop of young men and women proffer views that flow from a poor reading habit.

It is evident that many of today’s generation who say they admire Adolf Hitler do not feel bashful in saying so. It also does not seem to matter to them that India is seeking to woo a Jewish state, ironically enough, to fix its problems with hi-tech security gadgetry.

Had the students read what Hitler had to say of their forebears and about Indians generally, they would have hesitated to call him their hero. Let me quote from the copy of Mein Kampf’s Indian edition, which I picked up from the New Delhi railway station last month.

Speaking contemptuously of the “League of Oppressed Nations” which according to Hitler was composed principally of “representatives of the Balkan states and also of Egypt and India”, he says: “These always impressed me as charlatans who gave themselves big airs but had no real background at all.”

He then recalls something that should ordinarily be construed as mocking the Indian national movement. “I remember well the childish and incomprehensible hopes which arose suddenly in nationalist circles in the years 1920-21 to the effect that England was just nearing its downfall in India,” Hitler wrote.

Spewing venom at the “few Asiatic mountebanks, who put themselves forward as the champions of Indian freedom”, he declares: “I as a German would rather see India under British domination than under that of any other nation.”

What may be of greater interest, even inspiration, to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon when he comes calling here are Hitler’s scornful remarks about Egypt. “The hopes of an epic rising in Egypt were just as chimerical. The ‘Holy War’ may bring the pleasing illusion to our German nincompoops that others are now ready to shed their blood for them. Indeed this cowardly speculation is almost always the father of such hopes. But in reality the illusion would be soon brought to an end under fusillade from a few companies of British machineguns and a hail of British bombs.”

Welcome to India Mr Sharon. Time to catch up on your reading. Bring along your notes from the experience of Saabra and Shatila. We don’t need your notes, really. But who knows?

IT is obvious that apart from the establishment, the PML(Q) and the MMA are the two major political components that will have a decisive bearing on a resolution of the LFO deadlock.

This became evident on May 23 when the PML(Q) and the MMA reached a consensus on processing the entire LFO legislation through the National Assembly with their comfortable two-third majority.

Since then, what has been happening in the NWFP and Punjab, the political strongholds of the MMA and PML(Q), respectively, is reflective of intensive wrangling amongst the three entities for their respective demands on coming to terms on the LFO.

At one point, it looked as if the PML(Q) was with the MMA vis-a-vis the establishment when on May 26 the PML(Q) had joined the leaders of the major opposition parties — the MMA, the PPP Parliamentarians and PML(N) — at an All Parties Conference on the LFO in Islamabad. At this platform the opposition had called upon the president to step down from one office.

All hell broke loose thereafter in the PML(Q)’s stronghold in the Punjab for the next three consecutive days when PPP- Parliamentarian and PML(N) opposition members were dramatically barred by security forces from entering the assembly building and summarily arrested when they resisted. The events fuelled fears about an impending dissolution or temporary suspension of the civilian national government/assembly.

The first damage-control measure which the PML(Q) adopted was to pass an unprecedented resolution in the Punjab provincial assembly that amounted to a confidence motion on the president’s uniform. The resolution said it was “imperative” for the stability, prosperity and continuity of the development process of Pakistan that the president should continue to be in uniform.

Two days later, the president of the PML(Q) reiterated his party’s confidence in the president’s uniform when he said the presence of the president in uniform was the dire need of the hour to cope with the regional and international situation.

Meanwhile, the prime minister also spoke up for the uniform, saying the president’s uniform was something that neither parliament, the government nor the civil society could do anything about. This statement, plus that earlier one in which he had referred to the president as his “boss”, is tantamount to public admission of where the real power lies.

Now it seems that even the MMA has climbed down from the high ground of terming the presidency as illegitimate to willingness to accept the president in uniform for a year beginning from the date parliament approves the LFO.

The fear of dissolution may dissipate somewhat for the time being. Even if an agreement on the LFO may eventually be worked out and successfully passed through the national assembly, and thus the nation saved from another government/assembly dissolution, it is altogether a different question whether the system in place will be able to run smoothly for the country to take off in development and progress.

Already tension between the civilian government at the centre and the establishment has been evident in media reports about the recent appointments/reshuffle in the top civil service, including the position of the high commissioner to India. Reports of a split in the Sindh chapter of the PML(Q), as well as those of a rift surfacing within the ruling PML(Q)-led coalition at the centre, bring back memories of the earlier engineered breakaways of the PML(Q) and the PPP-Patriots from their respective parent parties.

In the NWFP, the high-handed destruction of advertisement signboards in Peshawar bearing images of women by activists of a component party of the MMA alliance - with the security forces standing by - plus the non-registration of FIRs against those involved even after a week of the incident, particularly against one MPA who admitted he supervised the operation, had caused consternation among the ranks of the religious alliance ruling the NWFP.

Then on Sunday, as one MMA leader warned of active attempts by the intelligence agencies to split the MMA, the NWFP government was confronted with its worst crisis yet - the en masse resignation of all 24 of its district Nazims. The seven- month tussle between the provincial government and the local governments in NWFP had led to the former instituting inquiries against several district Nazims, and two resolutions were supposed to be tabled in the provincial assembly on Monday (yesterday) sacking the Nazims of Bannu and Kohistan. Amongst those Nazims who have resigned include at least two who are affiliated to the component party of the MMA whose activists carried out the signboard destruction.

Even if the country can be spared of another dissolution this time round, the check-and-balance political system that has been put in place is clearly one that encourages politicization and divisiveness rather than unity and oneness. The tussles and wrangles between the centre and the provinces, the provinces and their respective local governments, the centre and the establishment, the prime minister and the president, and amongst and within the political parties/alliances, are likely to continue, with the threat of dissolution forever hanging over the nation. How effective can such a political system be in delivering the nation and its people from poverty and underdevelopment?

IBRAT this week takes up the World Bank’s report on Pakistan’s water issue and writes that the report endorses Sindh’s case.

The report calls for evolving a consensus on the construction of dams over the River Indus, releasing water downstream Kotri, making a new water agreement and observing of merit for water distribution among provinces by the Indus River System Authority.

The daily says that the WB report has come at a time when Wapda has managed to get the approval of more funds for the Thal canal project from the federal government. However, after the objections raised by the major donor agency coupled with opposition from the Sindh Assembly, the government has lost the moral ground to continue work on the disputed canal.

The WB’s recommendation to release water downstream Kotri to check destruction of the Indus Delta and stop sea intrusion from devouring two million acres of agriculture land and mangrove forests also supports Sindh’s stand, the paper adds.

Ibrat says the report’s suggestion that the water dispute in Pakistan could be resolved in a political way also corresponds to Sindh’s approach that the issue of water distribution is political and not technical, and that by the construction of the Kalabagh Dam, the upper riparian wants to tighten its grip over the Indus waters so that it may use it for political purposes in the future.

The paper concludes by saying that as the Sindh-Punjab dispute over the water issue has reached its zenith, ignoring the WB report will be a violation of Sindh’s rights and demands that an impartial commission should be constituted to resolve the controversy.

Another daily, Kawish, points out that the National Economic Council, while rejecting Sindh’s demand for more development funds, has cut the province’s development funds by 50 per cent. According to the working paper of the NEC, funds for the federal annual development programme have been increased from Rs152 to Rs157 but the share of the provinces has not been increased.

The paper comments that it is obvious from the NEC summary that the government has not changed the centre-oriented parameters for development activities. After the extension of the tenure of the National Finance Award, it was hoped that the provinces would get more development funds but to no avail. It says that the conditions in Sindh call for more development work in the province and advises the prime minister and the federal government to consider Sindh’s demand in this regard before finalizing the budget.

Referring to rampant unemployment in the province, Awami Awaz writes that millions of people in the province have no means of livelihood. It suggests that during the upcoming recruitment in government departments, youth who have no family member in government service should be given preference. The rising trend of suicides by jobless youth may be checked in this way, hopes the daily.

Sach says that the Thatta Cement Factory has been providing not only jobs to local people but also cement at cheaper and more competitive rates. Owners of private cement factories are now hatching conspiracies to get the mill closed. The paper appeals to the federal minister for industries to save the mill from being closed and direct the government departments of the Thatta district to buy cement produced by it.

Commenting on the rumpus outside the Punjab Assembly, Tameer-i-Sindh writes that the way in which the provincial government has dealt with the protest over the Legal Framework Order does not augur well for democracy. It is against parliamentary traditions to use force to crush dissent.

More shocking is the stand of the Punjab chief minister and the speaker of the Punjab Assembly that they had not ordered the crackdown. Does it mean that police are free to humiliate parliamentarians, the paper asks. It adds that under the present circumstances when the country is inching towards democracy from dictatorship, the Punjab government should not have adopted an arrogant approach towards the opposition. The federal government should also keep in mind that the Punjab scenario can be repeated in Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi as well as Islamabad. If the powers that be want to continue with the democratic process, they and their allies should respect the voice of the opposition and refrain from trying to stifle it.

LAST week, a drawing room type workers convention was arranged by the local administration in collaboration with some over-confident leaders of the PML-Q which was addressed by Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi. It confined the latter for most of the time to the Circuit House, instead of enabling him to meet the workers outside.

Sensing the lapse, some local leaders of the ruling party having differences with district Nazim Zahid Nazir tried to make amends by taking the CM up to the residence of ex-MNA Mian Amjad Yaseen whose wife, Riffat Amjad, is MNA from special seats for women. However, this did not fulfil the purpose of mass contact of the chief minister.

Out of four National and eight Provincial Assembly seats of the city, the PML-Q had only one seat of MNA which too was won by exerting full pressure and resources of the Tehsil Municipal Administration (city) as the candidate’s younger brother was its Nazim. The wisdom of holding a workers’ convention in a city dominated by opponents of the District Nazim and that too in the Circuit House could not be understood.

Another notable feature was the sidelining of Nazim Zahid Nazir and domination of his rival lobby, within his own party, during the tour of the chief minister. Provincial excise and taxation minister Dr Shafiq Ahmad and ex-MNA Amjad Yaseen, both Arain, appeared to be fairly successful in opposing and concerning Zahid Nazir as was apparent from the fact that PPP dissident Raza Nasrullah Ghuman, who recently joined the PML-Q, was got nominated for the seat of Naib Nazim, as a ‘gift’, which had fallen vacant after the selection of Afzal Sahi as Punjab Assembly Speaker.

Raza Nasarullah, an industrialist-cum-agriculturist, belongs to a family having deep relations with Jat politicians. He contested the last general election for a National Assembly seat on a PPP Parliamentarians ticket, but lost. He has been fielded in local bodies politics by the PML-Q under a calculated move to pressurize the district Nazim, who is considered by his opponents to be involved in ruining the district government affairs.

Pervaiz Elahi appears to be looking for some trustworthy lieutenant to control the district and is quite hopeful of finding one. Therefore, his visit was also a part of this mission, during which the role of the Nazim appears to have been limited.

Presiding over a meeting of local heads of government departments and legislators at the Circuit House, the chief minister said a special grant would be provided by the government for the development and rehabilitation of the district, which would be spent through MPAs under the direct supervision and control of provincial ministers belonging to Faisalabad district.

He said in order to reduce unemployment, about 25,000 jobs would be provided by the government within a month. A similar number of vacancies would be filled during the second phase. In this regard, a transparent procedure and principle of merit would have to be adopted and the vacancies would continue to be filled through the Public Service Commission.

He said the government had launched different projects for the welfare of the people. A project of Rs18 billion for improvement and development of the education sector would soon be launched. Under the programme, Rs6 billion had been earmarked for the next financial year, while Rs12 billion more would be spent during the next two years. For the execution of these works, an independent implementation wing has been set up in the education department.

He said for distributing agricultural land among landless cultivators at the rate of 12.5 acres for each farmer, 100,000 acres had been reserved, and a scheme of five-marla residential plots would be launched for homeless persons in rural areas.

The chief minister said planning was being made to provide loans to growers on the pattern of car-leasing, while a bill would be presented in the provincial assembly for waiving off agricultural tax on holdings of 12.5 acres and less. He said besides the Punjab Bank, the Cooperatives Bank had also started releasing loans according to the new markup rate.

He said he had made endeavours to meet the requirements taking suo moto notice of the shortage of resources of the police department for bringing about the desired change for making the police an exemplary force.

The chief minister clarified that the local body system would continue and necessary steps were being taken to make it more solid and meaningful. He said neither should anybody have any doubt or misunderstanding about it, nor should anybody try to create a wrong impression about this system. There should be a complete coordination among members of parliament and representatives of local bodies for tackling the people’s problems and monitoring the progress of development works, he said.

Pervaiz Elahi said for a solution to the problems faced by the Tehsil Nazims, special attention would be paid to the proposals put forth by them in this regard by holding a meeting of all Nazims at the provincial level.

A delegation of the District Bar Association called on the chief minister and presented him a memorandum for setting up a bench of the Lahore High Court in Faisalabad.

The chief minister, speaking to PML-Q activists and leaders at a workers’ convention, said steps were being taken to promote education and increase literacy rate.

He said teachers would be given due respect in society at all costs and conspiracies to demoralize them would be foiled. Vacant posts of teachers would be filled soon through proper channel.

He said the PML-Q central leadership had decided to reorganize the party at union, tehsil and district levels for which a special campaign would be launched in near future.

He said all provincial ministers had been asked to hold open kutcheris and conduct meetings at the Muslim League House regularly for solving the problems faced by party activists and leaders. He claimed that the district and tehsil Nazims had been directed to give priority to the suggestions of PML-Q activists and office-holders.

He said a plan was being introduced for the rehabilitation of sick industrial units as well as elimination of impediments in the way of setting up new factories.

Earlier, the chief minister, presiding over a meeting of the local administrative officers, said development funds would be spent without any discrimination in all constituencies. The schemes of opposition members of assemblies would be given due consideration, he said.

The chief minister asked the government officers to perform their duties with dedication, otherwise they would have to face a disciplinary action.

His announcement relating to the construction of Lyallpur Press Club project with a grant of Rs1 million was praised by the local intelligentsia. The chief minister entrusted the task of completion of the press club building to provincial minister for communication and works Zaheeruddin Khan.