Roots of violence

THE targetted assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Abu Shanab is the latest manifestation of Israeli terrorism. It has been followed by a joint statement by Islamic Jihad and Hamas calling off the truce to which they had agreed on June 29 as part of the roadmap for Middle East peace. Israel has re-established its roadblock on the Gaza strip in violation of the roadmap’s stipulations. The region seems headed for a recrudescence of violence, with Israel as its epicentre, enjoying the total support and patronage of the United States. Israel claims its murder of Abu Shanab is in retaliation for Tuesday’s bus bomb attack in Al Quds that killed 20 people and asserts that it will continue to “strike terrorists without mercy”. Hamas will now surely take revenge for the killing of one of its top men. The conflict will again be reduced to the simplistic tit-for-tat equation, and the fact of Israeli occupation and expansion as the fundamental cause of Palestinian anger and militancy will again be ignored.

The Bush administration’s blatant partisanship is evident once more in its reaction to the latest events. It persists in condemning the Palestinians and refusing to pin down Israel to deliver its part of the bargain struck two months ago. It humiliated and immobilized Yasser Arafat and, by failing to restrain Israel, is now cutting away the ground from under the feet of Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas. It may soon find that it has no interlocutors left on the Palestinian side willing to talk peace. This is the surest way to let the initiative slip back into militant hands. Mr Abbas had staked a great deal in persuading Hamas and Islamic Jihad to agree to a ceasefire; he was let down by Israel and its American backers when they did not make a serious attempt to implement the roadmap.

Many European nations have a far more balanced approach to the Middle East question, but it is America, unfortunately, that enjoys the greatest clout in the region, if nothing else because it is Washington’s military, economic and political backing of Israel that enables the latter to terrorize and bully everyone else. There will be no lasting peace unless the US is prepared to confront Israel on its policy of dividing the Palestinians through fences, barriers and settlements intended to turn the proposed Palestinian state into a patchwork of enclaves under Zionist tutelage. The Palestinians must be given respect as the owners of the land on which they have lived for centuries rather than be ordered about by intruders and settlers.

Their struggle for their rights should be treated with dignity, not dismissed as terrorism. The US has now sent back its ME envoy to talk to the two sides. His primary task should be to find out why Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders, who had accepted a ceasefire despite great resistance from their rank and file, have been forced to review their stand. This doesn’t concern just the incidents of this week: the roots of anger go much deeper and are not confined to one organization or another. It is a whole history of dispossession and suppression that has to be understood for any peace plan to move forward.

College shoot-out

THE shoot-out in a Karachi college on Thursday in which the principal of the college was hit by a bullet shows yet again the dangers of guns making their way into our educational institutions. The principal was apparently caught in the crossfire between armed students belonging to the Islami Jamiat Talaba, the student wing of the Jama’at-i-Islami, and the All Pakistan Mohajir Students’ Organization, whose parent party is the Muttahida Qaumi Movement. What led to the shoot-out was a dispute over ‘territory’ with the two groups claiming the college in question as their exclusive domain. There was bad blood between the two sides, and the pasting of party posters on college walls provided the pretext for the clash. Following the shoot-out, the College Principals’ Association has demanded that principals, teachers and students be given protection, and the Rangers be deployed at campuses throughout the city. This reminds us of what happened on the Karachi University campus more than a decade ago when the Rangers were called in to restore and keep order.

While those doing the actual shooting may be students, it is a matter of shame that their parent political parties have made no attempt to restrain their student wings. On the contrary, they seem to back their respective student outfits to add more and more colleges to their list of conquered territory. The deployment of Rangers is no long-term solution to this problem, which has turned the campuses into armed camps. Basically, it is the responsibility of the parent parties to disarm their student wings and to desist from using youths to further their political goals. The authorities should see to it that, while student unions continue to exist, they should not be allowed to become armed mercenaries for their parent parties. The worst sufferers are those innocent students who belong to neither side and are interested, as they should be, in acquiring knowledge. It is this latter category that needs the authorities’ support. Violence on the campuses in Karachi has done enormous harm to education. Regretfully, the top leaderships of these two parties have done nothing to stem the slide into anarchy on the campuses.

Ban on Indian channels

THE threat by the national cable operators association to stop relaying local television channels unless the government takes back its prohibition on Indian entertainment networks needs to be taken seriously. The cable operators have accused the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) of using tensions with India as an excuse to help improve PTV’s worsening financial position. PTV, the association says, has made a profit of Rs 500 million out of the ban by securing more advertising.

There is some truth in what the cable operators have said. Pemra officials are on record as having said that one reason for the ban on Indian channels was that this would help Pakistani channels grow and become financially successful. They have also said that these channels have programmes that are vulgar and go against our cultural norms. Both arguments are hollow. Shutting out foreign competition is not exactly the best way of improving the quality of local TV channels. All over the world it is an accepted fact that exposure to greater competition keeps the networks on their toes and places a premium on innovation and new ideas in programming. PTV’s programming has become so moribund precisely because it has fewer channels to compete with. The claim that Indian channels promote “vulgarity” is a matter of opinion. Some people find even PTV vulgar. Western channels too have programmes that a large percentage of viewers might consider vulgar. Now the way to counter vulgarity is to produce programmes which are rich in entertainment value as well as represent a source of intellectual and cultural edification. The average viewer can thus be provided with a wider range of choice, thereby enabling him/her to attain greater maturity in the exercise of judgment.