| 12 January 2004 | Monday | 19 Ziqa'ad 1424 |
No room for Jewish sovereignty
What would abundant energy mean to Maldives
Touch of winter
The euphoria at last week's 12th Saarc summit generated the impression that the longstanding stagnation in the Saarc process has finally been broken. With the signing of the multilateral Safta agreement and the social charter, and the issuance of the joint Pakistan-India statement on commencement of a composite dialogue, Saarc finally seems to be going somewhere. Or does it?
If other regional blocs like Asean and the EU have been more successful at cooperation and integration than Saarc has been, it is due largely to the fact that they were established with the view to confront common economic/political challenges and achieve common goals. Such a perception of a common challenge binding Saarc together has been lacking since its formation eighteen years ago.
This, combined with the perception held by many in the smaller members of Saarc, including Pakistan, that its biggest member, India, behaves like a big bullying brother, bedevilled any hope of Saarc becoming a model of regional cooperation and development.
For many years thus, Saarc was going nowhere. Its achievement lay in the mere fact that its leaders were able to meet together in summits, and that the summits (supposed to take place annually) were held at all. This was precisely how the last two summits were viewed.
The 10th Saarc summit in Colombo in July 1998 took place just after the nuclear blasts by India and Pakistan, and the much-postponed 11th Saarc summit which eventually took place in January 2002 in Kathmandu was held amidst the looming prospect of a military confrontation between India and Pakistan escalating to the nuclear level.
The image of Saarc hit rock bottom thereafter. The 12th summit was postponed again and again, so was a Saarc communications ministers conference, and the SAF Games was cancelled. Instead of drifting aimlessly, Saarc was heading towards doom.
If the summit in Islamabad last week has injected renewed hope into Saarc's fortunes, it is because of the surprise bilateral Pakistan-India joint statement expressing confidence in the peaceful settlement of all bilateral issues, including Jammu and Kashmir, "to the satisfaction of both sides". The issuance of such a bilateral joint statement at a Saarc summit is unprecedented, given that the Saarc charter specifically excludes bilateral and contentious issues from the deliberations of the association.
Although prodding by the US has been cited in many reports as having goaded New Delhi and Islamabad to come to a political understanding, pragmatic economic compulsions must have figured prominently as well. While neighbouring Asean and especially China have been galloping ahead in economic success in the past two decades, Saarc has only grown to become not only the most dangerous place on earth but also home to the largest number of people living below the poverty line.
Although housing some 1.4 billion people, as opposed to Asean's half a billion people, Saarc together received less Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in 2001 than two Asean countries individually had received. The biggest FDI receiver in Saarc, India, got only $3.4 billion FDI flows in 2001 as opposed to the $47 billion FDI flows into China in the same year. (FDI flows into China, the largest recipient of FDIs in Asia, has been fuelling its economic boom.)
How Saarc progresses now will depend on its members' ability to focus the organization on a common challenge and steer it towards a common goal. This time in Islamabad, the Indian prime minister tried to instil that common challenge by reminding members of the 1857 uprising in the subcontinent against the colonial masters, and even suggested that Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, could celebrate the 150th anniversary of that uprising in 2007.
But whether Safta will work to enable Saarc to develop as an engine of regional economic development depends in great part on the attitude of its biggest member, India. The smaller members have to be convinced that Saarc exists not purely for the economic and political benefit of India alone but for the mutual economic and political benefit of all member states as well.
Saarc will move forward especially if the process not only directly benefits smaller members commercially, but also translates into a stronger voice and better bargaining position for them in international economic forums.
In the end, Saarc will only be seen to be going somewhere if the measurement of its success moves beyond euphoric summit theatricals to concrete political understanding and economic cooperation, with results being reflected in the region's social and economic indicators. In this respect, it would help a great deal to have a Deng Xiaoping or a Mahathir in a Saarc member country rubbing off on the region.
No room for Jewish sovereignty
During the 1960s, attending the annual gatherings of European socialist parties, including that of Labour Party of England and the SPD of Germany, one could not help but notice a strong bias in favour of Israel. The left was emotionally involved with the Zionist state.
The right was quiet because of the killing of six million Jews during the Second World War. So there was little tolerance for criticism of Israel and little understanding of the plight of Palestinian refugees.
Even the 1967 war was seen as a defensive war which in their opinion Israelis had no choice but to fight. The war of 1973 and, later, Sadat's visit to Israel softened some public opinion in the West. Israel's brutal invasion of Lebanon in 1982 incurred the first significant outbursts of criticism (within Israeli society too).
But during the last 20 years the stubborn occupation of the West Bank and expanding illegal settlements of newly arrived Zionists on Arab lands has begun to be viewed with considerable disfavour by independent observers in the West. The left appears to have fallen out with Zionist expansionism. Media reports and images of Israeli actions in the West Bank are causing outrage. Recent polls in Europe show that a majority of the people feel that Israel is a greater threat to world peace than what George Bush calls the axis of evil.
During this period, new organizations such as the Palestine Solidarity Conference and the Committee for Palestinian Rights came up. Both these societies have a good number of Jewish participants. As a member of one of them, one saw their membership growing from hundreds into thousands. Recently both have been merged into one and have grown big in stature.
Apart from this the protesters against global capitalism have also embraced the cause of Palestinians and the voice for their freedom is raised during all the demonstrations which are held all over the world. This was the case in Florence, in Rio and in London where historic protests took place.
Since the Afghan and Iraq war, Muslims from South Asia have also started participating in these events, though sometime their banners reflected anti-Jewish feelings rather than an anti-Israeli policy. For the first time Pakistanis and Bangladeshis were found in big numbers in these demonstrations. This is also helping towards their political education and adjustment in western society.
The current American establishment, which is dominated by people with close links with the Likud party of Israel, accuse Europeans of anti-Semitism. When France and other European countries refused to join the war against Iraq, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used the word 'old Europe' to invoke the latter's anti-Semitism before the Second World War.
Recently, in the International Herald Tribune, Barry Kosmin and Paul Iginsky declared the Western media, which included the London Observer and the New York Times, to be biased and bigoted. The Observer was labelled judeophobic in spite of its historical support of Israel.
There are many Jews opposed to the policies of Ariel Sharon. In England an organization known as Jews for Justice in Palestine is derided by Zionists as comprising self-hating Jews. The awful irony for such friends of Palestinians is that many Muslims lump them together with the Zionists. Muslims often do not differentiate. This lack of understanding can only injure the Palestinians cause.
David Alexander and Claude Montefiore, respectively president of board of deputies of British Jews and president of the Anglo-Jews Association wrote in The Times in 1917, shortly before the Balfour Declaration, that the idea of investing the Jews with "rights in excess of those enjoyed by the rest of the population of Palestine was deplorable.
It would prove a veritable calamity for the Jewish people for whom wherever they lived the principle of equal rights was vital. To create a Jewish nationality in Palestine must have the effect throughout the world of stamping the Jews as strangers in the native lands."
These words sound prescient. In fact, the creation of Israel has complicated the Jewish question instead of solving it. Recently, an American liberal Jew warned the leaders of American Jewry that soon students on university campuses will be asking questions about the equal citizenship rights of the Arabs in Israel for which they will have no answer.
There also is the famous letter of Abbert Einstein to Dr Wiezman, the future president of Israel, in which the scientist says that the future of the Jews in Palestine depends on how they treat their Arab neighbours. "If we fail to treat them justly, we have learnt nothing."
It looks like they have failed. The liberal left among the Zionists endorses a two-state solution, one for Palestinians within the boundaries of the West Bank, which is only 22 per cent of original Palestine and has 230,000 Israelis in illegal settlements. How can an independent state be viable under such conditions? Then there is Sharon and the cabal around Bush who resist any concessions to the Palestinians.
Seeing the odds loaded against any settlement, some Palestinian intellectuals such as Gada Karami and Edward Said advocated a one-state solution, and a new dialogue started on both sides. Here is a very poignant discussion between Uri Avnery, a leading Israeli fighter for the Palestinian cause, and Haim Hanegby, an ex-revolutionary associated with the peace movement.
It was reported, in the Israeli paper, Ha'aretz: (Haim is preparing a new manifesto for one state which will include all Jews and Arabs including the ones who are in exile for the last 55 years):
"I am now reading a book by Eliezer Be'eri about the beginning of the conflict and the start of the Zionist enterprise. At one point, he describes how, on November 3, 1878, as Yehuda Raab tilled the first furrow in the soil Petah Tikva, he felt that 'he is the first person to hold the Jewish plough on the soil of the prophets after the long years of exile'. But look what it says here: 'Arabs also joined Yehuda Raab on the big day when ploughing began. He himself, with his plough harnessed to animals, could not have tilled an area of hundreds of dunams. He was joined in the ploughing by 12 Arab fellahin.'
"What does that mean, Ari? You tell me what it means. What it means is that when Yehuda Raab came to till the first furrow after 2000 years of exile he didn't have the strength to do it alone. He needed fellahin, and 12 of them came to help him. Reading that, I tell myself that I know all about Raab and who his descendants were and I know how his project developed. But I know absolutely nothing about the 12 fellahin.
They appear in history as unknowns and disappear from history the same way, with hardly a trace. They were removed from history by Zionism. Who were they? Where did they go? Where are they today?
"So the aging revolutionary you see before you has taken a vow to find those 12 vanished individuals, those 12 abductees of history. My last mission is to set them free from their historical captivity and give them names and faces and rights. Because their whole sin in relation to Raab was that they lived in this country untold generations before him. Why should they be punished for that? Why insist on their oblivion?
"There is something genetic here that does not allow us to truly recognize the Palestinians, that does not allow us to make peace with them. And that something has to do with the fact that even before the return of the land and the houses and the money, the settlers' first act of expiation toward the natives of this land must be to restore to them their dignity, their memory, their justness.
"But that is just what we are incapable of doing. Our past won't allow us to do it. Our past forces us to believe in the project of a Jewish nation-state that is a hopeless cause. Our past prevents us from seeing that the whole story of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel is over. Because if you want Jewish sovereignty, you must have a border, but as [Zionist thinker and activist Yitzhak] Tabenkin said, this country cannot tolerate a border in its midst.
"If you want Jewish sovereignty you need a fortified, separatist uni-national structure, but that is contrary to the spirit of the age. Even if Israel surrounds itself with a fence and a moat and a wall, it won't help. Because your fears are well placed, Ari: Israel as a Jewish state cannot exist here. In the long term, Israel as a Jewish state will not be able to exist....
"In essence, the bi-national principle is the deepest antithesis of the wall. The purpose of the wall is to separate, to isolate, and to imprison the Palestinians in pens. But the wall imprisons the Israelis, too. It turns Israel into a ghetto. The wall is the great despairing solution of the Jewish-Zionist society. It is the last desperate act of those who cannot confront the Palestinian issue. Of those who are compelled to push the Palestinian issue out of their lives and out of their consciousness.
"In the face of that I say the opposite. I say that we were apparently too forgiving toward Zionism; that the Jews who came here and found a land that wasn't empty adopted a pattern of unrestrained force. Instead of the conflict foisting moral order and reason on them, it addicted them to the use of force.
But that force has played itself out, it has reached its limits. If Israel remains a colonialist state in its character, it will not survive. In the end the region will be stronger than Israel; in the end the indigenous people will be stronger than Israel. Those who hope to live by the sword will die by the sword....
"In general, we have to shift to a bi-national mode of thinking. Maybe in the end we have to create a new, bi-national Israel, just as a new, multiracial South Africa was created.
What would abundant energy mean to Maldives
There has been some speculation about the possible reason why President Gayoom of the Maldives returned home abruptly half way through the Saarc summit in Islamabad. If one remembers correctly, former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif had himself gone away from the middle of a Saarc summit in Male in 1997 to attend a Central Asian meeting in Ashkabad.
This is not to suggest that the Maldivian head of state was returning any snub, which he may have felt as the host when the Pakistani leader left his company for someone else's. For that matter, the Sri Lankan President, Mrs Kumaratunga, was forced to cut short her stay in New Delhi when Mr P.V. Narasimha Rao was the chairman of an earlier Saarc meeting. But she had to go home to answer an emergency in her war-torn country where the Tamil rebels had unexpectedly broken a fragile truce with her government by shooting down a military plane.
It is therefore perfectly possible that Mr Gayoom had a far more significant reason than the mere need to make a personal statement for his early departure from Islamabad last week. The dictum that one man's meat could be another's poison would seem to hold a palpably truer answer to the riddle than would otherwise seem plausible.
Is it possible that Mr Gayoom heard a lot of words on the opening day of the Islamabad conference, which got an all round applause from everyone listening, but which to him might have seemed like the roar of some arriving doom for his country?
To put it simply, the major theme at the Saarc confabulations this year had willy-nilly turned to energy, or more specifically to hydrocarbons-linked energy resources piped from the Middle East and Central Asia. This is what the Pakistan prime minister held forth on and this is what the Indians have underscored assiduously in recent months. While the prospects of abundant energy may have prompted India, Pakistan or even Bangladesh to contemplate a prosperous future, let's spare a thought also for what this could mean to a country like the Maldives.
The Indian Ocean archipelago has been threatened by everything that threatens the natural environment in its vicinity and beyond. The slightest increase in the level of the surrounding oceans threatens to submerge large tracts of Mr Gayoom's nation. To consider a sub-continental parallel, Mr Gayoom has been expressing a fear similar to what we in India and Pakistan experienced in May 2002 when our nuclear standoff was peaking, thus threatening us with impending annihilation.
Likewise imagine a Saarc member state disappearing from the world map. Of course the proposed mindless growth in the consumption of hydrocarbons in South Asia may not grab our attention with the urgency the subcontinent's nuclear adventurism does, but the resultant pollution will increase and not remove the chances of an impending environmental catastrophe. This would seriously harm the delicately balanced ecosystem that holds aloft countries like the Maldives.
The very fact that Saarc summits have almost always tended to be overshadowed by the India-Pakistan sideshow cannot be a source of succour for countries like the Maldives, whose survival looks threatened by what its bigger members see as the promise of economic growth. Just how much of an issue is the environmental threat confronting the region? If we look closely, one of the key projects in India's approach to its proposed economic development is the massive building of arterial roads.
A billboard on the approach to the Delhi airport projects Prime Minister Vajpayee as a great visionary who is building multi-lane highways to link up the entire country. Whether this vision will bear fruit is a separate issue to ponder. But if successful, what it clearly implies for our immediate concerns is the threat of an exponential growth of a fuel guzzling economy in South Asia.
This happens to be the nub of the issue elsewhere too, as bloody battles are fought and countries torn as under in the precincts of Central Asia and Middle East, the two conduits for our proposed regional prosperity. This incidentally is also the core of a raging debate in the United States, whose gargantuan fuel guzzlers and their vendors have been drooling at the prospect of extending their domestic exploration empire to environmentally fragile regions like Alaska but are being resisted by a determined group of activists from within the system.
Despite its culpability as the world's leading pollutant, the United States has led the resistance to the Kyoto protocol. So when the same United States promptly welcomed the India- Pakistan thaw during the Saarc summit, Mr Gayoom may have marvelled at the duplicitous nature of Washington's priorities, and those of his own fellow neighbours.
* * * * *
In the epic battle of the Mahabharata, the righteous Pandavas were ranged against the wily Kauravas. The deadly war, according to Indian mythology, was sought to be averted by Krishna, friend, philosopher and guide to the Pandavas, who is revered also as a popular Hindu god.
So when Prime Minister Vajpayee went to Pakistan amid all the media speculation over the likelihood of his meeting with President Musharraf, his hardline Hindu patrons in the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the umbrella group that also includes India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, had already made up their mind that the meeting would be politically useful.
After all, explained the RSS in an article on the eve of the Saarc summit, had not Krishna repeatedly persuaded the Pandavas to continue to talk with the Kauravas to try to avoid war? So Mr. Vajpayee, according to the RSS thesis, must be the leader of the righteous Pandavas, leaving President Musharraf to play the Kaurava. Moreover, such a meeting does not preclude the possibility of resorting to war, which the Pandavas eventually waged.
Touch of winter
It used to be a standing joke at one time that Karachi's well-heeled had to go to Lahore in winter to put on their tweed jackets or blazers. Well, those of this ilk might have been saved a trip this time.
It's been a fairly respectable winter, with December temperatures lower than for some years, certainly the past couple of years. Last week, for three days there was also a strong wind that not only increased the feeling of cold but also raised a great deal of dust.
So we had a real touch of winter, which, besides the discomfort and the sniffing noses it brings in its wake, also has its own joys. Roasted whole peanuts, hot from the grate, tasted a lot better than they had for a long time. And also after a long time, it's been nice to sit out in the sun (briefly) on lazy Sunday mornings. Working in the kitchen was not such an ordeal for housewives and their husbands lounging around with grumbling tummies as it usually is; indeed, the heat from the stove was almost comforting. Cats sat sunning and cleaning themselves on precarious perches on boundary walls, and pigeons dozed in neat rows on rooftops.
Small pleasures of life fitfully returned. The changing of seasons used to be keenly observed and enjoyed. You waited for winter to bring its crop of juicy kinnos, for spring and its flower shows, for summer and its tangy berries, for the monsoon and its fat dark clouds. You asked for little, and were easily satisfied. After all, an Omar Khayyam could yearn for nothing more than "a book of verse, a flask of wine, and thou singing beside me" to believe wilderness had become paradise. Now, our values have changed. It is not the seasons that drive our senses but money. Winter is now known mostly for its tawdry, new rich weddings. Even winter outings to Malir have been commercialized, and you have to rent a farmhouse for a picnic.
But may be Karachi's flat climate is developing some variations. We had proper rains last summer and now we've had a proper winter. May be our capacity to delight in the small pleasures of life too will return.
Arts and crafts
One often tends to forget that the women of women are not only gifted designers - judging by the number of exhibitions held every other day at boutiques and local hotels - but adept at many other arts and crafts. This was more than evident at the Rangoonwala Community Centre which recently organized its annual arts and crafts show featuring some modestly priced and interesting exhibits. The centre offers different courses throughout the year primarily for women. This particular exhibition comprised items prepared mainly by students.
Arranged on long tables in the centre's huge hall were articles of beadwork, pottery, embroidery, etc. Crowds milled around a table that displayed candles in the shape of flowers, pyramids and ice-cream sundaes. On another table were attractively packed accessories for newborns while yet another displayed porcelain flowers, dry flower arrangements, jute craft and flowers and delicate trees made from thin wire and beads. Paintings were on display, including those done on glass. But it was the fabrics and apparel counter that seemed to draw most of the women visitors and their families.
Outside the hall in a covered area were more stalls. At one end, students who had attended grooming classes were keen to show their skills in applying makeup to willing faces and drew intricate patterns in henna on proferred palms. A lady in a quiet corner was giving visitors leaflets pertaining to kitchen gardening. She had before her a number of pots with small plants and explained how vegetables such as chillies and peas could be grown in the smallest of places and the tiniest of containers.
It was a happy, cheerful atmosphere with music and a stall offering tempting food. Children appeared to have a lot of fun as they whirled merrily around the long poles in the covered area. Many eagerly ran up to a table where a lady sat with paints and returned with wonderful designs on their hands and faces.
But while plenty of talent was in evidence, there is need to give it direction and sophistication. For instance, some of the crochet designs were worked in cheap yarn and certain embroidered items were available only in florid colours. This seems to be the general trend where handicrafts are concerned. More attention to design and quality might see the handicrafts market expand to include international orders.
Grave issue
Karachi's overcrowding is crossing all bounds. Now even the older dead have to make room for the newly dead. All the graveyards of the city are bursting at the seams. If one is not well-to-do enough to book one's last resting-place in advance, chances are that one's near and dear ones will have to do a lot of running around to find a six-foot-long place in any of the major graveyards of the city.
Last week a letter appeared in this newspaper in which Ahsan Ahmed of Karachi related how they had to rush from one graveyard to another - from Paposh Nagar, Sakhi Hasan and Hasan Square to Yasinabad - only to find that all of them were filled to capacity. They had to offer inducements to the gravedigger who dug up an old grave and buried their relative.
It is getting more and more difficult to keep prime urban land out of the clutches of land grabbers. There are scores of graveyards all over the country which have fallen prey to the machinations of squatters. Some of them have become the abode of junkies, stray dogs and the homeless.
But Karachi is not alone in its plight. In Singapore, in the past two decades 36 cemeteries of different races have been levelled to make room for the living under a government policy whereby graves cannot have a tenure of more than 15 years.
A biker's tale
After having spent a considerable number of years travelling in all manner of buses, a colleague recently decided to purchase a motorcycle. Getting wind of his plans, his friends offered him a lot of unsolicited advice.
Some wanted him to purchase a brand-new bike. Others insisted that he should buy a second-hand bike. The colleague was briefed about the all-round performance of the 125cc engine. He was also told that one could always resell a 75cc bike at a profit.
Some well-wishers did their utmost to dissuade him from buying a motorcycle at all. They pointed out that he would put his life at risk by riding a motorbike on the roads of Karachi where traffic laws are openly violated.
The colleague decided to do a bit of window-shopping before making the final purchase. He found out that the Japanese model with the 70cc engine was most popular among motor cyclists. Yet it was a bit too pricey. Chinese bikes with exotic names, available in a variety of shapes and sizes, were naturally the second-best option. However, it was bikes made from parts imported from abroad but assembled in Pakistan that finally met his approval. They were also the only vehicles he could afford to buy on his tight budget.
The salesperson at the showroom rattled off a much-rehearsed speech on the merits of the bike. He promised that the bike would purr like a kitten when he revved up the engine. The colleague maintains that the overall performance of the bike is on a par with that of motor cycles manufactured abroad, especially in the Far East. Since these bikes are assembled in Pakistan, their spare parts are also readily available. They are also specially designed to brave the bumpy roads of the country.
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