| August 16, 2005 | Tuesday | Rajab 10, 1426 |
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Urgency of reform
After the assassination
ISRAEL’s much-trumpeted Gaza pullout began finally on Monday. The settlers’ resistance to evacuation and the Israeli government’s policy to carry the process through are being depicted in the western media as an epic struggle in which Mr Ariel Sharon is the hero. Actually, the larger dimensions of the Gaza withdrawal plan run counter to the spirit of all UN resolutions and peace plans, including the Oslo accords and the April 2003 roadmap. The clash in Gaza is between hardliners and harderliners. Under the plan, Israel intends to dismantle all Jewish settlements set up on land that has for a millennium and a half belonged to the Palestinians. When Israel occupied the Gaza strip, it evicted Palestinians by blowing up their homes, destroying their orchards and diverting water to Jewish kibbutzim. The settlements were illegal and built in violation of international law that forbids the occupying power from altering the occupied territories’ demographic character. For instance, the Security Council’s Resolution 446 says: “... policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to the achievement of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.” Remembering the Palestinian suffering thus puts the present operation in historical perspective.
Now, as a first phase of his master plan to create a Greater Israel, the Israeli prime minister would dismantle 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza strip and four enclaves on the West Bank. Those leaving Gaza would mostly be settled not in Israel but in the occupied West Bank, which already has 400,000 Jewish settlers. Mr Sharon has no intention of leaving the West Bank and he enjoys America’s support. In fact, during one of Mr Sharon’s visits to Washington, President George Bush told the media that Israel would keep “some” land in the West Bank. This way Mr Bush torpedoed the peace plan prepared by the Quartet — the US, the EU, the UN and Russia. Under the roadmap, a Palestinian state was to emerge by 2005. However, President Bush later declared that 2005 was an unrealistic deadline for a Palestinian state to come into being.
America is still pledged to the idea of a two-state solution. On her last visit to Israel and Palestine, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made it clear that the US stood for a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem. However, given America’s unqualified support to all Israeli policies, it appears highly unlikely that such an idea will come to fruition. Mr Sharon has no intention of pulling out of the West Bank. The separation barrier — declared illegal by the World Court — is already in place, and work on the expansion of old settlements and the building of new ones continues. The wall has been so built that it has incorporated some more areas of the West Bank into occupied Al Quds and denied Palestinians in the area access to the holy city. The Gaza evacuation plan should be seen for what it is — a clever move to increase the West Bank’s Jewish population and to incorporate most of it into Israel. All that the Palestinians would be left with will be ‘bantustans’ crisscrossed by highways running through Arab villages and orchards. This hardly fits in with the proposed two-state solution. All that the sham “disengagements” would do will be to strengthen the militant groups among the Palestinians.
SINCE 9/11 and 7/7 the focus of the powers waging a war on terror — the US and Britain — has been on the madressahs in Pakistan. It is generally believed that these institutions have a very narrow focus and some of them even preach hatred and violence against non-Muslims especially the West. It is said that the visit of the British deputy high commissioner in Karachi and his counterpart in Islamabad to a madressah in Clifton, Karachi, for an exchange of views with the administrators there bore out this impression. As a starting point for reforms, it is the government’s responsibility to regulate the working and curricula of the religious institutions. It has been trying to register them for the last several years but without much success. One hopes that the latest attempt undertaken after the London suicide bombings in July will be more effective.
It is equally important for the government to pay attention to the school and college curricula and the content of some of the textbooks being taught there. Given the fact that the large majority of students are enrolled in the mainstream schooling system, it is essential that experts take a hard and appraising look at the courses taught there from the point of view of factual correctness and desirability. A lot of work has been done on this by NGOs and thinktanks exposing the distorted tone and content of some of the textbooks — the SDPI’s report The Subtle Subversion being a good example. Although the government is aware of this malaise, it has failed to rectify the problem. Its move a year or so ago to reform the curricula had evoked a strong reaction from the religious lobbies and the authorities promptly backtracked on the changes they were planning to initiate. It is time this task was taken up in right earnest and carried to its logical conclusion. In the process, there will naturally be obstacles and resistance especially from bigoted elements and obscurantists who pollute young minds by preaching and practising hatred and violence in the name of religion. Even internally, Pakistan has already paid too heavy a price on this score for it to delay any longer the reform of the madressah system.
THE death of Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, allegedly at the hands of LTTE snipers on Friday, is a serious blow to the island’s already fragile peace process. While the LTTE has denied involvement, the attack bore all the signs of a meticulously planned and executed operation, leading to widespread belief that the assassination was the work of the Tamil Tigers. Mr Kadirgamar, himself a Tamil, stood for national integrity and was opposed to the Tigers’ call for independence — though this demand was later toned down to political autonomy — in the north and northeast of the island. He was a vocal critic of the LTTE and its militant tactics and his relentless campaigning against the organization on the international front led several western countries to outlaw the LTTE as a terrorist group.
While President Chandrika Kumaratunga has said in the wake of Mr Kadirgamar’s killing that she would “redouble” her efforts for peace, there are fears that the island could once again lapse into civil war which, before the 2002 Norwegian-brokered ceasefire, had claimed over 60,000 lives. This is a particularly delicate time for the Lankans who are awaiting a Supreme Court decision with important political ramifications for the status of the next presidential elections. The situation has also been aggravated by the economic and social hardships resulting from last December’s Asian tsunami that claimed 30,000 lives in Sri Lanka alone. Moreover, divisions within the LTTE have led to several incidents of violence between rival factions, while the Tigers have been accused by the government of violating the ceasefire a number of times. Both the government and the LTTE will have to tread carefully from now on and refrain from making hostile moves if they are to avoid further damage to the peace process.