Grave setback for Palestine

A WEEK ago I described the Six-Day Arab-Israel war of June 1967 as a war that never ended. Another six days in June exactly 40 years later have written one of the bleakest chapters in the history of Palestine. The belief that the refusal of Israel and its supporters in the West to accept the electoral triumph of Hamas would create tensions with Fatah but never lead to a fratricidal conflict has been shattered.

This optimism sprang from the perception that the Palestinian liberation struggle was much too sacred to become a victim of internal differences. That perception is now overshadowed by a most misperceived battle of turf that the two factions have fought with much cruelty.Ever since the election that gave Hamas a landslide victory, Israel and the United States have worked relentlessly to deny it the opportunity to govern. While on its part Israel resorted to the use of outright force, targeted killings and detention of Hamas’s legislators, the United States enlisted the European Union in exacerbating the economic plight of the ordinary Palestinians.

Israel held back the taxes it had collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority to exacerbate economic hardship. Their calculation was simple: as the Hamas administration fails to pay salaries, ensure civic amenities and provide relief to the most disadvantaged groups, there would be a popular uprising against its rule. Considering the intensity of the siege, Hamas showed remarkable resilience in preventing a collapse for several months but failed to stop the progressive degradation of everyday life.

While the West starved the Hamas administration of funds for essential services, wages and social amenities, it found money to bolster up Fatah-dominated security forces. The leaders of Hamas constantly complained of a “stream” in these forces conspiring against its prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh. Distrust was beginning to spiral out of control when Egypt first and then Saudi Arabia stepped in to contain it.

For a time it seemed that Saudi diplomacy had averted the crisis by brokering the Makkah accord that provided the basis for a government of national unity. Many of us hailed it as a major breakthrough; it closed the Palestinian ranks and set the stage for a possible revival of the Middle East peace process.

Israel had obviously not liked this development as it was instrumental in building up international pressure on it to negotiate with the Palestinians on the basis of a two-state solution as envisaged in the Arab peace initiative. Israel was once again able to manipulate the larger concerns of US policy, which accorded a higher priority to the destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah, two strong movements that Washington links with Iranian ambitions in the Arab world.

In the murky world of Middle East politics, it takes a long time to unearth the hidden, subterranean currents but it can hardly be denied that the Palestinians have failed to find the quality of statesmanship that was required to forestall the crisis that their enemies were fuelling systematically. Israel had succeeded in turning the Gaza Strip into a veritable prison and it was not difficult to see that the unbearable condition of this prison would sooner or later erupt into the equivalent of a vicious prison riot.

The bloody events of the last one week have demonstrated that the Palestinians have simply not been able to fill the void left by the death of Yasser Arafat. Without him the hardliners in Fatah and Hamas have conducted themselves as if the occupation had already come to an end and they were contesting for power in a normal, independent state of their own. The leaders of both the factions were unable to control the gunmen on the streets who had obviously little understanding of the stakes involved. Nor did they show sufficient awareness of the fact that this grisly drama was being enacted under the dark shadow of Israeli occupation.

Fatah lost the support of a majority of the electors but was not willing to give up its grip on the levers of power. Gaza had well defined centres from which its security forces threatened Hamas. In permitting outside powers to openly discriminate between Hamas and Fatah, especially in the provision of arms, Fatah added to the apprehensions of the Hamas leadership that it would face a coup d’etat.

The greatest irony has been that the outside world – the so called international community – did nothing to enhance the prestige, stature and moral authority of President Mahmoud Abbas by promoting meaningful and result-oriented negotiations between him and Israel. He was the designated interlocutor but at no stage was he able to engage Ehud Olmert in a serious dialogue to restore the peace process.

Instead, a facile and misleading new dichotomy was created. President Mahmoud Abbas was routinely described as supported by Israel and the West while Ismail Haniyeh came to be derided as the leader of an Iranian-backed radical Islamist movement that stood in the way of a two-state solution. Transparent though this strategy was, the Palestinian factions simply fell for it.

The Makkah accord was specifically designed to remove this polarisation by locating factional differences in an Arab context that Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan would help manage. Iran was no part of the design. Their task is hugely complicated now and may well be beyond the resources of both the Arab League and the OIC.

On its part, Hamas has also failed to ensure that its election victory would once again consolidate the Palestinian liberation struggle. Yasser Arafat commanded the attention of the world because his PLO was almost universally recognised as the sole representative of the Palestinian people whether in the occupied territories or in diaspora. It is not that Hamas did not make the effort to narrow the gap with Fatah in this context. It did not repudiate its charter formally but it moved perceptibly towards a solution based on the frontiers existing on June 4, 1967.

The Makkah accord itself provided evidence of this evolution. It knew that the western rejection of it did not emanate from its refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist but from a much deeper policy of destroying radical Muslim movements on a global scale. This knowledge should have encouraged it to make greater efforts to work out a working relationship with Fatah. Instead, it ended up in a campaign to physically overwhelm the Fatah strongholds in the Gaza Strip.

Unless some deft Arab diplomacy can reverse them, the negative consequences of this mini civil war are much too obvious to be missed. Gone is the hope of a unified liberation movement that the Makkah accord implicitly sought. In fact, the Palestinian Authority and its subsidiary institutions lie in tatters. The western media has been quick to describe Gaza, where pro-Hamas gun men have prevailed, as ‘Hamastan’, a 40-km strip packed with 1.4 million people virtually cut off from the rest of the world.

The Arab territories in which 2.4 million Palestinians live in what is left of the West Bank are ‘Fatahland’. Mahmoud Abbas has dismissed Ismail Haniyeh and appointed the non- partisan finance minister, Salam Fayyad, as the new prime minister. Hamas has almost unfurled the flag of freedom in Gaza. But neither entity can make any significant move to re-open a dialogue with Israel on substantive issues. Israel will make both of them sweat for minor municipal concessions to just make life bearable.

These events have more or less coincided with the publication by UK’s daily, The Guardian, of a highly revealing end-of-the-mission report by the Peruvian diplomat Alvaro de Soto who gave up his job of the UN coordinator for Middle East in May in utter frustration. The report confirms what many people had feared all along: Israel has effectively deflected the “international community” with help from the United States from its quest for an equitable solution. He is unambiguous about the devastating consequences of the international boycott of the freely elected government led by Hamas. He fears that “erroneous treatment of Hamas could have repercussions far beyond the Palestinian territories because of its links to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose millions of supporters might conclude that peace and democratic means are not the way to go”.

The UN diplomat warns that if the Palestinian Authority passes into irrelevance or collapses, the calls for a one-state solution to the conflict will come out of the shadows and enter the mainstream. This will sharpen the conflict as it would pose an existential dilemma to Israel which can meet it only through renewed military conflict.

As Israel’s new president, Shimon Peres will embark upon an extended public relations exercise to convince the world that the Palestinians have no interlocutors that Israel could negotiate with. Behind this smokescreen, Ehud Barak, first as defence minister and later as a possible prime minister, would upgrade Israel’s military capability for bloodier interventions in Gaza at a future date, for more colonisation of the West Bank and perhaps for a showdown with Syria.

The Arab states have only a limited time to forestall such an aggravation in Israel’s policy. It is not at all clear how they can leverage their interest in reviving the peace process during the remaining 19 months of the Bush presidency but they will have to make an effort and also plan for contingencies arising out of a likely failure to do so.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

Not a pro-poor budget

BUDGETS are a ritual that governments have to go through once every year. They are no longer as exciting as they used to be, when tariffs were high and long lines of cars queued up at petrol pumps on the eve of the budget because of expected increases in the price of petroleum. Now there is no such hassle because budgetary levies are imposed throughout the year in the form of mini-budgets.

This year, there are no significant new hikes in duties or taxes, and if there are, they are camouflaged well. Being an election-year budget, we hear words like ‘subsidy’, ‘poverty alleviation’, ‘salary increases’, ‘increase in basic wage’ etc. The policy has come full circle. In the first seven years, the word ‘subsidy’ was an abuse in the economic corridors of the government and all strategy was based on a market economy. There was talk of following the policy of the survival of the fittest. Now, we hear of subsidy on daal, rice, sugar, fertiliser, electricity etc.

Some years ago, the country had a ration depot system, where the poor could get atta and sugar at fixed rates. It was thrown out of the window some two decades ago because it was difficult to implement and it bred corruption. Now we are planning to set up 5,000 utility stores all over the country within four months. This appears to be the main plank of our pro-poor budgetary strategy. I heard a discussant in one of the numerous discussion TV shows call this a “utility store budget”.

In the year 2000, the writer was the secretary, ministry of industries. Those were the early years of the “privatisation, deregulation and liberalisation” strategy. My minister was insistent on the complete closure of utility stores. Having seen the government function longer than he had, I pleaded that perhaps we should reduce the scale, (there were perhaps 450 or so stores then) but not kill the organisation.

I argued that governments sometimes need to make headlines though utility stores, and seem to be doing something when they can’t solve the actual problem. This difference of opinion generated its own heat, but I stood my ground and the higher forums upheld my point of view.

I was quite satisfied but never thought I would see the pendulum swing. Setting up 5,000 utility stores in four months is a wish which only a genie can achieve. Even a multinational retail marketing company with its enormous human and financial resources would not plan more than a dozen stores in that time span.

If the idea is to franchise these utility stores, it will do harm to the government’ image. When the differential of the price at which daals, sugar and ghee will be sold in at utility stores compared to the market price, is so high, you can certainly expect big windfalls for various ‘smart’ groups of people. What the people are likely to get is poor quality, short-weighted commodities and that also a few days of the month. If the government is really serious about the matter, it may want to re-examine the rations depot system, even though it will tantamount to an economic retreat. It was at least structured and the commodity did get to the poor.

Another way of looking at the utility store initiative in the budget is to make a simple calculation. If out of a population of 160 million, only 50 per cent are assumed to be below the poverty line or fall under the definition of potentially poor, each of the 5,000 stores will have cater to 16,000 people daily.

Also, it is difficult to understand why such drastic steps are required to take care of the poor, when, as claimed in the budget speech, atta in Pakistan is the cheapest in the area and we have reduced the incidence of poverty from 34.4 per cent to 23.97 per cent, since 2001. And to cap it all, our per capita income has almost doubled in that period. This is as baffling as our stock exchange performance.

The positive sign one notices is the attention that government servants have received, especially the lower grades, where not only the salary has been increased by 15 per cent but their current grades have been upgraded, and they have been given the hope of perhaps owning a house one day. This will improve their morale and hopefully their performance.

The government should stop wasting time in setting up commissions to look into making the government servant’s salary market competitive, because after numerous aggressive recommendations, all that the ministry of finance can afford each time is a maximum raise of 15 per cent. The government should instead aim to bring the salary and perks of government servants to realistic levels, in say five to seven years, by giving annual increases which are above the inflation rate.

The car lobby, which was receiving bouncers in the previous two budgets, has connected with the ball well this time and has bounced back. The decision to restrict used car import to only three-year-old cars will result in more expensive used car imports, improving the competitiveness of locally produced cars.

On the macro level one sees very little in the budget to tackle two very serious problems — that of the widening gap in power production and consumption, and declining industrial production. On the power front perhaps it can be said that the ministry of water and power will push Nepra into enticing more investors to get cracking. Merely the announcement of intent, or opening ceremonies, is not going to reduce the agony of the public that is being forced to sweat it out and is resorting to rioting.

As for industrial growth, the growth rate has come down from 18 per cent a couple of years ago to eight per cent this year. Even this figure is not reflected in the export industry where the growth in exports this year was more like six per cent. This is worrisome as the trade gap which the government continues to play down is on the increase.

Surely the increase in minimum wages, however laudable, is not going to encourage the growth of industry and subsequently exports. One of the reasons for the high cost of doing business for the textile industry was the last increase in minimum wages. This one could be the knock-out punch, especially for the labour-intensive garment industry.

I see little good news for the textile industry. While we have been spending over four billion dollars in investment in machinery to prepare for the post quota regime, our competitors India, China and Bangladesh have invested much more. Added to this is the higher cost of labour, both in absolute terms, compared say to Bangladesh, and in terms of productivity, compared to China and India.

One sees more trouble for the value added part of the textile industry in the coming year. With the closure of the more labour intensive garment factories, the government claim of providing one million jobs may go into reverse gear. Some of the doable things, for instance in the textile sector like supporting an entrepreneur set up electronically-managed state-of-the-art warehouses in the country of destination or assisting him purchase international brands, have become casualties of committees and reports.

Unfortunately, the budget exercise each year is the culmination of the hopes of various lobbies and the wealthy, while the have-nots continue to wallow in abject poverty. Let us pray that in future years we start making the main budget for the poor, rather than make them wait for the trickle-down effect.

tasneem.noorani@tnassociates,net

The US could learn from the Romans

YOU'VE seen the phrase a hundred times: "the world's longest boundary between a First World and Third World country."

But hearing those words the other day, as the immigration bill seemed to be falling apart in the Senate, my thoughts turned not to the 2,000-mile border of the United States and Mexico but to ancient Rome's 6,000-mile border with … well, its border with everywhere.

There's a widespread view that the Roman Empire was swept away mainly by a relentless tide of hostile outsiders; we've all heard ugly references to the "barbarian hordes" in today's immigration debates. But the truth is that Rome was the world's most successful multiethnic state.

So it's natural to wonder if the Romans might have anything to teach Americans. I'd argue that they do. One lesson is that the notion of "taking control of the borders" is overrated; borders were pliable then, and are even harder to define (or police) now. A second lesson is the importance of nurturing a national culture. It was the source of Rome's power, just as it is the source of ours.

Hadrian's Wall, which crosses the neck of Britain and marked the northern limit of the Roman Empire, gives the appearance of something built to deter an onslaught. That impression is misleading. The wall was not meant to be a Maginot Line; it was designed to be penetrated. It had gateways every mile to encourage traffic. Commerce moved both ways. You would have seen the same pattern at the borders of the empire along the Rhine and the Danube, and elsewhere on the frontier.

Americans today think of a nation's physical border as a static and even sacred sort of artifact — not quite as unchanging, say, as the path of the equator, but significantly more durable than the outlines of a Texas congressional district. Most historians, though, now see Rome's long imperial frontier as a dynamic zone where the interactions of different peoples had transformative repercussions on either side. The frontier, in other words, was a crucible, not a line in the sand.

And it's the same with us, for all the vigilantes grimly uncoiling barbed wire in the desert. What does "border" even mean? Global communications and electronic capital flows have brought borders into the fourth, fifth and nth dimensions. Hadrian's Wall today would have to be supplemented by Hadrian's Firewall.

American borders aren't quite where the map shows them, anyway. For national security purposes, they extend to the docks of Rotterdam and Hong Kong and as high as satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Some borders have simply disappeared. Consider the transnational revolution wrought by the ATM machine. For corporations, borders are a figure of speech.

If borders aren't a bulwark, then what is? Transported back to the Roman Empire, you would see something remarkably uniform from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, from Britain to North Africa. This was so even though the empire encompassed a wide variety of peoples, not all of whom had known their butter knives from their fish knives before coming under Roman rule.

The temples and baths of Londinium resembled those of Cordoba in Spain and Alexandria in Egypt. Roads and coins were uniform. Soldiers all wore something akin to dog tags (as did their horses). Even the statuary from place to place looked the same: At one time there were 20,000 statues of Caesar Augustus on view.

All of this was just the physical embodiment of an underlying dynamic — a set of values and a way of life — that rapidly turned outsiders into insiders.

Rome's ability to assimilate newcomers is so well-established that it's easy to lose sight of. And it has been overshadowed, in the history books as well as in movies, by episodes of invasion and mayhem in the final centuries, when the empire's domestic health was already gravely compromised.

But the expansion of the empire to include tens of millions of non-Romans — and then the absorption through immigration of many millions more — was a bigger phenomenon still. Military service integrated some, but Romanisation occurred without the help of other tools that Americans take for granted, such as public schools, mass communications, Madison Avenue or even a single language. (The strivers and elites spoke Latin and Greek, but the empire was polyglot.)

It took place because Roman civilisation turned out to be a good deal. The historian Tacitus rather cynically recognised its power, observing that what Rome's subjects called "culture" was in fact what kept them in line.

The US, too, is an assimilation machine, though one whose efficiency we tend to doubt in the present, and to acknowledge only in hindsight. Looking back, we now know that the US managed to accommodate the huge waves of immigration in the 1850s, the 1880s, the first decade of the 1900s and the 1980s — despite scepticism at each of those moments that it ever could.

Every age doubts that it retains the absorptive capacity of ages past, just as every age fails to remember the human heartache and wrenching adjustments that past immigration entailed. Or the utter determination.

My father-in-law came to the US from Mexico in 1920, in his mother's arms, and on his yellowing immigration papers there is the line "Mode of arrival" followed by the typed-in word: "rowboat."

––Los Angeles Times

Listening to Putin

THERE are a hundred reasons to dislike and distrust Russian President Vladimir V. Putin. Three of the best are his domestic repression, his paranoid view of western intentions and his attempts to reassert Russia's influence over its neighbours in often unpleasant ways.

Yet there are also a hundred ways in which Russia can thwart US ambitions. And Moscow grows richer and more powerful even as Washington struggles with Iraq, Afghanistan and other global crises.

In its headlong rush to expand Nato, to cultivate the former Soviet states on Russia's periphery and, now, to place anti-Iranian missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, the United States has fed Russia's mistrust. The Russian public is wildly anti-American, and the Kremlin is of the bitter opinion that the US demands Russian cooperation on issues such as Iran and terrorism, yet refuses to acknowledge that Russia too has national interests. Kremlin watchers warn of the ascendance of hard-liners who favour rapprochement with China and expansion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation to include Iran and add a security treaty. That would be an ominous step toward a new Cold War.

President Bush took a welcome step toward easing tensions last week by pledging to give due consideration to Putin's proposal to base missile defences in Azerbaijan. (Bush was also smart to invite "Vladimir — I call him Vladimir" — to his summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, over the Fourth of July holiday.) Putin's gambit could be a cynical ploy to try to split the US from its Czech and Polish allies. Still, that offer and other moves signal an important change in Moscow's position on Iran, which it has never considered an enemy. International sanctions against Iran's nuclear programme cannot succeed without Russia, so Putin's change of heart is well-timed.

But US missile defence hawks already are trashing the Azerbaijan idea. Apparently, Azerbaijan is close enough to provide a helpful early warning of an Iranian missile launch, but too close for the midrange interceptor missiles planned for the Czech and Polish sites. If so, the technicians should figure out how to make Putin a more feasible counterproposal.

The hawks have missed the point. The missile defence they so ardently defend doesn't work yet, and no one knows when it might. The Iranian nuclear-tipped missiles it intends to intercept also don't exist yet, and no one knows when they will. But the window for a healthier, cooperative relationship with Russia is open now, and perhaps not for long. It would be immoral to appease Putin, but to spurn him would be foolish.

––Los Angeles Times