Israel’s belated ‘yes’
WASHINGTON’s warm response to the Israeli acceptance of the roadmap to peace in the Middle East tends to give an impression as if Tel Aviv’s decision constitutes a favour to the Palestinian people. It is nothing of the sort. Palestine belongs to the people of Palestine and not to European settlers and their descendants. Forgetting for the moment that part of the Turkish sanjak of Palestine which now constitutes Israel, let us concentrate on the territories that have been under the illegal Israeli occupation since 1967. All peace plans and accords so far have concentrated on ending the Israeli occupation of these lands and creating a Palestinian state on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank with a mutually acceptable settlement of the final status of Al Quds. The Oslo accords had precisely this aim in view. According to the Declaration of Principles signed in Washington DC on Sept 13, 1993, a five-year period of interim self-government should have begun on April 13, 1994; the Israel occupation should have ended on July 13, 1994, and a permanent settlement should have been in place by July 13, 1999. However, after having signed the accords, Israel set out to sabotage the Oslo process. Both Netanyahu and Ehud Barak did their worst to scuttle the process. What was left undone was completed by Ariel Sharon, who reoccupied the West Bank and Gaza, on the pretext of combating “terrorism”. Since then, the world has seen nothing but bloodshed in the holy land.
The roadmap, announced by President Bush on April 30, is heavily loaded in Israel’s favour. It makes no mention of two crucial issues — the fate of Al Quds and the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes — except in passing. Yet it was the Palestinian Authority which first announced its acceptance of the new peace plan. In the meantime, before announcing its belated acceptance, Tel Aviv expressed 14 reservations about the roadmap. More important, in what constitutes a rebuff to Washington, the Sharon government has gone ahead with the settlements activity. This is contrary to the provisions of the roadmap, which not only calls for a freeze on settlements activity, but also requires dismantling of the ones built since March 2001.
It now remains to be seen whether Israel will remain faithful to its belated acceptance of the new peace initiative. On Sunday, the Israeli cabinet, which approved the roadmap, also passed a resolution ruling out the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homeland. This makes it doubtful if Sharon will really cooperate in the emergence of a Palestinian state. A true measure of a genuine Israeli acceptance of the peace process will be provided by action on two points: one, whether Sharon stops all settlements activity; two, whether he ends his reign of terror in the occupied territories. The roadmap, if fully followed, will result in the establishment of a Palestinian state by 2005. But a beginning has to be made right away. As a pointer to its intentions, Israel must officially announce a halt to all settlements activity. A continuation of such activity will mean that the Sharon government has no intention of following the roadmap to its logical conclusion. As a leading Israeli journalist put it, Israel has approved the roadmap only because it knows the plan has no chance of being implemented. The key question is whether the Bush administration has the will and intentions to stand up to pro-Israeli lobbies at a time when the presidential election activity in the US has begun.
MMA’s skewed priorities
THE Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal government in the NWFP has approved the draft Hisba Act 2003 aimed at promoting virtue and preventing vice. If signed into law by the governor, the new legislation will establish a hisba (moral) police force headed by mohtasibs (ombudsmen), qualified to be Federal Shariat Court judges, at the district and provincial levels. The NWFP government has also sought to amend the Rules of Conduct for Civil Servants Act (1987) with a view to barring civil servants from attending a meeting or a function where ‘obscene activities’ may take place. Given the provincial government’s recent drive to ban music at weddings and the pulling down of billboards featuring women, wedding functions may well fall into the category of ‘obscene activities’ as defined in the Hisba law. This obsessive stance on morality reminds one of the Taliban excesses in the name of enforcing an Islamic code of public morality.
The way the Pakistanis have traditionally lived and dressed themselves hardly leaves any room for obscenity in public life. Our men and women seen on the streets and in the bazaars are always modestly and adequately dressed without any hint of indecent exposure. Photographs of women appearing on billboards usually pertain to advertisements selling household items and are not offensive by any standards. Similarly, the traditional song and dance at weddings or on other occasions has a homely feel about it and cannot be termed vulgar. The proposed role of a hisba force going around judging people’s conduct cannot be challenged in a court of law or held in abeyance by the high court under the new law. This amounts to creating a vigilante force with unlimited power to do witch-hunt or harass people in the name of morality. All this in a country where people generally adhere to a strict moral code rooted in Islam and its noble moral and ethical values. As for priorities in the NWFP, a much better option for the NWFP government would be to address the real problems affecting the people such as basic education, health care services, water and sewerage, transportation and employment. A perceived lack of morality in public life, as embodied in the proposed Hisba law is hardly real or a matter of public concern in this country.
Regulating drug sales
IT was not too long ago that the incentives offered to doctors by the pharmaceutical companies were termed ‘bribes’ by the federal health minister. In the absence of an autonomous drug regulatory authority that can vet a given drug before it is allowed to be marketed, there is little in terms of an honest mechanism in place to keep pharmaceutical malpractices in check. Thus, many drug manufacturers feel free to make tall, sometimes spurious, claims about the efficacy of their brand medicines. The sporadic inspections carried out by the health ministry’s largely untrained inspectors is least suited to curbing this malpractice. The inspectors in question are more susceptible to bribes than the doctors who may or may not prescribe a given medicine regardless of the incentives being offered.
Lately, these incentives have come to include free air tickets to Dubai and other expensive gifts to the doctors and their family members. While this ‘marketing’ practice to boost sales of drugs may be acceptable in some developed countries where good diagnostic facilities and regulatory mechanisms exist, it is downright unethical in a developing country like Pakistan. Most life-saving drugs, when prescribed without proper diagnostic support and investigations as to their efficacy in a given case, can prove harmful, even fatal. While there is no law that prohibits the drug manufacturers from offering expensive gifts to doctors as part of sales promotion, the onus of acting in a conscientious manner is squarely on the doctors prescribing the medicines. It is time an autonomous drug regulatory authority, with full powers of approval and rejection of all pharmaceutical products and market surveillance, were put in place. This alone can ensure that the medicines on sale in the market are as effective in prevention and cure as their manufacturers claim them to be.