Original Zionist designs

PERSUADED that he should be seen as a world statesman, General Musharraf gives more attention to international affairs than to the tasks at home. He has initiated the peace process with India and elicited new thinking on old issues. In July 2003 he invited a national debate on the subject of recognizing Israel, and asked the people to say if they had any disputes with the Jewish state. (Needless to say, he expected them to come up with none.)

A few weeks ago, we heard that he had accepted an invitation to address the American Jewish Congress in New York, which he did on September 17 to his audience’s great delight. The day before he shook hands and, presumably, chatted with the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, at the United Nations.

The governments of Pakistan and Israel are said to have made secret deals from time to time since the early 1980s. According to a recent report, an American Congressman (Charlie Wilson) acted as an intermediary between General Ziaul Haq and the Israeli government for the procurement of Soviet weapons that Israel had captured in Lebanon and which it was now ready to sell for use by the Afghan resistance against the Red army. Other matters may also have come under discussion periodically.

Mr Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, the Pakistani foreign minister, conferred with his Israeli counterpart, Mr Silvan Shalom, on September 1 in Istanbul. Mr Shalom and other Israeli spokesmen expect that this meeting will in time open the way to the normalization of Israel’s relations with other Muslim and Arab countries.

Mr Kasuri said the meeting should not be taken to mean that Pakistan had decided to establish diplomatic ties with Israel. That development might come later, when matters between Israel and the Palestinians, including the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, had been resolved. He added that Israel’s relations with the Muslim world would normalize only if it showed decent respect for Palestinian rights.

Mr Kasuri has also made the interesting observation that his government wants to play a helpful role in moving forward the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, but that it cannot play such a role if it cannot even talk with one of the principals. Hence the move to “engage” Israel.

Two other explanations of the Pakistani move are being offered. President Bush has reportedly been commending it to General Musharraf since their meeting at Camp David in 2003. The general could have resisted this pressure without jeopardizing Pakistan’s relations with the United States. He could have argued that the exigencies of Pakistan’s domestic politics would not allow the proposed course of action. But he chose not to do so.

Another explanation has it that the opening to Israel has been made to ensure that the emerging Indo-Israeli entente will not be directed against Pakistan, and perhaps also to conciliate the normally pro-Indian Jewish lobby in America. In all of this the purpose professedly is to advance Pakistan’s own national interests. If that indeed is the case, we must concede that our government’s heart is in the right place. Qazi Husain Ahmad and other opposition spokesmen allege, however, that its understanding of our national interest is not sound. The issue merits further consideration.

The national interest is not to be reckoned exclusively in terms of dollars and cents. The moral commitments of a people, their value system, their emotional attachments, the maintenance of their sense of purpose, and their internal solidarity are unquestionably components, along with the balances of trade and military capability, of any viable concept of the national interest. Even if some of the Arab states have never reciprocated our concern for their well-being, a sense of fellowship with them, and a degree of affection for them, are embedded in our national psyche. The desire to help the Palestinian cause is not preposterous, but our ability to do so must also be weighed.

If the objectives of our Israeli policy are to be formulated realistically, we must begin with an adequate understanding of the state and society with which we will have to deal. A fair proportion of the Israeli people (especially those of European origin, the “Ashkenazi”) are liberal, secular-minded and, within bounds, willing to conciliate with the Palestinians.

But an equal, and at times an even larger, number (including some of the Ashkenazi but consisting largely of Jews of the Middle Eastern and African origin, the “Sephardim”) entertain none of these inclinations. A small minority in 1948, when Israel was established, the Sephardim now form the majority of that country’s population. Many of them are religiously orthodox, racist, aggressive, and expansionist. It is the state of mind of the more militant Zionists in Israel that I propose to explore today.

Zionism, as an ideology and as a plan of action, surfaced in the last quarter of the 19th century as a response to the intense persecution of the Jewish people in Eastern Europe and Russia. Jewish intellectuals at the time (more notably Y.L. Pinsker and Theodor Herzl) concluded that their people would not achieve equal status with other Europeans until they had a state of their own. Pinsker later became head of “Hibbat Zion” (Love of Zion), an organization that sponsored Jewish emigration to Palestine. Herzl published his advocacy in a book, “The Jewish State,” that became quite influential, and in 1897 he convened the first conference of the World Jewish Organization at Basel, which resolved to locate the proposed Jewish state in Palestine.

Jewish intellectuals at this time adopted the European notion that the “blessings” of western civilization must be spread to the non-European peoples of Africa and Asia who, left to themselves, would remain “barbaric” and incompetent. They posited that the Arabs in Palestine had done nothing to develop the land they occupied, a failing that disqualified them to keep it any longer. They were in effect “non-persons,” making Palestine a land without people, which should appropriately go to a “people without land,” namely, the Jews.

Herzl projected the proposed Jewish state as a line of defence against Asian barbarians! His successor in the Zionist movement, Chaim Weizmann, argued that Palestine, the most neglected part of the “miserably neglected Turkish empire,” must be redeemed by Jewish capital and labour. Max Nordau, a close friend of Herzl, wrote that “we are going to Palestine to extend the moral boundaries of Europe as far as the Euphrates.” Thus, Israel, as envisaged by its original Zionist proponents, was to include not only all of Palestine but also all of Jordan and the greater part of Iraq.

The League of Nations gave the British the mandate to rule Palestine for a period of time. A plan to partition the territory eventually to form two states, one Jewish and the other Arab, had been a part of British thinking all along. Zionist leaders accepted it only as a tactical move that would enable them to take all of Palestine by force of arms once they had established their presence in the territory. As far back as 1937, David Ben-Gurion (later to become Israel’s “father” and first prime minister) anticipated conflict with the Palestinians in which they would lose further territories to the new Jewish state.

His diary and other sources reveal that he also expected the establishment of Israel to pave the way for the “transfer” (meaning expulsion) of much of the Arab population in Palestine to the surrounding Arab states. In 1937 he wrote: “We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspiration are the concerns of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.” In a letter written at about the same time he noted: “We must expel Arabs and take their places.” In the following year he declared: “We will cancel the partition of the country (between Jews and Arabs) and we will expand throughout the land of Israel.”

The United Nations adopted its partition plan for Palestine on November 29, 1947. On May 15, 1948, David Ben-Gurion and his associates proclaimed the state of Israel and in less than a couple of weeks the first Arab-Israeli war began to the Zionist leaders’ great satisfaction. For as they had expected, Arab incompetence enabled the Israeli forces to seize a substantial part of the territory that the United Nations had awarded to the Palestinians.

At the beginning of 1947, 1.3 million Arabs resided in Palestine as compared to a Jewish population of 600,000. At this time the Jews owned no more than seven per cent of the total land area. Yet the United Nations allocated 55 per cent of the territory to Israel. As a result of the war Israel came to occupy 80 per cent of Palestine and forced more than 700,000 Palestinians out of their homes and land.

The more grasping among the Zionists wanted all of Palestine right then. In violation of the secret agreements the Jewish leaders had earlier made with King Abdullah of Jordan, David Ben-Gurion urged his colleagues in the provisional government to invade and take all of the West Bank, including the Old City of Jerusalem. They did not go along with him at this time for fear of possibly adverse British and American reactions. But their successors implemented Ben-Gurion’s design in their next war with the Arabs (1967).

Has the thinking of Ben-Gurion and the earlier founders of the Zionist movement now been discarded? Not by all Israelis. The ultra-religious and ultra-nationalist parties, and quite a few in Likud (the currently ruling group), who would expel all Palestinians if they could, have considerable following within Israel. The most notable in the anti-Palestinian faction within Likud is Benyamin Natanyahu, a former prime minister, a member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s cabinet until recently, and now his principal rival for the party’s leadership. The willingness of an Israeli government to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state, the kind the Palestinians want, is not to be taken for granted. We will have to look at Israel’s domestic politics in order to get a fuller picture, and this we will do next Sunday.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, US. E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net

Real cause of instability

NO ONE would disagree with President Musharraf when he says he is not indispensable. But no one should be sharing his confidence that the political system he has introduced will outlast him. Let there be no delusion on both counts.

No party or politician of substance is sincerely committed to Gen Musharraf’s system — some loath it while others are indifferent but have chosen to climb on to his bandwagon. The clerics who had helped Musharraf salvage his system in a power deal have now sworn to overthrow it whatever it takes and however long it takes. The mainstream politicians had rejected it outright and the intelligentsia, too, had advised against its very concept. In bargaining with the MMA and under the pressure of his own partisans the system has already been whittled down. It is unlikely to survive him.

The fractious rabble that constitutes the present government would feel least concerned if Musharraf were to abandon his system altogether so long as Benazir and Nawaz Sharif are kept out of politics and, preferably, also out of the country. Were they to have faith in the strength and durability of the institutions that the system has created, they wouldn’t have been worried about their return at least while Musharraf’s protective umbrella stands.

The religious leaders gloated over their achievement in watering down some of the clauses of the Legal Framework Order and then let it become a part of the Constitution because they too had acquired a vital stake in the system. It wasn’t bad bargain for them to keep their governments in the NWFP and Balochistan and also lead the opposition in the National Assembly in return for accepting the National Security Council as a statutory, rather than a constitutional, body and surrendering control of the local councils (a provincial subject) to the federal government. And thus the aspirations for greater provincial autonomy were undermined.

Like the breakaway factions of the PPP and the Muslim League, the religious parties, too, had no quarrel with the constitutional provision ousting the two former prime ministers from politics. It created space for them. That is where the interests of the people supporting Musharraf (Q Leaguers and PPP-Patriots) as well as of those opposing him (MMA) coincided with his own interest. The system now shelters all three but remains Musharraf’s own brainchild which has yet to stand the test of time and popular will.

Though General Musharraf says he is not indispensable, that is merely a public posture. He genuinely thinks the country cannot do without him.

As president he continues to act much beyond the role he has assigned to himself under the 17th amendment. That shows the weakness of his system and not its strength. If in the unlikely event of Musharraf’s term being cut short Mohammadmian Soomro were to become president he surely wouldn’t be performing the same functions, or exercising the same powers, as Musharraf does.

But the first question to arise in such an eventuality would be: will the generals in the National Security Council let the Senate chairman take over the office of the president if they determine he would not be able to cope with the situation? The personality and professional career of Mohammadmian Soomro apart, he would be unable to stand up to the generals unless he has the firm backing of a political party which in turn is backed by the parliament and by the people. That, quite obviously, is not the position.

All this may belong to the realm of speculation but the undeniable fact remains that only popular opinion and not a council — whatever its composition or character — can prevent a military coup or any other extra-constitutional intervention in the affairs of the state. And popular opinion must manifest itself in a parliament that is fairly elected. That the current parliament obviously is not.

In this view of things a sad fact to be admitted is that our institutions as presently constituted do not represent the popular opinion. All voters are not listed and less than one-third of those listed go to the polls only to discover later that the ballot had been rigged.

The outcome is a kind of National Assembly that is now in existence. Musharraf is “fully satisfied” with its performance only because it has hardly ever met in quorum. It would be in vain to expect such an assembly, and the Senate it elects, to deter a coup maker when it cannot prevent the incursions even of its own executive. The parliament is ineffectual because it is unrepresentative.

President Musharraf wishes to be remembered for making Pakistan strong and stable, for reducing poverty and providing jobs and better health and education facilities to the people. All this is beyond him and beyond anyone else. But there is a short cut to the hall of fame that is entirely possible. He should dismiss all the governments and hold fair and free elections (this, too, is entirely possible) and then abide by the verdict of the people.

The only cause of instability in Pakistan is that it had no free and fair elections in the post-1971 period. In fact, every succeeding election has been worse than the one preceding it. This trend has to be reversed to prevent the coups by the army commanders or by the presidents.

Dr Mubashir Hasan who walked out of this funny game a long time ago now proposes to exorcise the demon that dogs democracy in Pakistan. That demon, according to the doctor, is an axis of the military and civil bureaucracy, the landed aristocracy and the barons of trade and industry.

He should have also named the election commission, the courts and the clerics. He should be also conscious of the fact that the demon draws its first political strength and legitimacy from the “heirs” to the legacy of the Quaid-i-Azam as also from the rigging legacy handed down by the party of which he was a founding member.

Voting for reform

IF it is true, as former President Jimmy Carter said, that Americans have lost faith in their voting system, then he and former secretary of state James A. Baker III have lost a significant opportunity to help them restore it.

A bipartisan commission led by Carter and Baker released a report on Monday that proposes many reasonable ways to make voting a smoother and more trustworthy process — but stops far short of addressing what really keeps people from the polls.

For that, the report would have to have recommended abolishing the Electoral College, the cornerstone of a winner-take-all system that leads presidential candidates to lavish their attention on a few key states. It might also have at least alluded to reforms of campaign finance laws and conflict-of-interest rules for elected officials, especially because many voters see politics as a parade of special-interest pandering in which their interests seldom count for much.

Such reforms would take tremendous political will. But that is lacking these days, so the commission limited itself to pragmatic, incremental reforms designed to boost public faith in the ballot system. With some adjustments, many of these should be adopted.

One recommendation that should become reality is a rescheduling of the presidential primaries. The report suggests holding them on a mostly regional basis and rotating the first regional primary regularly.

—Los Angeles Times