Iraq: democracy must work

WITH Iraq’s election commission having rejected the demand for re-polling, the country seems to be heading towards a new spurt of violence. Those challenging the results of the elections on Dec 15 are the Iraqi Accordance Front and the Iraqi United Front, and both have threatened not only to go to the Arab League, the European Union and the UN with complaints of manipulation, they have also warned of street agitation. Other Sunni groups have threatened increasing the level of violence. The allegations of manipulation are not substantiated by UN monitors, who believe the polling and counting of votes were fair. The major surprise in the parliamentary election was a high turnout. In the elections to the transitional assembly in January and in the referendum on the constitution, the turnout was around 60 per cent because the Sunnis had stayed away from voting. This time, Sunni participation pushed the turnout to a remarkable 70 per cent. To demand re-polling now looks unreasonable, because the vote last week seemed to be a culmination of the electoral process that began in January. The ratification of the constitution on Oct 15 was a major event, because those opposing the basic law enacted by the transitional assembly failed to get a negative vote by a two-thirds majority in any of Iraq’s 18 provinces.

It is time the Sunni groups realized that the Baathist leadership was no less harsh on the Sunni population. Sunnis might have occupied important positions in the Saddam administration, but basically it was a brutal dictatorship that made no difference between Arabs and non-Arabs and between Sunnis and Shias when it came to consolidating its power. Physical elimination of political opponents was the standard form of Baathist response to dissent, and the victims belonged to all ethnic and sectarian communities. In the changed circumstances, an American pull-out is possible only when an elected Iraqi government representing all sections of the country’s population is in place.

The parliament elected on Dec 15 thus is an opportunity which should not be wasted. If there is no agreement on a new government, and a satisfactory power-sharing arrangement is not worked out, things could get out of hand. Violence will reach new heights and that will have several negative consequences. One, the US-led forces will not pull out, because Washington would not like to abandon Iraq while it is in the grip of anarchy. Two, the failure of the democratic process could strengthen separatist tendencies in a country where sectarian and ethnic communities live in more or less well-defined zones — the Kurds in the north, the Shias in the south and the Sunnis in the “triangle” between the two. Three, the Kurds would not like to live in Iraq again as a persecuted minority. The electoral process has given them a sense of participation in Iraqi affairs, and Iraq now has a Kurdish head of state — something unprecedented. The Kurds, therefore, look forward to a peaceful and democratic Iraq. A failure of the democratic process could enable the extremists among the Kurds to think of seceding from Iraq. This could draw Turkey and Iran into the fray, because both have large Kurdish populations living in contiguous areas. All Iraqis must pledge to make a success of the evolving democratic process. A stable and democratic Iraq could also be an example for the other Arab states in its neighbourhood.

Inflationary pressures

THE approval of substantial increases in gas tariffs for domestic, commercial and industrial users by the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) from January 1, 2006, can only have an inflationary impact on the economy. For its part, the government has only recently claimed that inflation has been brought down to eight per cent, which is still too high. The regulator explained what can only be seen as an anti-consumer decision by saying that the price of crude oil and sulphur fuel oil had increased sharply in recent months and that domestic gas producers had also raised their prices. Since gas is used in many homes and most commercial and industrial establishments, the tariff hike could well have a significant ripple effect across the board, causing prices of other products to rise. Also affected will be hundreds of thousands of motorists, who till now had at least a cheaper alternative for fuel in CNG.

The gas tariff hike comes at a most inopportune time, especially from the point of view of containing inflation. It has also been reported that even before the end of the first half of the current financial year, the federal government had already exceeded its borrowing target for the whole year. The target for 2005-06 was Rs 98 billion but by Dec. 10 over Rs 101 billion had been borrowed. Given this trend, it is likely that government borrowing will sharply exceed the annual target. Since this has happened mainly because of the financial pressures exerted on government spending by the exigencies of the Oct. 8 earthquake, it can be argued that this was unavoidable. However, it also highlights the very rigid nature of those expenditures — defence, debt servicing and administration — which account for the bulk of the federal budget. Either way, a sharp increase in government borrowing to pay for increased spending will further add to inflationary pressures. Macroeconomic policy-making is akin to a balancing act: increased spending causes growth but can cause inflation, which can lower growth. It seems that for now with the gas tariff hike and the sharp rise in government borrowing, there is a real threat that inflation may well wipe out any real benefits of our much-publicized GDP growth rate.

KCR: postponed again

FOR the past one year, we have been hearing from all and sundry about the impending revival of the Karachi Circular Railway — which is why Tuesday’s announcement about the project being delayed by another two years is disappointing. Successive governments always talk about giving Karachi a modern and efficient transport system but that objective has remained more of a mirage than a perceivable reality. Karachi needs a transport system that is efficient and cost-effective. The answer is not having more large buses that charge exorbitant fares, making travel too costly for a large majority of commuters and clogginf traffic further. Even March’s “revival” of the KCR — there is nothing circular about the route — was hardly noteworthy. Thanks to auto-financing schemes, more people are buying cars, which explains the choked roads and traffic chaos. This is why it is surprising that the government which recognizes all this can sit back and allow work on the KCR project to be shelved for another two years. The reason given by the state minister for railways is that the Japanese delegation that conducted a feasibility study of the subject estimated the cost to be around $830 million, which the government has to approve. If it okays the plan and gets the required loan for it, work will begin at the end of 2007 or in the beginning of 2008; the project will be completed by 2010.

It is hard to fathom how the city government can justify this inordinate delay. By the time 2010 comes around, the traffic chaos is likely to be of nightmarish proportions, irrespective of how many flyovers and underpasses are built. There is no doubt that the Japanese proposal is sound but the government will have to find alternative ways to speed up the process to ease traffic which has never been addressed in earnest.

Why Israel does not have a constitution

MOST observers of the Palestinian scene know that Israel does not have a constitution, but few try to know why it has chosen not to have one. The reasons are to be found less in the conflict between the religious right and the liberals and more in the Zionist entity’s eternal quest for “a final solution” to the Palestinian question.

The western media repeats ad nauseam that Israel is the Middle East’s only democracy; what it does not tell the world is that it is the only democracy in the world whose citizens do not enjoy fundamental rights.

To be meaningful a constitution must incorporate fundamental rights in it for the benefit of all of its citizens irrespective of religious and ethnic variations. However, if Israel were to have a constitution, it will have to give these rights not only to its Jewish citizens but also to the one million Arabs living in Israel.

True, Israel’s Declaration of Independence pledges “complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens” irrespective of race and religion, but the declaration is a political document and has no constitutional value. What fundamental rights demand are written safeguards in the form of a bill of rights — as part of the constitution — against which the state’s actions could be challenged in a court by an individual whose fundamental rights had been violated. As the US State Department once noted, Israel guarantees the civil, political and religious rights of its citizens “by law”.

Amazing as it may sound, until 1995, courts in Israel did not have the power of judicial review — of the kind courts have, say, in America, where any citizen can go to a federal court to challenge a law, claiming that it is against the spirit of the American constitution. The court would then decide whether or not this was the case.

Israel never bothered to set up a constituent assembly; instead, the Knesset, which is a legislature, also serves as a constitution-making body. Over the decades, the Knesset has passed 11 “Basic Laws”, each basic law relating to some particular subject — the powers of the president and prime minister, the question of land ownership, the law of return, etc. In 1995, — hampered by the absence of a written constitution — the courts declared that they would treat the 11 basic laws as Israel’s constitution. This way Israel became the only country in the world which has a constitution of sorts given by the judiciary.

All these basic laws were passed by a simple majority. This is against the practice worldwide, because a constitution is a sacred document and must be enacted and promulgated by the will of the people, which may be in the form of a two-thirds majority of an elected assembly. Consequently, an amendment to the constitution must likewise be done through an elaborate mechanism that is tantamount to a popular ratification. This is completely missing in Israel’s case, because the basic laws were enacted by a simple majority and can be repealed or amended by a simple majority. Even more bizarre, a basic law can be suspended or repealed by emergency legislation. A sympathetic commentary on Israel’s constitution says Israeli citizens “have enjoyed a large measure of civil rights as a result of high standards of fairness” in the Israeli judicial system.

Nonetheless, it added, “certain infringements have been caused by the dictates of security.” The dictates of security obviously refer to how they view the Palestinians and their place or lack of place in Israel.

The effect of the absence of fundamental rights on Israel’s Arab population has to be seen to be believed, because Israel has now turned into an apartheid state in which Israeli Arabs are left with only two choices: either to live in ghettoes in sub-human conditions or leave Israel.

For instance, the Israeli authorities deliberately have not made a master plan for housing and development for east Jerusalem. Since housing is a basic activity which every human community must remain engaged in, the Arabs of east Jerusalem build houses on lands that have belonged to them for more than a millennium and a half. However, Israeli authorities call these houses “illegal” and demolish them. The same is true of most other Arab towns and villages which continue to shrink because Israeli authorities requisition their lands for roads and highways that either go right through Arab villages or nibble at them. There is no judicial remedy for this, because most Arab houses are supposed to be illegal since the villages themselves are regarded as illegal.

Because the villages do not exist officially, they do not get such services as water, sewerage, electricity and roads. Most Arab villagers get power through private generators, making electricity very costly, and they have to pay high fees for living in “illegal houses”.

Incidentally, Israel’s land policy is controlled not by the state but by two Zionist organizations — Jewish National Fund and Jewish Agency — which were created during the British mandate. As revealed by Susan Nathan, a most courageous Israeli woman, JNF today owns 13 per cent of land, consisting mostly of lands confiscated from Arabs. But according to its charter Arabs cannot purchase the land which was originally theirs. This is apartheid pure and simple.

An extraordinary Israeli invention is the term “Present Absentees”. This needs explaining. When fighting broke out after Britain pulled out, nearly 800,000 Arabs fled their homes. Most went to Lebanon, Jordan and other Arab countries — never to return. But hundreds of thousands fled to safer villages within Israel itself. When peace came and they returned to their villages, they found their homes flattened. By Israeli estimates, 400 — by Arab accounts 537 — Palestinian villages were levelled. Thus, present absentees are those Arabs who never left Israel and merely moved from one village to another within Israel to avoid fighting.

These Palestinians have all their movable and immovable property, jewellery and money in banks confiscated by Israel. But when they petition the courts for getting compensation for property and money lost, they are told they are “present absentees” and cannot get all that back. They cannot invoke fundamental rights because Israel does not have any.

One can understand Israel refusing to compensate those Palestinians who chose to live in Europe, America or some Arab countries. But the Zionist authorities have surpassed the Nazis in loot and plunder by refusing to compensate Israel’s own citizens, simply because they are not Jews. According to a rough estimates, the value of the lands, homes, jewellery and other assets left behind by the Palestinians — those abroad and the “present absentees” — comes to tens of billions of dollars. But the Palestinians have no judicial remedy for this.

This cruelty is heightened by the fact that the Jews themselves have managed to get from European governments every single penny for the assets seized by Germany during World War II. Instead, the money confiscated from the Palestinians is used to finance the migration of Jews to Israel from other countries.

The denial of rights to Arabs stems from the fact that Israel — official name Madinat Israel — is a state of Jews and not of all of its citizens. The law of return, passed by the Knesset in 1950, throws open Palestine for settlement to Jews from all over the world, but it does not give the same right of return to Palestine’s own sons of soil. This violates international law and the UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948 which calls for the return of the Palestinians to their homes.

Palestinian homes that escaped destruction in relatively big towns were occupied by Jewish immigrants. Susan interviewed a “present absentee”, Samira, who told her that when she finally managed to locate her house in Ein Hod, and wanted to take a look inside, its Jewish owner was angry and asked her to go away. This exactly was the case with Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian activist, who as a British citizen finally managed to reach her home decades later, but found it under the occupation of an American Jewish family.

The economic annihilation of the “present absentees” is reflected brutally in the kind of quiet and insidious war that is being waged against the Palestinians’ means of livelihood. Figures that are at lest half a decade old show that the Israeli authorities have destroyed 150,000 olive and citrus trees belonging to the Palestinians to make way for Jewish settlements and parks. Jews in kibbutzim keep an eye on their neighbours and report to the authorities if they see any signs of construction. Improvised reservoirs storing rain water are immediately destroyed.

Just as the Nazis had asked the Jews to wear the Star of David, so Nathan noted that, at one construction site, Arab workers were asked to wear helmets with Red Cross markings to distinguish them from Jewish workers. In one restaurant, an Arab woman was fired because she spoke to a colleague in Arabic, even though Arabic is one of Israels two official languages. The restaurant management’s plea was that its customers did not wish to hear Arabic.

Another cruel law against which there is no judicial remedy forbids a Palestinian from having a spouse from the West Bank. The result is that either couples keep their marriage secret — which gives rise to social problems — or, if the marriage is discovered, they are deported to the West Bank.

Fortunately, a growing number of Israeli Jews are becoming aware of the crimes committed against the Palestinians and the apartheid state into which the Ashkenazis, who dominate Israel, have turned their country. Specially revealing are three books — all of them by Jews, the first one being British, who have bared the racist nature of Israeli state and society and demolished, with facts and figures, both the myths on which Zionism has been constructed and the heinous nature of the occupation regime in Palestinian territories. The books are The Myths of Zionism by John Rose, On the Border by Michel Warschawski, and The Other Side of Israel: My Journey across the Jewish-Arab Divide by Susan Nathan.