25 April - 1 May 2002
Issue No.583
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 25 April - 1 May 2002 Issue No.583 |
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The main accomplice
Washington's collusion with Israel's mass murder of Palestinians exposes America's claims to occupy the moral high ground as utterly hollow. Ibrahim Nafie contemplates the results
The US, which has at successive junctures posed as the prime, then sole, sponsor and occasionally a full partner in the Arab Israeli peace process, has single-handedly undermined all its qualifications to serve in such capacities. The only function it retains is as the foremost partner of Israel and, as a consequence, the sole sponsor of the atrocities Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinian people.
Many explanations have been given in the struggle to fathom, or justify, the curious inconsistencies that have given rise to this position. What is certain, however, is that Washington has lost its credibility as a fair and impartial partner or mediator in the intricate process of seeking a settlement to an even more complex conflict.
Common cultural affiliations, ideological outlooks and the existence of a powerful Jewish lobby in the US may help to explain Washington's pro-Israeli bias. However, these factors cannot explain why it is so staunchly and exclusively pro-Israeli as to jeopardise its own interests in the region and its international prestige.
The US's unmitigated support for Israel's aggression and crimes against humanity in Palestine will leave a deep and lasting scar on its image, particularly in the Third World and among the Arabs. The nation that sought to promote itself as the champion of human rights, and invented the concept of humanitarian intervention to defend those rights, appears blind to the humanitarian plight of the Palestinian people. It has done nothing to stop the massacres being perpetrated against the Palestinians in West Bank camps and cities. US Secretary of State Colin Powell, for example, could not be bothered to see for himself the devastation Israeli forces wreaked on Jenin. Instead, he reiterated Sharon's accusations against Arafat and ended his tour by giving the war criminal in Tel Aviv and his occupation army a grace period to cover up evidence of their crimes.
Nor will the world forget that the US threatened to use its veto to prevent a Security Council resolution to send international forces to protect the Palestinian people. Similarly, it brandished its veto to forestall a resolution to send an international investigatory commission to Jenin, forcing the Security Council to adopt, instead, resolution 1405, creating a mere "fact-finding" committee whose remit will extend only to the making of recommendations rather than instigate further actions based on its findings.
There is no doubt who was pulling the strings. Israel made it clear that the resolution was passed only after intense communications with Washington. It further refused to have UN Middle East envoy Terji Roed-Larsen included in the committee because he was audacious enough to announce that Jenin looked as though it had been struck by a natural disaster. The appalled Roed-Larson responded that he could very well understand why Israel objected to his inclusion in the fact-finding team, and that he would present his testimony to the committee.
At least there was one US official who could not conceal his horror. Upon seeing the inhabitants of Jenin searching through the rubble of their demolished homes in order to extricate the corpses buried in mass graves, Assistant Secretary of State William Burns stated that "what we see here is an appalling human tragedy." On the very day that Burns issued this statement, US President Bush declared that Sharon was "a man of peace."
Little wonder that Washington's credibility is at rock bottom. Given its collusion in the atrocities perpetrated against the Palestinians, in violation of all international conventions, how can Washington continue to pose as a defender of human rights, democracy, freedom and justice?
In responding to this situation, it is increasingly obvious that the Arabs must stop appealing to the US to take a more active role in efforts to reach peace, since the closer the US gets involved the more Israel escalates its crimes and the greater the suffering of the Palestinian people. Instead the Arabs, whose foreign ministers will be meeting soon, should bring the Palestinian case in its entirety before the Security Council and demand that that international body assume its full responsibility towards a human tragedy that is the product of a brutal foreign occupation. That the occupying power, in addition to the crimes it commits against innocent civilians, has threatened neighbouring states for merely voicing their sympathies for the victims of its brutality makes this increasingly imperative. This will entail invoking Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which furnishes the mechanisms to counter what has become a very real threat to international peace and security.
The case that the Arabs will bring before the Security Council rests on a number of resolutions that the Security Council has itself passed. The first is Resolution 181 of 1948, which Israel had to accept as a condition for being admitted to the UN. Under this resolution, the territory comprising historic Palestine was partitioned to create two sovereign states -- Israel and Palestine on 56 and 44 per cent of the land respectively. Since then Israel has expanded into half of the territory allocated to a Palestinian state and then occupied the remaining 22 per cent in June 1967. What the Palestinians today are demanding is only the occupied 22 per cent, or half the land promised to them under the partition resolution. As Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri put it: "The Israelis think that what they have they should keep and what remains should be divided between them and the Palestinians."
Other documents to be placed before the Security Council include a host of resolutions adopted by the General Assembly and the Security Council, calling for Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories, the right of return for Palestinian refugees and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem. Specifically, I refer to UN General Assembly Resolution 194 pertaining to the return of refugees; UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, issued in the wake of the June 1967 and October 1973 wars respectively; and, finally, Security Council resolutions 1397, 1402, 1403 and 1405, all adopted within the past five weeks, and, as a whole, demanding the establishment of a Palestinian state, the withdrawal of occupation forces and the immediate implementation of these resolutions.
The task of the Arab governments, after reminding the Security Council of these resolutions, is to urge it to enforce them. Towards this end they should appeal to the UN to consider invoking Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which provides for the use of armed force in order to enforce its resolutions.
The Arab governments must be determined not to let Washington's anticipated threat to use its veto prevent them from bringing the Palestinian cause before the Security Council. It has become essential to expose Washington for what it is: a full accomplice in Israel's crimes and the first and foremost impediment to the implementation of the resolutions of international legitimacy. The Arabs must make it clear that the US and Israel are defying the entire world.
The Security Council, for its part, must resolve the Palestinian case by adopting all the necessary resolutions towards ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. In this regard it must treat Israel as a state operating outside international law and in defiance of Security Council resolutions intended to apply the law. It must, therefore, explore, in accordance with Chapter 7, means of enforcing its resolutions.
Simultaneously, the Security Council must assume the urgent task of investigating the crimes committed against the Palestinian people in Jenin and other Palestinian cities and camps. The events that have and continue to take place in Palestine furnish model conditions for compelling the dispatch of an international protection force under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter.
In short, the most immediate needs at present are to provide protection for the defenceless Palestinian people and to mount an investigation into the crimes committed against humanity in the land of Palestine. Initial estimates indicate that more than a thousand Palestinians died in Jenin alone. If this appalling figure is not enough to awaken the American conscience, then the international community must take action to investigate these crimes, the horrors of which will be exposed regardless of attempts to cover up evidence and distort facts.
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