Issue No. 613
Opinion
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21 - 27 November 2002 Issue No. 613 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | |||
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Colonial memories
In his speech at the opening of the new parliamentary session President Hosni Mubarak called for parity between the treatment of Israel and Iraq when it comes to the inspection and removal of weapons of mass destruction. The international position on Israel's arsenal is, to say the least, extraordinary. With the consistent support of Washington, Israel has become an exception to international norms. The US is adamant about furnishing Israel with the kind of military superiority that enables it to keep the Palestinians under heel, occupying their land and rejecting any peaceful settlement except on its own terms. Washington will not hear of restrictions on Israel's nuclear arms which the latter employs to bully its neighbours.
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in the early 1990s provided the pretext for sanctions on that country. But what about Israel's occupation of Palestinian and Syrian land and its invasion of Lebanon? By any criterion of international fairness Israel should be treated just as Iraq. But it is not, because the Arabs are divided, because Israel has succeeded in portraying itself as a country threatened by its neighbours, and because the US is making sure that Israel gets away with everything. Israel is above international norms, above inspection, above commitment to nuclear disarmament agreements. And Washington wants it that way.
Granted, the Arabs -- Egypt being the one exception -- have not made enough efforts to call for the scrapping of Israel's weapons of mass destruction. This is perhaps because they trust Washington's assurances on this matter, which is all too reminiscent of what happened when the British were running the show in the region. History is repeating itself, even though the exercise of colonialism has passed into different hands. The Americans are the ones now making promises they won't keep to the Arabs while giving Israel all the military and political support it needs to achieve its goals.
A few days ago, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw admitted that the colonial past of his county is responsible for the endemic trouble in the Middle East, and between India and Pakistan. The secretary said that the Balfour Declaration and the conflicting promises the UK once made to Jews and Palestinians were disgraceful. He also mentioned that the way the UK drew Iraq's western borders, following World War I, has complicated the Kurdish problem.
Historic mistakes by great powers do not go away even when admitted. They stay and fester, are bequeathed by one generation to another, even from one century to another. Then, suddenly, they resurface with a vengeance, and in an unpredictable manner. This is what happened on 11 September 2001, in Washington and New York, engineered by the fanatical Bin Laden, a man whose mindset seems to be firmly locked in mediaeval times. Bin Laden's outfit, Al- Qa'eda, was born in one of the world's most backward countries, Afghanistan, and its apparent aim is to settle historic scores that many had thought were long dead and buried.
Ironically, at a time when the Arab world seems so desperate to sort out its differences with the West and the US at any cost, Washington does not seem interested. Its attitude towards the Arabs is becoming ever more severe. Even inside the US arbitrary measures are being taken against Muslims, who are being subjected to repeated insults and face discrimination in civil transactions, universities and corporations. Moreover, State Department officials say they are now reviewing aid to the Arab world -- including Egypt -- allegedly to further democracy and law and order in this part of the world.
This attitude reinforces concerns that Washington is trying to change political regimes by force in the course of the so- called war against terror. Iraq is the first path on the US roadmap and not, as the emissaries of the State Department would have us think, a Palestinian state.
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