Soapbox:

When ignorance is bliss

By Abdel-Qader Yassine

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President George Bush's recent comments on Palestinian affairs included several astute observations. The president was right to note that, "the Palestinian legislature has no authority and power is concentrated in the hands of an unaccountable few." Palestinian legislators, after all, are trapped under military curfew. Power over all aspects of the lives of Palestinians is in the hands of the Israeli prime minister, who is unaccountable to international law no less than to the 3.5 million Palestinian civilians who suffer an unrelenting siege.

Bush was also right to remark, "the Palestinian people lack effective courts of law and have no means to defend and vindicate their rights." The Israeli army, after all, has rounded up thousands of Palestinians without charge or trial. They endure inhuman conditions and languish in Israeli prisons indefinitely. But US president was misinformed when he told the Palestinians to draft a democratic constitution. The Palestinians already have one. Late president Yasser Arafat established a constitution committee in 1999, long before George Bush came to power. This constitution provides for regular elections, separation of powers, and civil rights. It addresses the rights of Palestinian refugees, and it pledges religious tolerance.

What George Bush is incapable of understanding is that a Palestinian constitution means little as long as the Israeli occupation continues. Palestinian reforms will not end the conflict, because Palestinian politics is not the source of the conflict. The violence will not end until Israel takes its soldiers and settlers out of the West Bank once and for all.

President Bush's call for democracy in Palestine is not wrong as much as it is beside the point. It does not matter how the Palestinians choose their leaders when Israel retains the power to besiege, arrest or assassinate them. It does not matter what free market institutions the Palestinians develop as long as Israel can impose closures that bring commerce, not to mention daily life, to a screeching halt.

This week's Soapbox speaker is a Palestinian social scientist living in Sweden.