Sharon’s terms for peace

AS a result of its first war with the Arabs (1948-49), Israel came into possession of about 80 per cent of Palestine. During the second war (1967) it took the Jordan Valley, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. The United Nations and the world community generally expected that it would soon withdraw from these territories, which would then become an independent Palestinian state. Thirty-eight years later (August 2005), Israel withdrew from Gaza, but its intentions concerning the West Bank are not clear. Let us see how the issue has figured in Israeli politics.

Israel annexed East Jerusalem, including the Old City and 18,000 acres of adjoining land, within days after the war (June 28, 1967). For a year or so, a majority of the Israelis were willing to give up the conquered territories in return for peace with the Arab states. But this willingness declined with time. A poll taken in March 1986 indicated that 50 per cent of those asked opposed the land-for-peace swap. A few months later a poll showed that nearly 40 per cent of the respondents favoured expulsion of the Arabs from “Judea and Samaria” (meaning the West Bank). A poll in August 1988 revealed that the number of Israelis holding this view had risen to 50 per cent of the population.

Successive governments in Israel have been busy creating new “ground realities” with which the world would have to reckon. Of the 85,000 Arab residents in the Jordan Valley (also known as the Jericho region) all but 10,000 were driven out during the war and their lands given to Jews. Israel established Jewish dominance in Jerusalem by demolishing Arab neighbourhoods and building homes for the Jews there, and by building Jewish settlements on the surrounding hills.

The pace of settlement building increased dramatically after the Likud, led by Ariel Sharon, came to power in 1977. By 1988 Israel had confiscated 52 per cent of all land on the West Bank, established 135 settlements, and placed Jews in them. Many more settlements have been built since then, and the Jewish settlers now approximate one quarter of a million.

The Gaza Strip, with a total area of 141 square miles, has been vacated, but it may still be useful to see what happened there. The original Israeli intention was to annex the territory. In 1973, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin proposed to send the nearly half a million Palestinians in Gaza to Jordan, but for a variety of reasons this was not done. By 1988, Israel had confiscated one third of Gaza, built 18 settlements, and located several thousand Jews in them. Jewish settlers on average occupied 2.6 acres of land per person while the Palestinians had less than 165th of one acre each (0.006).

It has been Israeli policy ever since 1967, regardless of the composition of the government in power, to deal with the Palestinian population in the occupied territories with the utmost severity. Demolition of Arab homes, imprisonment without trial, collective punishments imposed on whole villages or neighbourhoods, mass arrests, torture, deportations, and political assassinations have all been commonplace. One estimate has it that until the “Intifada” began in December 1987, one out of every three Palestinians, on average, had been subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention.

Israeli military regulations prohibited any display of Palestinian nationalism, including possession of a Palestinian flag. Use of the word, Palestine, was forbidden because, as one Israeli judge ruled, it offended Jewish sensibilities. It became a criminal offence for an Israeli to meet a PLO leader and several Israeli politicians were sent to prison for having done so during visits abroad. Palestinian access to water was progressively reduced by prohibition of its use and by its diversion to Jewish settlements and to Israel. Repression of Palestinians became severer during the Intifada.

In considering Israeli attitudes towards the Palestinians three major trends within Zionism may be identified. Mainstream Zionists are relatively liberal and secular-minded with regard to issues of domestic policy. Represented by the Labour party, they did not initially favour a Palestinian state and hoped to be rid of the issue by ceding some West Bank territory to Jordan. But after King Hussein terminated this option in July 1988, they adopted the course of suppressing Palestinian nationalism and holding on to the territories.

Revisionist Zionism, so named because its founder, Vladimir Jabotinsky, advocated revision of the British Mandate to include Transjordan, and thus enable the creation of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River. This state was to be created through violence against the Arabs. Likud, which represents Revisionism, has been doing better than Labour in parliamentary (Knesset) elections since 1977. It began as a coalition of militants who opposed compromise with the Palestinians and withdrawal from the occupied territories. It believed in “self-reliance,” which in its version included distrust of non-Jews and contempt for opponents. It has mellowed to a degree over time, but we will take that up a little later.

There is then a mingling of religious parties, ultra-conservative and ultra-nationalist groups. Many of them believe that Arabs should be expelled from Israel and the occupied territories. One of their more prominent spokesmen, Rafael Eitan, preached that what the rest of the world thought did not matter, and that in the event of another war Israel should deport a million Arabs.

Likud, the religious parties, the ultra-orthodox and ultra-nationalists differed with one another on issues of domestic policy, but they were united in the belief that Israel had a divine right to occupy all of Palestine. Yet, a disposition to make some kind of a settlement with the Palestinians, and to bring about a separation from them, has been surfacing during the last five to 10 years.

Two forces appear to be at work. The United States and the European powers have been urging Israel to take the “peace process” more seriously. Second, many Israelis are now increasingly alarmed over the “soaring” Arab birth rate (close to three per cent) and the probability that, if they are not separated from the Jews, they will become numerous enough to jeopardize the Jewish character of Israel. The basic antipathy towards the Palestinians may not have abated, but thinking on what to do with them is changing.

An opinion poll conducted by the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies (Tel Aviv University) in 2003 showed that 59 per cent of the respondents were ready to support the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. About the same number favoured abandoning all but the large settlement blocs. Forty-three per cent supported the idea of ceding Arab neighbourhoods in Jerusalem as part of a peace settlement. A slightly larger number believed most Palestinians wanted peace.

On the other hand, the survey showed also that disillusionment with the peace process remained deep. Fifty-four per cent of the respondents thought it impossible to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Sixty per cent were inclined to dismiss the American “roadmap” to peace (April 30, 2003).

Also noteworthy is the fact that in the summer of 2003, when the afore-mentioned poll was taken, 41 per cent of the respondents opposed withdrawal from the occupied territories. According to another report, as many as 45 per cent of the Israelis favoured the “transfer” (meaning expulsion) of Palestinians from the occupied territories, and some 33 per cent of them would want even the Arab citizens of Israel (about 20 per cent of the population) to be sent away.

Considering that more than 150,000 Jews are living on the West Bank, and many of them have been there for 25 and more years, withdrawal is an awesome task for any Israeli government. Note also that even those Israelis who support withdrawal do not want the larger Jewish settlements on the West Bank to be disrupted.

Ariel Sharon’s coalition won a commanding victory in the Knesset elections in January 2003. But his popularity has not kept pace with his electoral success. A few months after the election, 76 per cent of the respondents in a poll thought his government had been performing poorly. In 2004, the Israeli police were investigating charges of corruption against him. More important for our concerns here is the fact that quite a few of his own party members, led by Binyamin Netanyahu, oppose concessions to the Palestinians. Just the other day (September 26) he barely escaped repudiation by the Likud central committee over his decision to withdraw from Gaza.

In a landmark speech on December 4, 2002, Prime Minister Sharon himself spelled out phases of the peace process as he envisaged it. First there must be complete cessation of terror; next, negotiations for a Palestinian state with undetermined borders; and finally negotiations to determine its status and settle its borders. With all the will it can muster, the Palestinian Authority cannot bring terrorism to complete cessation. It simply does not have the capacity to accomplish that result. (Nor does Pakistan for that matter). There is an extremist fringe out there that it does not, and cannot, control.

If Mr Sharon’s pre-requisite to further movement in the peace process (complete cessation of terrorism) remains operative, an Israeli settlement with the Palestinians is not likely to materialize anytime soon. The same may also be said of the prospect of Pakistan’s normalization of relations with Israel if its complete withdrawal from all of the Palestinian territories and the establishment of a sovereign, independent Palestinian state, are the preconditions.

At best Mr Sharon may offer a truncated Palestinian state, a “mosaic of enclaves” as one Israeli commentator has put it, including Gaza and about 42 per cent of the West Bank, interspersed with numerous fenced Jewish settlements and roads connecting them with one another and with Israel. And all of this designed to shut the Palestinians away from Israel. This is not the kind of state the Palestinians have in mind.

Where does all this leave the man (or woman) who aspires, and is in a hurry, to be Pakistan’s first ambassador in Tel Aviv?

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

Parliament’s role in governance

MANY questions hang over the future of democracy in Pakistan, but none more vexing than the role of parliament in governance and its place in public life. So far it has played little part in both. The authority and esteem both belong to the other organs of the government.

Even in the making of laws which is its exclusive prerogative, parliament is seen to ratify the executive decrees (called ordinances) more than contemplate and debate its own legislation. The members do not debate issues, they just shout or stay mum. The speaker no longer rules, and just admonishes. Question hour in parliament which is traditionally used to embarrass the government, or shame a minister, and inform the public is hardly ever reported in the press.

The people, too, approach the members of parliament to intercede for them with executive authority but hardly look up to the institution of parliament as a guardian of their rights. For that they remain at the mercy of the executive agencies because even of legal recourse is not always accessible.

This is a paradoxical state of affairs in a society where political leadership shows tremendous commitment to a parliamentary form of government in which, as its very name implies, parliament occupies a central position. It is the source of all laws and also defines the limits of the authority of the government and the freedom of the citizens.

The Parliament of the federation and assemblies of the provinces have been progressively losing powers and influence to the extent that they are now subjected to a variety of checks but themselves exercise none on the other organs of the government. Now, even the leader of the house i.e. the prime minister and his ministers and the leader of the opposition are chosen by the president. Ours is a peculiar parliamentary government in which everything else counts but not parliament.

The assemblies are subdued because the political parties are many and weak, quarrelling and continuously falling apart. The executive heads, on the other hand, are backed by permanent and cohesive ranks of the military and civil bureaucracy, trade and industry and even foreign allies. This imbalance has aggravated, to the detriment of the assemblies, by the president throwing all his weight behind district governments. The mainstay of his brand of democracy is in the local councils and not parliament.

The members of the assemblies had lost their legislative powers to the executive even before Musharraf’s regime through sheer indifference and incompetence. Now they have also lost influence and patronage in their constituencies to the district government. Executive authority has devolved to the local councillors and the president says he is all with them in bringing about a “silent revolution”.

It has thus now become a wholly uneven contest between the assemblies and the executive heads. If the parliamentarians can claim representative credentials despite low-attendance rigged polls, the president and his governors in the provinces are indeed backed by thousands of councillors who are closer to the grassroots.

The question that now rankles is that if the members of the national and provincial assemblies can neither vote to change the government nor make policies or laws nor are able to influence the administration or development in their constituencies what is left for them to do? The answer is very little. That explains thin attendance leading to frequent break in quorum and the mad scramble of the members to acquire some executive position which, besides financial reward, brings them some power, or a semblance of it, to impress or oblige their constituents and cronies.

The financial cost of this tussle between the parliamentarians and nazims is high and the ensuring stress is causing the breakdown of administration in the field. But the people at the grassroots have not been empowered. The nazims in the districts, towns and talukas come from the same clans or families which dominate parliament and the provincial assemblies. Even the central ministers succumbing to the lure of power and patronage at the grassroots are now aspiring to be nazims.

To make the parliamentarians and councillors useful to the community, instead of allowing them to vie with each other for power, their respective spheres need to be defined. Only a clear demarcation can avert clashes and curb ambitions. The people should know where to go for relief and the officials should also know with whom to deal in a particular situation.

The powers of the president and his local councils notwithstanding, the governments at the centre and in the provinces must be made accountable to the assemblies if the parliamentary system, even in its present form, is to survive. The National Assembly, the Senate and the provincial assemblies through their committees should exercise checks on the executive actions of the president and prime minister, governors and chief ministers.

One such check could be to make important appointments like those of secretaries and ambassadors, judges and senior law officers, heads of corporations and commissions subject to the approval of the relevant house committee.

Such scrutiny would have the effect of making the executive authority prudent and responsible in its selection and public hearings would bring forth the public reaction as well. The recent hearings by the US Senate and Congress committees on the appointment of Bush nominees to the UN and the supreme court provide a good illustration of the usefulness of this check on the executive authority. The bias of the appointing authority is exposed to public view even if the appointment is not reversed by the intervention of the committee. This is but one example. There can be involvement of the committees, and through them of the people, in other executive decisions as well.

Enough has been said and done about the powers of the president at the top and the councils at the grassroots. The fact being ignored by the political leaders on the side of General Musharraf and also those opposing him is that a federal and parliamentary structure is underpinned by parliament and the assemblies of the constituent units of the federation and not by the presidency and local councils.

Wrong way in Iraq

AS Iraq moves toward a referendum on its new constitution, many of its senior politicians readily concede that the charter is seriously flawed, and that its approval may worsen rather than alleviate the relentless violence.

Leaders of neighbouring Arab states and some Bush administration officials seem to share this view. Yet none of these officials or leaders has been willing or able to stop the political process from going forward. Some, like Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, speak hopefully of fixing the constitution by adding an annex between now and Oct. 15.

Others, including senior Bush administration officials, more realistically look past the referendum to parliamentary elections at the end of the year. These, they hope, will produce a different and more representative group of Iraqis able to settle the many conflicts that the constitution leaves unresolved. Faced with sinking domestic support, the Bush administration seems driven by an unwise zeal to produce visible results in Iraq — such as a ratified constitution — however problematic they may be.

At best, administration policymakers are calculating that moving forward with the referendum offers better odds of eventual success than trying to stop and start over. Yet, judging from what even supportive Iraqis are saying, the risk is very great that the constitutional process will either tip Iraq decisively toward civil war or produce a state far from the goal of a tolerant democracy for which nearly 2,000 Americans have given their lives.

The fundamental source of trouble is not the Islamic extremists President Bush usually speaks about; nor is it the presence of American soldiers. If the protesters visiting Washington this weekend succeeded in forcing a quick U.S. troop withdrawal, the bloodshed in Iraq, and the damage to the United States, would grow far worse.

That is because the real problem is the absence of an agreement about Iraq’s future between the majority Shia and Kurd communities and the minority Sunnis, who ruled the country from the time of its establishment until the fall of Saddam Hussein. That disconnect is expressed in the overwhelming rejection by Sunni leaders of the constitutional draft.

In one hopeful sign, the Sunnis are working hard to register their voters and produce a massive turnout in the referendum, a striking contrast to their boycott of January’s elections. But the most probable outcome of that democratic participation is that Sunnis will vote overwhelmingly against the constitution — and it nevertheless will be ratified by the votes of Shias and Kurds.

Even officials of the current, Shia-led government fear that such a result would cause moderate Sunnis to reject the nascent political system and more fully embrace the armed insurgency, which is led not by foreign Islamists such as Abu Musab Zarqawi but by Iraqi Sunni nationalists.

Defenders of the constitution argue that many Sunni leaders are pro-Hussein diehards who wouldn’t accept any democratic system in Iraq and who don’t represent most Sunnis. That’s probably true, but it’s equally true that some Sunni complaints about the constitution are legitimate.

Though the details of implementation were postponed, the current draft would allow the Shias, who already control the national government, to create their own mini-state in southern Iraq.

—The Washington Post