Muslim rage against America

This isn’t about India’s interest!
Strolling along a flagstoned Byzantine lane in the Arab quarter of the walled city of Jerusalem near the Temple Mount — the Al Aqsa mosque is an imposition of later vintage — I spotted a bowl containing pieces of exquisite coral in the window of a Bedouin jewellery shop. The man behind the counter was obviously an Arab, one of the many who live and work in Israel and are far better off than the Palestinians in Gaza Strip and West Bank, although they are loath to admit it. I greeted the man in halting street Arabic and inquired about the coral. A smile broke out on his face and he asked, “Indian?”
In Egypt, the question would have been, “Indian or Pakistani?” Since Pakistanis do not visit Israel, the second option did not arise. I answered in the affirmative and tried to steer the conversation to the price of the coral, but he would not have any of it. He issued rapid-fire instructions to his assistant, asking him to get mint tea, which arrived within minutes. Meanwhile, he launched into a harangue on how India had dumped Muslims both at home and abroad to “befriend the Zionists and the Americans”.
For evidence he cited the India-US civilian nuclear cooperation agreement and Israel’s supply of military hardware to India. His knowledge of the twists and turns of the nuclear deal, the rejection of it by India’s Muslims and the Left’s ideological opposition to New Delhi forging a strategic relationship with Washington, DC, was truly amazing.
Asked about the source of his information, he said, “Arab newspapers from Misr (Egypt) and Saudi Arabia”. Apparently, local Arab sheets published in the Palestinian Authority areas had been reproducing commentary and opinion articles from newspapers published from Cairo and Riyadh. As for Indian Muslims feeling agitated about India moving closer to the US, the Internet, he said, was an excellent source of information.
The shaai was good, but the coral was far too expensive for me — I had a feeling he had raised the price after sensing my unease over his diatribe and at times abusive references to how “Hindus are conspiring with Jews and Christians against Muslims”. So we parted company after the customary round of kissing; I promised I would return for the coral, perhaps he knew I wouldn’t.
But the halt at this Arab jewellery shop was not entirely wasted: It had provided me with an insight into the ‘ummah web’ — how Muslims separated by borders, land and sea remain connected, feeding on each other’s anger and fuelling each other’s rage with the help of conspiracy theories and imagined grievances. Much of the rage is directed at the West; most of the anger is aimed at the US. As for the Zionists, if the ummah had its way, insha’allah, Israel would cease to exist.
Months later, at an international conference on radical Islam, in which most of the participants were Muslim scholars and theologians, this perception of the ummah’s worldview was strengthened as participants stopped short of chanting “Death to America!” while caustically rebuking both the Congress and the BJP for taking India closer to the US and Israel. A participant from India, by no means a fanatic mullah with hennaed beard and skullcap, asserted that if the Government went ahead with formalising the nuclear deal with the US, it would be as good as “ignoring the sentiments of 150 million Muslims at home” and “enraging Muslims abroad”.
There is nothing startlingly new about such aggressive assertion of ‘Muslim sentiments’, which are invariably pegged to imagined grievances and inflamed by perceived notions of Christians and Jews — and, in India’s case, Hindus — conspiring against the ummah. From Indonesia to Turkey, via the sand castles of Islamic states in between, the targets of Muslim ire are the same; the intensity of rage ebbs and flows depending on events as they happen and as they are seen to happen.
So, cartoons that allegedly lampoon Mohammed published in a Dutch newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, of which nobody had ever heard before, become the cause of angry street protests and threats of murder and mayhem one day; on another, jaundiced reports of torture at Guantanamo Bay, whose details pale in comparison to the horrors inflicted by the Taliban, result in violent outrage. At Friday sermons, the two disparate issues are slyly merged into one: Islam is under assault; the ummah is endangered; and, America is to blame.
It would be erroneous to trace the Muslim rage that we see to post-9/11 American policy and the war on terror being waged by President George W Bush. It is true that Muslims view the Taliban’s loss of power, which Mullah Omar and his band of Deobandi fanatics wielded ruthlessly and which saw the sickening debasement of women and girls, as a blow against the ummah and their faith. It is equally true that Muslims grieve over the fall and death of Saddam Hussein, who turned to god after decades of Ba’athist atrocities that included mass slaughter and terrible torture.
Yet, Muslim displeasure with America is not merely on account of the discontinuation of the shocking spectacle of shari’ah being enforced in its purest, most pristine form in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein getting his just desserts. It predates 9/11. Mr Zafarul-Islam Khan, editor of Milli Gazette, published from Delhi, traces the “roots of Muslim anger at the US and West to long before the illegal and unjust current imperialist crusade in Afghanistan under the guise of fighting terrorism”.
The ‘roots’, according to him, lie in “normalisation of relations with Israel”, “US role in condoning Serbian aggression in Bosnia” and “economic attrition of the Muslim world resources”. The list of imagined grievances is too long to be reproduced here, but it does highlight two points: First, Muslim concerns — for instance, in India — transcend local realities and are essentially pan-Islamic issues that agitate the entire ummah; second, even if there were no India-US nuclear deal, India’s Muslims, as also their co-religionists elsewhere, would have been equally angry with America and Mr Bush; they would have still gathered in frighteningly huge numbers in Delhi and rioted in Lucknow to protest against his visit to India.
Seen in this context, CPI(M) Polit Bureau member MK Pandhe was merely stating the fact when he warned the Samajwadi Party of a Muslim backlash if it supported the nuclear deal and joined forces with the Congress to push it through. The Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind’s protest against the CPI(M)’s “attempt to communalise the issue” and the claim by other Muslim organisations, especially the Jamaat-e-Islami, that Muslims are opposed to the nuclear deal because they believe it is “not in the national interest”, need not be taken seriously.
Unless we must believe that the Arab shopkeeper in old Jerusalem who chided me for New Delhi’s increasing proximity to Washington, DC and Tel Aviv shares the ‘concern’ of Indian Muslims for India’s national interest. If this is absurd, as surely it is, so is the Jamaatis’ concern for India’s national interest, which, thankfully, has not yet been supplanted by the ummah’s interest.

(The Pioneer, leading article, Edit Page, June 28, 200g)

(c) CMYK Printech Ltd.

Interventionism as policy

Kanchan Gupta / Essay / November-December, 2008.

Part I

US President Barack Hussein Obama’s utterances on Jammu & Kashmir, indicating that the so-called ‘Kashmir issue’ will figure on the agenda of his Administration, just as it featured on the ‘To Do’ list of Mr Bill Clinton during his first term as President, have raised more than eyebrows in India. To his credit, President George W Bush had steered clear of the ‘Kashmir issue’; he snubbed Pakistan each time it tried to push for a revival of American interventionism, insisting that Islamabad had to deal directly with New Delhi. Even Gen Colin Powell, with his pronounced pro-Pakistan bias, could not get Mr Bush to change his view and send in Nosy Parkers from the State Department to play their insidious games. Recall a busybody called Ms Robin Raphael whom Mr Clinton promoted during his first presidential term to ‘solve’ the ‘Kashmir issue’. She used the opportunity to forge the All-Party Hurriyat Conference with disastrous consequences in Jammu & Kashmir, and colluded with Benazir Bhutto to create the monster called Taliban in the hope Mullah Mohammed Omar would look after Unocal’s business interests.
With the shadow of American interventionism as policy looming large, it would be instructive to scan the past, if only to figure out the genesis of the West’s proclivity to interfere in an issue that neither impacts it directly nor does it understand entirely. Interestingly, much before the US decided to get into the act, it was the UK which manipulated events in a manner that whetted Washington’s appetite. Equally interesting is the reason that shaped Anglo-American perception and policy on Jammu & Kashmir, which does not figure in much of the discourse on this issue but has been presented in great detail by former diplomat C Dasgupta in his path-breaking book, War and Diplomacy in Kashmir — 1947-48.
First, some bare facts. Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession on October 26, 1947, making Jammu & Kashmir an integral part of India. Simultaneously, Indian forces were airlifted to Srinagar to evict the Pakistani invaders and establish India’s sovereignty over its territory. The accession was — and remains — entirely valid in terms of the Government of India Act of 1935 and India Independence Act of 1947; it is total and irrevocable in international law. Speaking in the UN Security Council on February 4, 1948, the US representative, Warren Austen, said: “The external sovereignty of Kashmir is no longer under the control of the Maharaja... with the accession of Jammu & Kashmir to India, this foreign sovereignty went over to India and is exercised by India and that is why India happens to be here (at the UNSC) as a petitioner...”.
India went to the UN in good faith after Pakistan refused to vacate territory occupied by its armed raiders. In its formal reference, lodged with the Security Council on January 1, 1948 under Article 35 of the UN Charter, which permits member states to bring any situation whose continuance is likely to endanger international peace and security to the attention of the Security Council, India asserted: “Such a situation now exists between India and Pakistan owing to the aid which invaders, consisting of nationals of Pakistan and of tribesmen from the territory immediately adjoining Pakistan on the North-West, are drawing from Pakistan for operations against Jammu & Kashmir, a State which has acceded to the Dominion of India and is part of India... The Government of India request the Security Council to call upon Pakistan to put an end immediately to the giving of such assistance which is an act of aggression against India.”
In the reference, India also asserted its right, under international law, to self-defence by initiating military action against Pakistan by way of what is today termed as ‘hot pursuit’: “In order that the objective of expelling the invader from Indian territory and preventing him from launching fresh attacks should be quickly achieved, Indian troops would have to enter Pakistan territory...”.
In addition to the five permanent members, the UNSC in 1948 had Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Syria and Ukraine as non-permanent members. The instant reaction of the UNSC was to issue a Presidential Statement on January 6, 1948, making an “urgent appeal (to India and Pakistan) to refrain from any step incompatible with the (UN) Charter and liable to result in an aggravation of the situation”. This was followed by Resolution 38 on January 17, 1948, reiterating the Presidential Statement and requesting both countries to immediately report to the Security Council any material change in the situation.
Across the Atlantic, the Commonwealth Relations Office entered the picture at this point, formulating a political perspective that came to greatly influence the Security Council’s subsequent handling of the ‘Kashmir issue’, at least up to the formation of the UN Commission for India and Pakistan. The CRO’s perspective was rooted, and strangely so, in the British Foreign Office assessment of the emerging political crisis in West Asia. Britain in those days stood accused by Arabs (and their sympathisers in Europe and the US) of having abjectly failed in its Mandate over Palestine as it had been unable to control the immigration of Jews. Britain was also seen as having failed in its responsibility to prevent or contain the outbreak of what was then referred to as ‘civil war’ (which still continues to rage between Palestinians and Israelis).
Britain took the Palestine issue to the UN in April 1947 and announced its decision to abandon its mandate by May 1948. The UN General Assembly immediately adopted a Resolution for dividing Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, paving the way for Israel’s re-birth as the homeland for Jews in Palestine and the Diaspora. The Arab reaction was vicious, instantaneous and directed in bulk against Britain.

* * *

Part II

After Britain took the Palestine issue to the United Nations in April 1947 and announced its decision to abandon its mandate by May 1948, resulting in the General Assembly adopting a Resolution for the creation of separate Jewish and Arab states, thus unleashing Arab rage against the West, especially the United Kingdom, the British Foreign Office embarked on a duplicitous and dangerous course. It convinced the British Government, struggling to cope with the rapidly changing post-War geopolitical realities, that the only way Britain could contain — and reduce — Arab anger was by adopting a policy on Jammu & Kashmir that would be perceived as weighing in favour of Pakistan, a Muslim state. It believed this would assuage enraged ‘Arab nationalism’ (which the British Foreign Office, to its credit, had the far-sight to recognise as incipient radical Islamism). A second factor that propelled British policy in this direction was Britain’s oil interests that had become crucial in post-War Europe’s search for energy sources that would reduce dependency on coal.
British Foreign Office records, including minutes of discussions approved by Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Ernest Bevin, substantiate this assessment. For instance, a Foreign Office minute prepared for Prime Minister Clement Attlee said, “The Foreign Secretary has expressed anxiety lest we should appear to be siding with India in the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir which is now before the United Nations Security Council. With the situation as critical as it is in Palestine, Mr Bevin feels that we must be very careful to guard against the danger of aligning the whole of Islam against us, which might be the case were Pakistan to obtain a false impression of our attitude in the Security Council.” If six decades ago the Attlee Cabinet was keen to appease Islamists by short-changing India on Jammu & Kashmir, Mr Barack Hussein Obama’s Administration may be tempted to do something similar to establish its credentials in the Islamic world since it won’t dare to push around Israel.
Interestingly, Louis Mountbatten, who had played no small role in steering the Jammu & Kashmir issue to the Security Council, found the British Foreign Office policy harmful to larger Commonwealth interests. In one of his reports he recorded: “Everybody here (in India) is now convinced that power politics and not impartiality are governing the attitude of the Security Council... Indian leaders counter this (attempts to dispel this conviction) by saying that the Anglo-American Bloc apparently attaches so high a value on the maintenance of Muslim solidarity in the Middle-East that they are even ready to pay the price of driving India out of the Commonwealth into the arms of Russia...”.
Not known for being tolerant of Indian sensitivities, Philip Noel-Baker, the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, was easily persuaded by Bevin’s perspective and he took it upon himself to pro-actively lobby with the US and non-permanent Security Council members to toe a pro-Pakistan line in enforcing a solution to the Jammu & Kashmir issue through a UN-sponsored plebiscite. Noel-Baker had his way with Resolution 39 adopted by the Security Council on January 20, 1948, on the setting up of a three-member UN Commission for India and Pakistan which would visit the two countries, study the ground situation, and report back to the Security Council.
Noel-Baker followed this up by aggressively pushing a draft resolution that was crafted in a manner to favour Pakistan. The US representative was initially hesitant to go along with Noel-Baker’s draft, but was soon won over. Surprisingly, at this stage the Chinese representative came up with an alternative draft that was comparatively more balanced. In a change of tactics, necessitated by his being reprimanded by Attlee who feared ‘irreparable damage’ to relations with India, Noel-Baker seized upon this draft and cunningly had it amended to such an extent that it bore no resemblance with the original draft; the Noel-Baker version of the Chinese draft came to be adopted as Resolution 47 by the Security Council on April 21, 1948.
Resolution 47 set out the terms of reference in two parts. Part One increased the number of members of the UNCIP from three to five (Noel-Baker believed that a larger team would enable a report more in tune with his perspective) and instructed the UNCIP to “proceed at once” in order to “place its good offices and mediation” at the disposal of India and Pakistan with the twin goals of restoring peace and order and holding a plebiscite. Part Two comprised the Security Council’s recommendations to India and Pakistan for achieving these goals:
i. Pakistan should “use its best endeavours” to secure the withdrawal of the raiders (tribesmen and other Pakistani nationals) from Jammu & Kashmir;
ii. India should withdraw its forces and reduce them to the minimum level required for the maintenance of law and order; and,
iii. UNCIP might employ troops of either dominion “subject to the agreement of both the Government of India and the Government of Pakistan”.
Pakistan rejected Resolution 47, demanding an amendment that the deployment of Pakistani troops should not be subject to the agreement of the Government of India. The amendment was defeated. India rejected the Resolution on the ground that it was weighed in favour of Pakistan and that it skirted the main issue as contained in India’s reference to the Security Council — that of vacating the Pakistani aggression. India also pointed out that the Security Council had failed to issue a clear call to Pakistan to withdraw the raiders before going into the plebiscite arrangements. However, both India and Pakistan accepted the setting up of the UNCIP and agreed to receive the Commission.
The UNCIP visited India and Pakistan in July 1948. By May 1948, the ground situation had undergone a radical material change with Pakistani Army regulars being deployed in the occupied areas of Jammu & Kashmir. Zafarullah Khan admitted to the UNCIP that Pakistani Army regulars had been deployed since May 1948. This was seen by the UNCIP as a violation of earlier Security Council Resolutions that had insisted on there being no material change in the ground situation.
The UNCIP’s findings and its subsequent Resolutions (of August 13, 1949, and January 5, 1948) were not influenced by Noel-Baker primarily because there was no British representative in the commission. Also, by then India had launched a diplomatic offensive as well as demonstrated its determination to force out the Pakistani invaders militarily. Therefore, the UNCIP reports and Resolutions, unlike the Security Council’s Resolution 47, did not reflect a deliberate pro-Pakistan tilt; recognised that the entry of Pakistani Army into Jammu & Kashmir was a violation of Security Council Resolution 38; demanded that Pakistan must withdraw its forces from Jammu & Kashmir since their presence constituted a “material change in the situation”; and, conceded primacy to a ceasefire based on withdrawal of the invaders.
The rest is history.

West Asia politics

A time for peace in West Asia

Kanchan Gupta

West Asia peace conferences in the past have been big media events with every actor in this strange, never-ending passion play seeking to hog the limelight. From Camp David to Oslo to Tabah, via various other places including the Red Sea resort of Aqaba, the journey to a lasting peace and a final settlement has been extremely rough for both Israelis and Palestinians, with the Americans cheering from the sidelines and the Arabs slyly digging up the road for the vicarious pleasure of watching peace-makers stumble and fall. With media making a big show of earlier peace conferences and television reporters insisting, "History is being made inside those rooms you see behind me," when in reality everybody was just being cussed and cross, great expectations would be generated among the people in a region that has known nothing but conflict for the past six decades. Those expectations would soon be swamped by bitterness and loathing of the other.
Thankfully, the organisers of the Annapolis Conference were careful not to turn it into a media circus; US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has demonstrated that she is far smarter than her predecessors and is mindful of realities instead of possibilities. When she had embarked upon her mission to kickstart the stalled West Asia peace talks and thus gift the Bush Administration with a foreign policy success, perhaps she had hoped for something concrete to emerge from the Annapolis confabulations. She worked overtime to ratchet up the working relationship between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, camping in Jerusalem and visiting Ramallah in the hope of getting the two leaders to agree on a joint statement listing the key areas of broad agreement.
In the event, President George W Bush read out a statement of intent on behalf of Mr Olmert and Mr Abbas who have now agreed to fast forward the peace process for a final settlement by the end of next year. Mr Bush could yet go down in history as the American President who brokered real peace in West Asia and solved a riddle that had tested the intelligence of his predecessors and left them stumped for a solution. Of course, there is no guarantee that Israel and Palestine will have worked out a two-state solution by this time next year. Apart from the proverbial slip between the cup and the lip, there are other imponderables that cannot be wished away.
In the rapidly shifting sands of Arab politics, what is true today can lie buried deep under a sand dune tomorrow. Hence, there is no reason to believe that the Arab endorsement of the Annapolis initiative -- Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister was seen clapping more than once inside the conference hall and even Syria has grudgingly applauded the outcome -- will be as strong after a few months as it is now. King Abdullah has fashioned, or shall we say forced, a sort of Arab consensus on a durable peace based on the two-state formula by getting the Arab League to accept his pragmatic position at the Riyadh summit. But that does not necessarily mean ever Arab leader has stopped wishing Israel's demise, nor does it suggest that the Arab street is one with the Arab palace on carrying the Annapolis initiative to its logical conclusion.
For the moment, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan are mightily worried about Iran's expansionist dreams and a belligerent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's aggressive agenda of imposing Shia dominance in Sunni Arabia. If Iran is able to achieve a breakthrough in its basement nuclear programme and enrich sufficient plutonium to make a bomb, for which it has already secured the know-how from Pakistan's nuclear black-marketeer AQ Khan, then Mr Ahmadinejad would have the Arabs on the run. Already, with Tehran calling the shots through Iraq's shia clergy, Lebanon's Hizbullah and Gaza's Hamas, there is sufficient cause for worry in Riyadh, Cairo and Amman. The Iran-Syria nexus only adds to these concerns. On its part, Syria is worried that it is getting increasingly isolated among the Arabs states, a situation it is desperate to get out of, especially in view of the Israeli air strike on a strategic target (believed to be either a nascent nuclear installation or a storage facility for Iran's enriched uranium). Despite Syria protesting loudly and appealing to Arab sentiments, not a single Arab state has as yet condemned the Israeli strike. On the contrary, there is reason to believe key Arab leaders have conveyed their appreciation to Israel. This is bad news for the regime in Damascus.
Predictably, Iran and Hamas have rubbished the Annapolis Conference and declared their intention to undermine any efforts to forge a durable peace. There is matching cynicism, we can be sure, in the Arab street and opinion cannot but be divided in the Arab palace. Within Israel, there are many who are opposed to making the smallest of concessions, leave alone considering the restoration of the Green Line or returning to the 1967 border. Any talk of dividing Jerusalem, with the Palestinians getting East Jerusalem with its Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosque as their capital, can inflame passions in Israel and bring down Governments, irrespective of their parliamentary strength. There is also the issue of right of return that Palestinians consider non-negotiable and Israelis, whether on the Left or Right, will not even countenance, leave alone concede. These are issues that one gets to hear and read about; there are others that are of strategic importance but not in the public domain. For instance, Mr Abbas is believed to be driving a hard bargain on sharing of waters, sending shivers down many Israeli spines.
Yet, both Israel and Palestine realise that this is perhaps the best time for putting the bitter past behind them and working on a future co-existence that will be mutually beneficial. The Arab leaders -- Kings, Princes, Sheikhs and Presidents -- realise that unless the Israel-Palestine dispute is resolved, Iran will prey on imagined victimhood both within their territories and in Palestine to further its agenda of Shia supremacy. Ironically, the nuclear arsenal Shia Iran desires and Sunni Arabia fears is seen by many Sunnis on the Arab street as Islam's ultimate empowerment which will spell Jewish Israel's nemesis.
Speaking at Annapolis, Mr Olmert, striking a note of caution, said, "We do not need to lose proportion... This was not meant to change history." He is both right and wrong. History was made 60 years ago last week when the UN adopted Resolution 181, virtually creating the states of Israel and Palestine. That reality can never be changed. But if the Israelis are able to convince Mr Abbas and his colleagues in Fateh that an honourable deal is in everybody's interest, and the Arabs underwrite such an agreement, then the course of history will change. For starters, Iran will be halted in its tracks.

December 2, 2007.

© CMYK Printech Ltd. Unauthorised publication prohibited.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/

Israel Diary V

The hawk who turned dove
Kanchan Gupta

The writer with Shimon Peres in Jerusalem

Israel's President Shimon Peres does not have to exert himself to be in the news; the news chases him. This past week he featured in possibly every newspaper in West Asia for "making history as the first Israeli President to address the Turkish Parliament". To thunderous applause, Peres expressed gratitude to Turkey for providing refuge to Jews expelled from Spain in 1492.
What made the event important -- apart from an Israeli addressing Prime Minister Abdullah Gul's Islamist party-dominated Parliament -- was the presence of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Yesterday's foes could not have come closer today; nor would an Israeli head of state have dreamt of asserting with any conviction that "peace is possible with the Palestinians and other neighbouring Arab countries ... in the entire region, from Syria to Yemen".
Yet there was a time when Peres would be counted among Israeli hardliners like David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan who wouldn't countenance the very thought of accommodation with Palestinians, leave alone the Arab countries, and actively propagated the concept of settlements in Gaza and West Bank to push Israel's frontiers to its biblical past.
That was many decades ago; the hawk has now turned into a dove. He doesn't tire talking of peace in our time.
Few would recall today, including in Israel, that Shimon Peres was born Szymon Perski in eastern Poland in 1923. He arrived in the British mandate of Palestine in 1934 and seven years later entered politics as an elected official of the Labour Zionist Youth Movement. Later, he joined the Hagannah, procuring arms to defend Israel from its Arab neighbours. It's been a long time in politics and an eventful public life.
Peres was elected to Knesset in 1959, and since then has been a member of Israel's Parliament till his election as President in June this year -- easily a record of sorts for any politician in any country. Travelling across the political spectrum, from Mapai (which he left along with Dayan and Ben-Gurion after the 'Lavon Affair') to Kadima (which he joined convinced that Ariel Sharon alone could deliver peace), he now plays the role of senior statesman and peace-maker, having served as Prime Minister thrice and as Minister in 12 Cabinets.
Along the road to the highest (though largely ceremonial) office in Israel, he has picked up the Nobel Peace Prize along with Yitzak Rabin and Yasser Arafat for his role in the negotiations leading to the Oslo Agreements. Of the troika who reached the cusp of peace but didn't quite succeed in securing it, Rabin and Arafat are dead; the former was assassinated by an Israeli extremist for conceding too much.
Standing outside the President's residence in Jerusalem, waiting for security clearance as a young woman scrupulously checked my palms and fingernails for traces of explosives with a high-tech gadget, I wondered what would Peres be like in real life. A ponderous old man? A pompous politician? A cynical manipulator? As we were shown into his rather modest book-lined office (lesser 'leaders' in India have far more opulent offices), Peres, easily more than a couple of inches taller than me, lumbered over from his desk, exuding grandfatherly warmth and an easy charm. Over the next 45 minutes he held forth, effortlessly, on the coming Annapolis peace talks, the prospects of a lasting agreement on Palestine and Israel's alarm over Iran's nuclear programme.
Despite Cassandras both at home and abroad predicting that Annapolis will be another stillborn affair, Peres is confident that Israeli and Palestinian peace-makers will keep their date. "Diplomacy is the art of the possible. Annapolis will not be an end by itself, it will lead to a sort of beginning," he says. Like many other optimists in Jerusalem, Ramallah and Washington, he believes a declaration of intent will be issued and the "real negotiations will start".
Looking back at the wasted years spent hunting for an elusive deal acceptable to both Israelis and Palestinians, Peres recalls how King Hussein of Jordan signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1987 and offered his help to form a Palestinian confederation. "The Israelis torpedoed it ... I believe we shouldn't have taken on the job of managing Gaza and West Bank," he adds. Twenty years ago Peres wouldn't have said this.
But Israel wasn't to blame entirely. Referring to the talks preceding Oslo, he recalls, "Yasser Arafat agreed to the 1967 border." This is not what is popularly known of the Oslo talks -- Arafat would never agree to specifics, not at Oslo, nor later, including at Tabah. Then came the rider, "Without him we couldn't have started (talking), with him we couldn't finish." Then came Rabin's assassination and the suicide bombings which made "things difficult". That's putting it rather mildly.
He recalls how he was informed, while on his way to office in 1996, of a suicide bombing in Jerusalem in which 50 Israelis were killed. "The square was full of blood ... Next day there was a blast in Tel Aviv." Peres, who by then had begun to push for a land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians, was branded a "traitor" at home. "Extremism took over the centre," he says impassively.
That 'extremism' has now yielded space to pragmatism -- both in Jerusalem and Ramallah. Mahmoud Abbas realises that this could be the moment in history which Palestinians have been waiting for; Prime Minister Ehud Olmert feels Israel couldn't have a better opportunity to strike a deal and cut its losses. "We are closer to peace than ever before. Everything is negotiable ... prejudices, differences and obstacles," explains Peres.
But there can't be any compromise on Israel's position against conceding the Palestinians' demand for the refugees' 'right to return'. "They can return to the Palestinian state," he says. The steel in his voice can't be missed -- shades of the hawk? He pauses for a moment, and then adds with a flourish, "You don't look for the most popular but the most promising (deal)."
In 1994, Peres had famously declared, "History is one long misunderstanding." Does he still subscribe to that view? "These days I recommend young people not to read history," he says with a chuckle, rubbing his hands. Tea is served by two elderly ladies who fuss over Mr President. He has a sip, thinks for a while, and then picks up the thread of the conversation, really a long monologue, but not boring at all. "There was a time when people made a living from land, so they annexed territory ... Today, existence does not come from land but science. So, there's no reason for war. Intellectual energy will fuel the future," Peres says.
If only the real world had been so easily persuaded, it would have been a happier, peaceful place. As the meeting comes to an end, Peres remembers to mention that he continues to be "fascinated by India" and how he connects Jawaharlal Nehru with 'wisdom', MK Gandhi with 'moral strength' and Rabindranath Tagore with 'love'. It's a vastly different India today, one which would find such views quaint. I wish Peres could see it for himself.

November 18, 2007.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/

Middle East Affairs

UN's favourite terrorist

Kanchan Gupta

This weekend marked the third death anniversary of Yasser Arafat, lionised in life and in death as a ‘revolutionary’ who fought for Palestinian rights. But Arafat was not half the man he was made out to be by his Arab admirers and supporters across the world, notably in India where the lib-left intelligentsia hero-worshipped this false god. Here’s what I wrote after Arafat died – it’s as valid today as it was three years ago.

New York, United Nations: Supreme leader of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, this morning strode into the hallowed United Nations General Assembly Hall, waving at the assembled gathering of representatives of 191 member states with one hand and holding aloft his trademark AK-56 rifle with the other.
As he took the podium, there was thunderous applause: The entire General Assembly was on its feet, giving a justly deserved standing ovation to the man fittingly described by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as “the courageous symbol of pan-Islamic nationalism”.
An impossible scenario?
Not if you consider a similar despatch filed by news agencies (this was before the days and nights of 24x7 live television) that made waves around the world on November 13, 1974. On that day, the United Nations shamelessly opened its doors to a certain Muhammad Abdel Rahman Abdel Rauf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, alias Abu Ammar, aka Yasser Arafat. Sporting his pistol-in-holster trademark, he was allowed to enter the UN's premises armed, and address the General Assembly which was only to happy to anoint the progenitor of modern day Islamic terrorism as its ‘favourite and favoured terrorist’.
It took Arafat a decade-and-a-half spent masterminding the hijacking and blowing up of civilian aircraft, the massacre of pilgrims at Lod Airport, targeted assassination of diplomats (including one American ambassador), shooting down school children at Ma’alot (an event that played no insignificant role in inspiring the killers of Beslan) and killing Jewish athletes at the Munich Olympics, apart from gifting the world with a unique weapon of civilian destruction, the human bomb, and unleashing terror in a myriad forms, to secure legitimacy for his evil deeds from that high institution of low scruples, the United Nations.
A decade from now, that honour could be Osama bin Laden's. If Arafat, who spent his entire life leading a campaign of terror, sowing dragon’s teeth of hatred and fanning religious bigotry in the guise of ‘national resistance’ can be described as 'the courageous symbol of Palestinian nationalism' by Kofi Annan, there is no reason why similar accolades cannot be showered on an unrepentant Osama bin Laden.
After all, the inspirational force behind the ritual beheadings of ‘non-believers’ that are conducted with sickening glee by masked Islamists for Al Jazeera's prime time evening news bulletins is as much Osama bin Laden as Yasser Arafat. It was the undisputed leader of al Fateh, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the president of the Palestinian Authority who made ruthless violence fashionable, even romantic, during the decades of the Cold War; it was he who made terrorism chic among those manning the barricades and in the vanguard of proletarian revolution around the world.
Ironically, notwithstanding his status as the UN’s favourite terrorist and the EU’s favourite despot on whom the latter showered billions of dollars in aid, at the fag end of his life, Yasser Arafat had become irrelevant – in Palestine, in Arabia and in Israel, the country he was determined to obliterate but which reduced him to a pathetic shadow of his past, holding him prisoner in his decrepit and bombed out headquarters in Ramallah.
In the Arab street he was the object of contemptuous ridicule, and not without reason: He was seen as a charlatan who stole from the very people whose interests he claimed to protect. In 2003, when Forbes published its list of the world's richest people in a new category reserved for kings, queens, and despots, President Yasser Arafat ranked sixth, bracketed with Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. According to Forbes, Arafat “feasted on all sorts of funds flowing into the Palestinian Authority”. Even as Palestinians were pushed into increasing impoverishment, desperate to eke out a living, Arafat lavished $100,000 a month on his wife, Suha, safely ensconced in luxury in Paris.
Few remember today that Arafat was not a product of the original Palestinian struggle for nationhood. Licking their wounds after their disastrous campaign against Israel following the birth of the Jewish state, Egypt, Syria and Trans-Jordan hit upon the idea of floating a Palestinian body that would be the Arabs' proverbial cat's paw. Thus was born the Palestine Liberation Organisation, headed by Syria’s nominee, Ahmed Shuqueri, in 1964. Following Israel's triumph in the Six-Day War of 1967, the Palestinian National Conference met in Cairo and the radicals, led by Arafat, whose al Fateh had by then emerged as the dominant group, took charge.
Similarly, few remember that Arafat was not a Palestinian by birth. He was born in Egypt and moved to Jerusalem to live with an uncle after his mother's death. He returned to Cairo for studies, spent his early adult years in Egypt and then moved on to Kuwait. A popular Arab street story has it that he changed his formal name from Muhammad Abdel Rahman Abdel Rauf al-Qudwa al-Husseini to Yasser Arafat not as part of his effort to radicalise his image (that was done with army fatigues, a chequered kafiyeh, dark glasses and a loaded pistol in a hip holster, immortalised by Time) but to erase his kinship with the infamous mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini whose claim to fame was his collaboration with the Nazis during World War II.
After becoming chairman of the PLO in February 1969, Arafat never looked back. Like his fellow despots who rule over their fiefdoms, kingdoms and sheikhdoms in Arabia with an iron fist, he ruthlessly established himself as the sole spokesman, the sole leader and the sole public face of Palestinian nationalism, mastering the art of media spectacle and political timing that contributed in no small measure to his gaining an iconic status among liberals and leftists.
In a post-colonial world looking for symbols of national resistance, Arafat emerged trumps: unlike Che Guevara or Ho Chi Minh, he was the romantic face of revolution. So much so, he is perhaps the only resistance leader in modern times who was able to convincingly justify recourse to violence against civilians, even make it acceptable as a legitimate instrument of struggle against occupation.
But that does not minimise the fact that it was Arafat who fashioned political terrorism and never in his life apologised for the bloodletting that his Al Fatah is responsible for; on the contrary, even in his dying days, holed up in Ramallah, he continued to sanction repeated assaults by al Fateh’s al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade on Israeli civilian targets. After being feted with the Nobel for peace, he unabashedly justified suicide bombings – after a young suicide bomber had blown up Jewish civilians, Arafat consoled the boy’s parents by telling them the “young man who turned his body into a bomb is the model of statehood and sacrifice for the sake of Allah and the homeland”.
After becoming chairman of the PLO in February 1969, Arafat never looked back. Like his fellow despots who rule over their fiefdoms, kingdoms and sheikhdoms in Arabia with an iron fist, he ruthlessly established himself as the sole spokesman, the sole leader and the sole public face of Palestinian nationalism, mastering the art of media spectacle and political timing that contributed in no small measure to his gaining an iconic status among liberals and leftists.
In his lifetime, Arafat proved to be obdurate and intransigent in the face of the most reasoned logic of peace-making. If the Israelis and the Americans learned it the hard way – from Camp David to Oslo to Taba to Aqaba, Arafat moved one step forward only to take a giant leap backward – the Saudis had to rue coming up with their famous proposal that offered Israel full recognition in return of Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state. Arafat merely laughed up his sleeve.
In a sense, Arafat managed to maintain his stranglehold over Palestinian affairs by taking a maximalist position on peace-making. He rejected each and every offer on the specious plea that it did not offer the Palestinians the maximum he desired. By unswervingly insisting on Palestine of pre-1948 vintage, he was able to convince Palestinians that history could be rolled back and Israel wiped out from the map of Middle-East. That, or nothing else, was his consistent stand. Now that he is dead, Palestine is a possible reality.
Arafat saw himself as a modern day Saladin; he preached the language of hate and militated against reconciliation and accommodation. Through a skilful mix of Arab nationalism and radical Islamism, which he had picked up during his association with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, he inspired generations to march to death and disaster. His was a life spent on fighting for Palestinian land, not for Palestinian lives.
In the end, he failed to drive the Jews out of Jerusalem, but has left behind a legacy of hatred that continues to drive Arabs against Jews, Palestinians against Israelis. It is a pity that India, and a large number of Indians, should honour such a wasted, and wasteful, life.

(This article originally appeared on http://www.rediff.com/ on November 19, 2004. See my Rediff homepage at http://www.rediff.com/news/gupta.htm )

Israel Diary - IV

Security fence for peace

Kanchan Gupta

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbours'.

-- (Mending Wall by Robert Frost)
There are pines and sycamores and olive orchards, but no apple trees along what Israelis refer to as geder ha'hafrada and those unwilling to concede that Israel has the right to protect its citizens from Palestinian terrorists call the 'wall'. Geder ha'hafrada means the 'separation fence' or, given the purpose behind erecting it, the 'security fence'. The 'wall' could mean any one or all of these things: A racial barrier, an illegal separation, forced quarantine and, according to the more radical and therefore absurd voices, apartheid in practice. In reality, it is mostly a chain-link fence that escapes attention unless you look for it.
Driving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, you first encounter the security fence in its other avatar: Flat slabs of grey concrete strung together, providing a canvas for artists who are adventurous enough to brave the security cameras, the electronic sensors and the patrolling soldiers. The stretch of concrete wall, which has been built to prevent Palestinians from shooting at Israeli motorists on the highway that snakes along but has come to capture popular imagination beyond Israel as a symbol of "suppression" of Arab rights and "occupation" of Palestinian territory, comprises only three per cent of the planned 720-km security barrier; 97 per cent of it is a three-metre high chain-link fence that crawls along the pre-1967 line which separated Israel from West Bank. Gaza Strip was fenced off in 1994 along the 1949 armistice line, two years after Yitzhak Rabin, mourning the slaying of a teenaged Israeli girl by Hamas, promised that he would "take Gaza out of Tel Aviv".
The entire fence has not been erected -- there are yawning gaps and these are causing concern among both the security establishment and the people who live in fear of bombings by Hamas and Islamic Jihad that were commonplace till the barrier began to take shape. "Construction on many of the fence's stretches has been halted and new building contracts aren't being signed. Work is proceeding only where old contracts are still in force, like around Gush Etzion, as distinct from some unfenced areas of western Samaria, Modi'in and the Arava," says a report in The Jerusalem Post. It goes on to add, "Considering the enormous financial and political investment -- from almost all across Israel's political spectrum -- in promoting the fence and the concomitant separation from Palestinians which it embodies, it is bizarre in the extreme that a Government which includes the most outspoken of fence advocates (like Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Vice-Premier Haim Ramon) cannot come up with the funds to efficiently complete the project."
There are valid reasons for this disquiet and simmering anger, an Israeli official tells me over dinner at Restobar, a happening place in Jerusalem's upmarket Rechavia neighbourhood, a stone's throw from the Prime Minister's official residence. More than 900 Israelis have died in terror attacks, including suicide bombings, carried out by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. With Gaza Strip effectively cut-off by a security fence, terrorists would slip in from West Bank and effortlessly carry out their murderous mission.
Five years ago, Restobar was known as Moment Cafe. A suicide bomber walked in on March 9, 2002, and pulled the trigger, killing 11 people. A marble plaque at the entrance recalls that terrible night. All around Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and, indeed, across Israel, similar memorials bear mute witness to the slaying of innocent Israelis, often school children, in the name of Palestine. At a bus stop, the twisted stubs of steel poles have been set in concrete as reminder of a suicide bombing; at Mahane Yehuda market, where two bombs killed 16 people and injured 178 others, memories are still fresh of that horrific bloodletting. Everybody has a grim story to tell. Eric Silver, veteran journalist and old Israel hand, shows me the spot outside his 19th century house on the Street of the Prophets where a suicide bomber's belt went off accidentally. The man's head landed in the adjacent convent.
There has been a dramatic reduction in such attacks -- barring the firing of Qassem rockets at Sderot, which is a different story by itself -- and for the past year there have been no bombings. This is largely attributed to three factors: Better intelligence-gathering, robust patrolling by soldiers and the security fence. There is considerable apprehension that with peace talks coming up next month and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas making the right noises, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may go easy on the fence. "That could be disastrous. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are waiting for us to lower our guard. Moreover, they will do anything to scuttle the Annapolis conference," a strategic affairs specialist with the Israeli Government tells me. Everybody is expecting a big bang that would force Mr Olmert to leave the negotiating table.
Israelis, therefore, believe that the only way to prevent the recurrence of terror bombings is to complete the construction of the fence which, apart from being a security barrier, is also a "key component in planned West Bank disengagement". Officials who highlight this point also take care to stress that the fence is neither aimed at annexing Palestinian land nor at establishing a border. There are a large number of crossings to allow Palestinians' free movement. Contrary to stories about long delays at these crossings, I drove into Ramallah without being asked for any documents. It is equally erroneous to claim that the fence is being built entirely on private Palestinian land; the portions that intrude on private land comprise a minuscule fraction of the fence. Full compensation is paid for private land over which Palestinian owners retain their right and if they do not wish to part with it, they can approach the courts, which are known to have ruled against requisitioning, as opposed to acquisition, of private land for erecting the fence.
All this apart, it is difficult to argue against the security fence because the Palestinian Authority has not been mindful of its obligations under the Oslo accords and subsequent agreements. Not only has it abjectly failed in preventing Hamas and Islamic Jihad from killing Israeli civilians but also done nothing to punish the perpetrators. Israel cannot be expected to abdicate its responsibility towards its citizens, nor does it make sense to demand that it should give up its right to self-defence. The fence can be dismantled; the dead cannot be brought back to life.
David Ben-Gurion had famously declared that "they (Arabs) will be there and we will be here". The security fence, which separates Israel from Palestinian territories in both Gaza Strip and West Bank, ensures this separation. It also proves Frost's neighbour right.

Israel Diary - III

Israel moves towards durable peace

Kanchan Gupta

Forty years after the 1967 war which gave Israel absolute control over West Bank and Gaza Strip, uniting Jerusalem but dividing the world between contesting groups aligned with or against Arabs, peace may descend in the land of prophets before 2007 draws to a close.
Across Israel, political differences have been set aside, at least for the moment, and there is a sense of quiet confidence in the Left and the Right that the moment to strike a deal with the Palestinian leadership has arrived. A similar upbeat mood prevails in the West Bank, more so in Ramallah.
With Hamas rapidly losing support -- Palestinians shocked by its reign of terror in Gaza are rallying behind President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fateh -- it finds itself squeezed out of the latest attempt to forge a durable peace in the theatre of the world's longest conflict. Mr Abbas is not complaining, neither are his interlocutors in Jerusalem.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Jerusalem last week, discussing the finer details of the Annapolis conference scheduled for November 26. Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is believed to have shown her his cards, as has Mr Abbas. The sets don't clash violently, and that's a huge movement forward.
The key issues have been narrowed down to final demarcation of Palestinian territories, the status of East Jerusalem and the right of return of refugees. Senior officials in the Israeli Government, including those involved with the latest peace initiative, feel a deal can be struck on all three points of contention.
For instance, Israel has 'more or less' agreed to the 1967 border as the territorial demarcation for a future state of Palestine. There are some areas which it is reluctant to give up, including those of strategic importance. But it is willing to do a land-for-land swap to retain these areas, some of which have big settler communities.
A senior Palestinian official in Ramallah told The Pioneer that Mr Abbas and Fateh are not averse to the idea. This is a big leap forward from the time when Yasser Arafat walked out of the Camp David, Oslo and Tabah talks, refusing to settle for anything less than 100 per cent - he was being offered 97 per cent. For the first time, both sides agree there are no absolutes, that compromises have to be made if a deal is to be signed.
On East Jerusalem, there is an emerging consensus of sorts. Israel is willing to give up its control over this part of the city, which is dominated by Arabs, so that Palestine can have its desired capital. The sticking point is the walled city with its Jewish, Arab and Christian quarters and symbols of all three Judaic faiths.
For Palestinians, East Jerusalem makes sense only if it includes Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. But this is something that no Israeli Government will ever agree to, not least because the Temple Mount and the Western Wall have been non-negotiable ever since Jordanian troops were forced to retreat in 1967 and Jerusalem was 'unified'.
The right of return of Palestinian refugees was non-negotiable, too. But there has been a subtle shift in the Israeli position, as also in that of the Palestinians. Today, Israelis are willing to discuss the possibilities of arriving at a 'settlement', which includes compensation for those Palestinians claiming refugee status.
On their part, Mr Abbas and his aides accept that it is absurd to expect Israel to pave the way for a demographic shift that would rob the Jewish state of its raison d'être by granting the right of return to four-and-a-half million Palestinians who claim 'refugee status'; not all of them are in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
Two ideas are being bandied about: First, Israel will agree to a certain number of 'refugees', possibly 10,000, exercising the right of return; and, second, it will offer monetary compensation to any 'refugee' who wishes to exercise this right. In Ramallah, both options are being considered with an open mind.
Does this mean Annapolis will see Mr Olmert and Mr Abbas signing on the dotted line? More important, will it be a deal or just a joint declaration of principles? Even the most optimist officials and politicians on both sides of the divide are not looking forward to a final settlement. But everybody is hopeful of a joint declaration of principles around which a final settlement could be crafted.
This would be a big breakthrough, provided Annapolis happens. Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, with a stake in Israel and Palestine arriving at some sort of an accord, are working behind the scenes, pushing both Mr Olmert and Mr Abbas.
With Shia Iran steadily grabbing space in the region and making its ambition of gaining control clear to all, Sunni Arabia has been quick to align with Israel. The Riyadh declaration of the Arab Leagur, calling for an end to hostilities between Arabs and Israel, is beginning to take tangible shape and form.
Which doesn't mean Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is worried. For him, the Annapolis conference is a "Zionist conspiracy" and a move by the "enemy to deceive Muslims". But his shrill cry does not resonate in the olive groves of Mount Scopus and Mount of Olives which overlook this city that has rarely known peace since the days of the First Temple, yet looks bewitchingly at peace with itself and the world.

Jerusalem: The eternal front line

Caroline Glick
THE JERUSALEM POST
June 2, 2009

The following is the full text of Caroline Glick's speech after accepting the 'Guardian of Zion' award. For nearly as long as I can remember, the image of the watchman on the gates of Jerusalem has been the singular image of Jewish strength for me. It is has always been to the Jewish watchmen, ever vigilant, to whom we have owed our lives, and our survival as a people.
Today these watchmen preserve our freedom in our land. For 50 generations in exile, it was the memory of those Jewish Centurions, manning the barricades, that inspired us to keep faith with our traditions, our God, our law and our land.
It is an honor beyond measure that Bar Ilan University and the Rennert Center would deem it proper to cast me among the ranks of our greatest defenders and champions. I know I do not deserve the distinction. I certainly do not believe that I have earned it. But I do know that since childhood I have strived to emulate the image of the watchman - or watch-woman - on the walls of Zion. And I pledge that I will continue throughout my life to strive to earn the distinction you bestow on me tonight. THE WATCHMAN at the gates is a powerful image. But of course the defense of Jerusalem cannot begin at the gates. And guarding Jerusalem is not simply a matter of physical strength. It requires spiritual commitment and wisdom as well. Indeed, defenders of Zion require a greater mix of physical and spiritual strength than any defenders of any spot on earth.
Both our recent and ancient history as a people is one continuous testament to this truth.
And it is this aspect of Jerusalem - the eternal and temporal front line of the Jewish people - that I wish to discuss with you.
If you drove to Jerusalem this evening from Tel Aviv, as the coastal plain suddenly ended 25 kilometers from the city at Sha'ar Hagai or Bab el Wahd, you reached the starting point of the siege of Jerusalem from 1947. It was from this gauntlet that the British-commanded Jordan Legion sought - with the help of the Arabs of Jerusalem and surrounding villages - to cut the Jews of the city off from the rest of the country and so to conquer the nascent Jewish state.
As you began ascending through the hills to Jerusalem you could see the remnants of some of the most fearsome and bloody battles of the war. They came in the form of the reverentially preserved hulks of armored personnel carriers used by Haganah and Palmach units sent in front of the Jordanian snipers in a continuous attempt to bring reinforcements and food to the besieged Jews of Jerusalem.
As the hills - covered on both sides by JNF forests - rose to meet you, you passed the Latrun fortress on your right. It was the British decision to transfer control over Latrun - with its command over the road below - to the Jordan Legion, that all but guaranteed the fall of Jerusalem by preventing reinforcements from aiding its undermanned defenders.
Wave after wave of Jewish soldiers threw themselves against the guns of the Jordan Legion in a desperate attempt to break its chokehold on Jerusalem.
If you came to this hotel from the center of town, you may have gone by Davidka Square. There you would have passed by one of the primitive mortars used by the Harel Brigade in the battle for Jerusalem.
The Davidka was grossly ineffective as a killing machine. But between its thunderous noise and the rumor mill, it proved an effective tool of psychological warfare against the enemy. Even more than in traditional conflicts, the psychological aspect of the War of Independence played a pivotal role in determining its outcome.
The Jews, who just three years before had been incinerated in European crematoria, were an object of wonder no less than hatred for our enemies. Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, for many Arabs there was a sense that supernatural powers were at work as the new Jewish state rose from the ruins of Jerusalem.
If you came this way from the Old City, you most likely walked through the Jewish Quarter. It was to the 1,700 Jews who lived there in 1948 and their 150 defenders that the eyes of the citizens of nascent Jewish state were turned. The future security of the country was dependent on their ability to withstand the Arab siege. They had to be assisted and they had to hold their ground if the war was to end in a resounding victory for the Jews.
Tragically, the spiritual strength that sustained us 61 years ago was not matched by sufficient physical strength to hold the city.
As Jerusalem commander Dov Yosef instructed the starving and desperate Jews within the walls about the nutritional benefits of various leaves that they could eat in the absence of food, and as wave after wave of Jewish fighters fell to their deaths on the roads ringing the city - at Latrun, the Castel, Har Adar and Gush Etzion - in their bid to relieve the Jerusalemites - the British-commanded Jordanians delighted in our suffering. Arab snipers picked off any Jew within range.
In the end, the Jews of the Old City held out for six months. Last week marked the 61st anniversary of the fall of Jerusalem on May 27, 1948. Of the Jewish Quarter's 150 defenders, only 43 survived until the Hurva synagogue was destroyed by the Jordan Legion. It was the destruction of the venerable old synagogue that finally forced the hands of the rabbis within the walls. After the Hurva was destroyed, the rabbis began negotiating the surrender of the Old City to the Arabs.
If you walked to the King David Hotel today from the Old City, and exited through the Jaffa Gate, you certainly took note of the gentrified neighborhood of Mamilla. Today, as you walk through the new upscale shopping plaza, it is hard to believe that from May 27, 1948 through June 7, 1967 Mamilla was Israel's frontline. It was the Sderot and Kiryat Shmona of its time.
The Jews of the neighborhood lived in constant fear of Jordanian snipers who took pot shots from the walls of the conquered city at the Jews down below. The buildings you passed were once surrounded by sandbags. The Jews who lived inside them would run, not walk across the street. Any hesitation could spell their death.
But then, on the third day of the Six Day War, their long nightmare ended. After 19 years, the IDF succeeded in liberating the capital city. Paratroopers from kibbutzim danced with yeshiva buchers as they stood in awe before the remnant of the Second Temple. In June 1967, the proper balance between our spiritual and physical defenses had finally been struck.
After 2000 years, we were again a free people. EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO, on May 27, 1991, the 43rd anniversary of the fall of Jerusalem, and the 24th anniversary of its liberation, tens of thousands of Jews from Ethiopia were airlifted to the Jewish state. As then prime minister Yitzhak Shamir said, the Ethiopian aliyah marked the first time in history where Africans were liberated from slavery by being taken out of Africa.
The entire country celebrated the arrival of these Jews, who had maintained their allegiance to Zion for thousands of years often in complete isolation from the rest of the people of Israel.
The next day, May 28, 1991, I stepped off an El Al plane at Ben Gurion Airport, and before reaching the passport check, I walked up the stairs of the old terminal building to the Ministry of Absorption's offices and officially made aliyah. A friend picked me and my massive immigrant suitcases up and a few hours later, I began my new life in Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem that greeted me 18 years ago was almost entirely free from fear. It was hard for me to imagine that the city had ever been endangered as I rode the buses, walked along the streets, sat in cafes, hiked in the forests, shopped in supermarkets and clothing stores.
As I moved without fear through Arab neighborhoods, and traversed the old and new city, it rarely occurred to me that I was walking on contested ground. The Palestinian uprising, which had begun in 1988 and had instigated a period of self-segregation and renewed hostility towards Israel among the city's Arab residents, had been defeated in the wake of the Gulf War.
But unbeknownst to me and to my fellow Jerusalemites, all of this was set to change just two years later. When, as part of the implementation of the Oslo peace process with the PLO, the government of Israel allowed for an Arab armed force to be deployed on the outskirts of the city, fear returned to Jerusalem.
Within just a few weeks of the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, Jerusalem again became the front line of the country as terrorists from Ramallah, Hebron, Beit Lehem and beyond converged on Jerusalem to terrorize its people in shooting attacks and suicide bombings. What the people of Sderot experience today was first suffered by residents of Gilo.
I moved away from Jerusalem at the end of 1991, after I joined the army. I returned to the city in 2002. By that time, the sense of safety I had felt here during my first months in the country had been obliterated. Every day brought a new atrocity or attempted atrocity. My own street became the scene of carnage as a bus was bombed just a half a block from my front door. My neighbors' mangled bodies were strewn before me as I ran out of my home with some vague notion that I could help someone.
It was only after the government finally unleashed the Israel Defense Force in Judea and Samaria that a semblance of normality returned again to the city. It was only after Operation Defensive Shield returned our soldiers to the streets of Ramallah, Beit Lehem, Shehem, Jenin, Kalkilya and Hebron, and vastly curtailed the powers of the Palestinian armed forces, that we could feel safe going out to dinner and riding the bus again. DURING THE YEARS that Jerusalem came under physical threat, it also became politically threatened. Israel's acquiescence to the PLO's military presence on the outskirts of the city began a process of unraveling Israel's own claim to the city. As Yasser Arafat ordered his forces to march on Jerusalem, and denied that the Jewish people have any rights to the city, successive Israeli governments found themselves on the diplomatic defensive.
Just as our leaders allowed Jerusalem's physical wellbeing to be threatened, so they enabled its political unity to come under assault. Rather than insist that the world recognize our sovereign rights to our capital, at best, our leaders spoke of the strategic importance of Jerusalem to our physical security.
The element of metaphysical power embodied by the tactically worthless Davidka was absent from discussions of how Israel needed Tzur Bahar and Jabel Mukaber to defend Armon HaNatziv or how our control over Shuafat and Beit Hanina is necessary to defend Ramot, Neve Yaakov and Pisgat Zeev.
Happily today Prime Minister ISRAEL TRANSFORMED. In 1967, the convergence of Jerusalem as our frontline of physical security and spiritual security was palpable. Binyamin Netanyahu and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat have abandoned this defensive posture and are waging strident campaigns against all who demand that we again surrender our eternal capital.
But for much of the past 15 years, the full expanse of Jewish history and identity was narrowed to a discussion of isolated neighborhoods, as if they were what this is all about.
Jerusalem's importance is far greater than the sum total of its neighborhoods. In ignoring this basic truth, our leaders did more to imperil the city's neighborhoods than legions of our enemies could hope to accomplish.
Even more devastating than what we said to the world is what we said to ourselves. For much of the past 15 years, our national leaders scornfully and contemptuously worked to limit our expectations and accused us of being greedy for assuming we had a right to our capital.
When did King David live in Abu Dis?, they sneered. Why were we needlessly upsetting the Arabs by moving back to Ir David?, they hissed. The underlying message was clear. We were provoking our enemies by asserting our rights, which we were told, were unimportant.
In general, since 1994, to greater and lesser degrees, our leaders abandoned Jerusalem as our metaphysical frontline and reduced the rationale of our control over our eternal capital to a security argument.
This argument is fine for as far is it goes. We explained - correctly - that without Israeli control over Jerusalem, the entire country would be under threat. And this is true. Indeed it has always been true.
Among other reasons, King David chose Jerusalem as his capital city because of its strategic importance. Were foreign forces to take control over Jerusalem and surrounding areas today, everything from Ben Gurion Airport to Tel Aviv to Beersheva to Tiberias would be placed under threat.
As Shaar Hagai in 1948 and Beit Jalla in 2000 showed, with foreign forces on the outskirts of the city, Jerusalem is cut off from the rest of the country. To secure the city is to secure the country. And to abandon the city - whether by surrendering control of the road to Tel Aviv or by relinquishing Judea and Samaria - is to imperil the country.
Specifically, placing foreign forces in Jerusalem or on its doorstep would mean importing Gaza into the heart of the country.
Jerusalemites would find ourselves living in bomb shelters like our brothers and sisters in Sderot. Tel Aviv would find itself, like Ofakim, within range of enemy rockets. Terrorists with simple portable weapons could sit on the hills of Jerusalem and shoot down civilian jetliners landing at Ben Gurion airport. In wartime, terrorists with primitive artillery could shut down the country's vital traffic arteries, preventing reservists from reaching the fronts to defend the state.
Although inarguably accurate, Israel's security arguments for its sovereignty over Jerusalem have fallen on deaf ears. Neither the Americans - who demand that we cease asserting our sovereignty over eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem, not to mention Judea and Samaria - nor the Arabs consider Jerusalem primarily a military issue.
The Americans prefer to ignore the metaphysical and spiritual aspects of the city's frontline status as they push for an Israeli retreat to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines. For them, the issue of Jerusalem is no more than a petty real estate squabble.
But our enemies know better. For them the question of who controls Jerusalem is rightly recognized as the core issue - as the issue upon which Israel rises or falls as a state and as a people. Earlier this month, this point was made clearly by one of Israelís sworn enemies.
In a television interview on May 7, the PLO's Ambassador to Lebanon Abbas Zaki explained that from the PLO to the Iranian mullahs, Jerusalem is seen as the metaphysical key to Israel's wellbeing. As he put it, "With the [implementation of the] two-state solution, [involving an Israeli relinquishment of Jerusalem], in my opinion, Israel will collapse, because if they get out of Jerusalem, what will become of all the talk about the Promised Land and the Chosen People? What will become of all the sacrifices they made - just to be told to leave? They consider Jerusalem to have a spiritual status. The Jews consider Judea and Samaria to be their historic dream. If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse. It will regress of its own accord. Then we will move forward."
As a wayward Jew once said, "The truth will set you free."
We owe the likes of Zaki - and the Iranians who call their most prestigious terrorist unit the Jerusalem Brigade - a big thank you for reminding us of who we are and what we need to survive. For even as our leaders tried to forget what we as a people have always known, our history - both ancient and modern - is testament to the truth of Zaki's statement. WE MARK the end of Jewish control over the Land of Israel as having occurred not with the Roman invasion in 63 BCE, nor from the defeat of Bar Kochba's rebellion 182 years later in 135. We mark the hurban, the destruction of our sovereignty, as having occurred with the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE.
And why is this the case? It is because people do not fight for strategically significant hilltops. They fight for ideas like freedom. They fight for symbols, for abstractions like flags. They fight for their beliefs. They fight for their way of life.
They do not fight for strategic advantage.
We Jews know this better than any other people. We were the first people to self-consciously define ourselves at Mt. Sinai as a nation committed to an abstract principle of an invisible God, an abstract code of law, and an abstract, yet-to-be-seen promised land.
Josef Trumpeldor is not remembered as a great hero for having said, "It is good to die for strategically significant hilltops" - although that is what he died defending. Trumpeldor is remembered as a great hero for declaring, "It is good to die for our country."
Just as Zaki, Arafat, Nasrallah, and Ahmadinejad remind us every day, from the outset of our nationhood here in Israel 4,000 years ago, throughout the centuries of our dispersion and to this day, our fate as a nation - both physically and spiritually - has always been tied directly to our control, or lack of control over Jerusalem. Jerusalem has always been our front line both physically and spiritually.
Rabbi Akiva knew, as he gazed at the destroyed Temple from Mt. Scopus, that one day our control over the city would be restored and so our national wellbeing would be renewed. This is why he laughed as he watched foxes entering and exiting the Holiest of Holies.
Perhaps if he had known then that it would take nearly 2,000 years for that to happen, he would have joined his colleagues in their tears instead of shocking them with his laughter and gaiety. But still, today we know that Rabbi Akiva was right. Our return to Jerusalem did presage our national rebirth with the renewal of our sovereignty in 1948 and 1967.
The modern Zionist movement, which officially began with Hovevei Tzion in 1882, came after the Jewish repopulation of Jerusalem. By 1850, Jews again comprised the majority of the city's population. And it was our strong presence here that emboldened the early Zionists to believe that a mass return to Zion was finally possible. It was because we had returned again to Jerusalem that our hope and so our strength were finally renewed after 2000 years of stateless wandering and persecution. LET US RETURN for a moment to 1967.
In June 1967, Israel was transformed from a threatened, vulnerable Jewish statelet into a mighty state to be reckoned with. But who celebrated - then or since - the conquest of Gaza and Kalkilya? Who remembers the great battles in the Sinai or even the Golan Heights?
The images of that war that have entered our collective consciousness - never to leave - are the images of our paratroopers on the Temple Mount, of Mota Gur crying "Har Habayit b'Yadeinu!" "the Temple Mount is in our hands!," of our young soldiers praying at the Western Wall.
The convergence of Jerusalem as our frontline of physical security and spiritual security was palpable in those days.
In honor of Yom Yerushalayim this month, a documentary was aired on Israel Television about the signals battalion in the Paratroopers Brigade. The battalion played a major role in the fighting - first taking over the Rockefeller Museum, then the Temple Mount, then the Kotel, then the walls of the city.
In the documentary, the heroes who liberated Jerusalem were brought together 40 years later to celebrate its renewal and to recall their fight. They told a stunning story.
After the city was liberated, they situated themselves in the abandoned Jordanian police station just inside the Jaffa Gate. The same station now houses the Israel police. In one of the rooms, they found a large quantity of musical instruments. Apparently, the Jordanian police band was stationed at the site and stored its instruments there.
The men took one of the drums and climbed up the walls of the Old City overlooking Mamilla. There the Jews had been huddled beneath the streets in their bomb shelters for several weeks.
As they ascended the walls, the paratroopers began pounding the drum. It must have been a terrifically strange noise since they all claimed to have had no idea how to play the drums.
As the men told it, and as a woman who had been hiding in the shelters with her family recalled, the civilians became perplexed at the new sound that replaced the familiar staccato pop of gun bursts and cannon fire. Slowly, they began emerging from the shelters to find out what was happening.
There above them, they saw the flag of Israel flying. They saw Jewish watchmen on the walls, beating the drums of victory in a half-mad boom, boom, boom.
And at the site of the Guardians of Jerusalem above them, the Jews of Mamilla began to dance as in times of old. They danced and danced, and walked to the walls, first tentatively, and then with a massive convulsion of joy and relief, of hope and ecstasy as for the first time in 2,000 years the city was secured. The Jews were free of fear as we returned to the Temple Mount, to Mt. Zion, to Jerusalem from whence our strength was renewed. OUR ENEMIES are right in choosing their targets. They are right because they know who we are. We are the children of Jerusalem, of Zion. Our physical and spiritual survival is dependent on our willingness to dedicate our lives in every generation to guarding both the physical and spiritual walls of this city. It is only by guarding Zion, that we guard its people.
I am humbled and honored beyond words to have been chosen from among so many of my fellow Jews for this singular honor of being named a "Guardian of Zion." For me, more than anything, what this means, is that people I respect for their defense of our people accept me as a loyal daughter of this eternal city. It is all I have ever wished to be. It is all I wish for my children to become.
And with God's help, it is something I will be blessed to remain all the days of my life.
Thank you. God bless the people of Israel and our eternal capital city.