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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 579
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WCL 579 Mar 2008
Words and truth in Palestine
It was revealing this week to hear two antagonists arguing about the most recent fighting over the Gaza strip. First an Israeli minister declared that the forces which had killed 100 or more people had no other recourse. "We had to do it to stop the rockets that Hamas was landing on our towns." In return, the Hamas spokesman was unrepentant. "We have to do this to defend ourselves." This is cloud-cuckoo land.
The pair were simply in error or lying or both. The action by the rocketeers was not defence, but retaliation. It defended no one. And the Israeli troop incursion did not and does not stop the rockets falling. So whatever the rights and wrongs of the dispute, both sides are determined to mire the argument in falsehoods from the beginning. These in turn inevitably diminish the possibility of agreement or moves to solve the dispute.
Sixty-plus years from the crucial days of the first Arab-Israeli war, we can survey a plethora of similar misleading and often deceitful statements. Only by reverting to a few basic facts, however unpalatable to one or both sides, can there be the faintest chance of securing agreement between the disputants: agreement of any sort, let alone the solutions that are needed. But for the sake of both sides - and the peace of the region, if no further, such agreement is desperately needed. Yet neither side wishes to return to fundamentals, preferring instead to cling to their supposed moral strengths.
After quarrels, disputes and bad feeling, war broke out after the United Nations, perhaps unwisely or unfairly, set up a sovereign state on Arab territory. That then became, right or wrong the fact established in international law. It could only be legitimately challenged in the World Court or by a new Security Council decision. Neither of those looks remotely possible and so one must consider the further United Nations resolutions that have ignored for decades. Principally these required Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied after the 1967 war.
These two United Nations positions need to be accepted openly by all parties to the Arab-Israeli dispute about Palestine and then explicitly stated as the basis of renewed negotiations. Not because they are ideal, but because they still constitute a legal basis - probably the only possible basis - for a settlement. Without such an agreement and a simple starting-point, the accumulated lies, half-lies and propaganda from the past 60 years will continue to prevent any progress whatsoever.
John Roberts
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