A rchive Date
[ 28-08-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Palestine ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/mansur_toronto.html
Palestinians are at the crossroads
By SALIM MANSUR -- For the Toronto Sun
August 28, 2003
LONDON, Ont. -- The Hamas suicide bomber from Hebron who boarded the No. 2 bus in Jerusalem and killed Jews returning from prayers at the Wailing Wall on Aug. 19 may have also killed the road map for the making of the Palestinian state.
And if that didn't, the predictable Israeli response of assassinating Ismail Abu Shanab, the Hamas political leader, with his two bodyguards in retaliation for the suicide bombing in Jerusalem, may have interred the road map in the debris of a week of insanity.
But if the road map gets raised from the dead in a region where we know the dead may be raised as a sign of miracles, it will not be because of the endeavours of Palestinians and Israelis.
In this dance of death the two people, irrespective of being like conjoined twins, are not equal. The Palestinians are the weaker and have the most to lose if those who have brokered the road map, particularly the Americans, decide to shelve their efforts.
History always has some lesson to offer. But there is never an easy agreement on which page to read, especially when every grieving party has its own preferred page and insists on the veracity of its own historical narrative.
Yet let us persist in believing the elemental desire to live, therefore to reason, may still emerge out of the dark night of despair that shrouds the lives of two peoples who must accommodate each other if they are to prosper.
The United Nations' decision in November, 1947 to partition Palestine - which had been administered by Britain under the old League of Nations' mandate - did not come easily, nor was it the preferred option of the parties most immediately involved.
Britain, as the mandatory power over territories formerly under Ottoman rule on both sides of the Jordan River, had committed itself through the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to the establishment of a national home for Jews in Palestine. In 1922, Winston Churchill, then Britain's colonial secretary responsible for the Middle East, established the boundaries of Transjordan (Jordan of today) as distinct from Palestine and handed it for dynastic rule to Abdullah, the son of Sharif Husayn of Mecca, as a reward for the family's loyalty.
However, in 1947, Ernest Bevin, the British foreign secretary, was not kindly disposed to the idea of partitioning Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish. Nor were Arabs and Jews, for different reasons.
But the world's awakening to the horrors of the Holocaust, and its pathetically inadequate response to Hitler's design for liquidating European Jewry, became the decisive factor in the UN majority decision to partition Palestine. The Zionist leadership of the Jews accepted the UN decision, the Arabs rejected it.
In accepting the UN decision, despite the odds stacked against them, David Ben Gurion and the leadership of the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, affirmed their will to live. In the following decades, Palestinians paid a mounting price for rejecting the UN settlement of 1947.
Finally, suffering greater abuse from their Arab brothers than from Jewish denial of their rights, the Palestinian leadership indicated its willingness to take a page of history from the Israelis and settle their differences by diplomacy.
The world applauded. America opened its doors to the Palestinian leadership. The seal of approval came with the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Yasser Arafat and his Israeli counterparts, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.
But then Palestinians allowed themselves to be overtaken by fanaticism. George Santayana defined it as "redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."
For Palestinians, there can be no progress through blaming Israeli bigots for fuelling the spiral of violence, since the smoke of death suffocates all dialogue. Following 9/11, the demand on the Palestinian leadership has been unambiguous: to end violence whatever the excuse, and work with the international community to reach its goal.
Palestinians have to choose. And, having arrived at the fork in their road, the world watches with dismay their inability, or unwillingness, to end their dance with death and affirm life unconditionally.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Thursdays. He can be reached at smansurca@yahoo.ca Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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