Clueless in Gaza

There are untold numbers of Israeli Jews who recognise this. I am a regular subscriber to The Other Israel, a Tel Aviv-based Israeli Jewish journal which denounces the excesses of the Israelis on the Palestinians. Unfortunately, the voice of Israeli Jewish journalists like Amina Haas is the voice of a minority. Mainstream Israeli opinion at best suffers the Palestinians. Until the Israeli Arab is the equal of the Israeli Jew, and until there is a full-fledged state of Palestine, Zionism, notwithstanding any resolution the United Nations might withdraw, will remain a form of racism. The ending of apartheid has brought reconciliation to South Africa. It is only when the wall of apartheid between the Jew and the Arab is brought down in Israel/Palestine that there can be reconciliation. And till there is reconciliation, no number of meetings at Wye River or Camp David or the White House will bring peace to West Asia.

There is a Clinton who understands this. Her name is Hillary. But now that she is running for election from New York, the state with a larger concentration of Jews than the Promised Land, she is being made to forget her instincts and align herself with mainline American thinking which her husband represents so well. Her husband has failed in West Asia because he never understood that a smile of 1000-watt charm is no substitute for justice. It is American interests that he is out to safeguard in the oil-rich Middle East, not the interests of those who perforce have to live there. Which is, of course, why he will not go down in history, as he hoped, as the broker of peace in West Asia.

In contrast, India under Jawaharlal Nehru has already entered the pages of history. For the solution advocated by India in 1947 remains the only enduring solution, precisely because it combines justice for all with peace for all. That is the federal solution: Israel/Palestine as a federal state with autonomy in their respective areas and the central government run by whoever wins a democratic majority. It was while we ourselves were going through the trauma of Partition that we stood out against the partitioning of Palestine. Partition — whether on our subcontinent or Cyprus or Biafra or Ireland — has never been the enduring answer. At the same time, we have consistently rejected the extremist Arab call to drive the Jews into the sea, a demand withdrawn by the PLO in 1967. We saw no reason why Jew and Arab could not, in the great Old Testament tradition of the lion and the lamb lying together, not live together and forge a common destiny. Nehru’s approach was rejected by the Zionist and the Arab alike. Buthalf a century on, it remains the only viable solution. Till some version of democratic federalism is agreed, there can be no end to the conflict and no hope of justice for both until they learn the Indian experience of unity in diversity.

Tragically, the Vajpayee government understands none of this. Jaswant Singh, allegedly the least communal of the Sangh Parivar, revealed his deep-seated prejudices when he asserted on the sacred soil of Jerusalem that India delayed diplomatic recognition to Israel because of the “Muslim vote-bank”. He has since refused on the floor of the House to apologise for this outrageous remark. The Parivar equates the Zionist conflict with Islam with the Hindutvist opposition to Muslims. Thus has India under Vajpayee abandoned 80 years of Indian foreign policy in the Middle East. For it was Mahatma Gandhi who said in the twenties, after the Balfour Declaration of 1917 proclaimed the right of the Jews to a homeland in Palestine and the establishment at Versailles of a British mandate in Palestine to facilitate this, that “Palestine belongs to the Palestinians like England belongs to the English and France to the French.”

It is the induction of communalism into our Israel/Palestine policy that has ended our role in West Asia. Unsurprisingly, it is the blunt Saudis who have first seen this, contemptuously cancelling Jaswant Singh’s scheduled visit to Riyadh hours before he was to take wing. What can a Palestinian make of Indian solidarity when it is confined to a donation of Rs. 25 lakh to the Red Cross, around fifteen days rent for an Indian Ambassador’s residence in the plusher reaches of the Gulf?

The Narasimha Rao government justified its diplomatic recognition of Israel in 1992 on the grounds that it would give us an entree to the peace process then unfolding in Madrid. That dividend has taken eight years to come our way. Newspaper reports claim that India was approached to mediate in the current crisis in West Asia. Vajpayee ducked the opportunity. It was not his knee but his external affairs minister who was responsible. For Jaswant Singh’s agenda is to play second fiddle to the Americans, not raise India’s voice loud and clear. When the Vajpayee government sees an Israeli what comes first to their minds is not the continuing injustice of Israel but how the methods that Israel has used against their Muslim enemies can be pressed into use against the Muslim enemies of the Sangh Parivar.

In these circumstances, those of us who have urged for decades that justice for Palestine is the pre-requisite for peace in Palestine must raise our voices above the communal din to demonstrate that Mahatma Gandhi, not Guruji Golwalkar, remains our mentor on all questions Palestinian.

India was approached to mediate in West Asia. Vajpayee ducked the opportunity. It was not his knee but his external affairs minister who was responsible.