ISRAELI AGGRANDISEMENT AGAINST SYRIA     13.10.03

By kazi anwarul masud (former Secretary and ambassador)

On Sunday morning of 5^th October the Israeli air force violated the airspace of Lebanon and Syria and launched missile attacks on a civilian site near Damascus. A day earlier a Palestinian suicide bomber blew herself up along with nineteen other people at a Haifa restaurant. Speaking at the UNSC emergency session following the Israeli attack Israeli ambassador claimed that the air attacks were on a training camp of Islamic Jihad, a terrorist organization, and not on a civilian site and was in retaliation of the Haifa bombing  for which Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. Israel further claimed that Islamic Jihad operated freely both in the Palestinian territory and in Syria which provided the terrorists with money, training, safe haven, and logistical support. UN Secretary General Kofi Anan strongly deplored the Israeli attacks and warned that it could inflame violence in the troubled region. He called upon all the parties to respect international laws and to exercise restraint. Predictably the Bush administration did not criticize Israel for the attacks. On the other hand the US served notice on Syria for being on the “wrong side’ in the war on terror. Ambassador Negroponte informed the UNSC emergency session of the telephonic conversation between President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon in which President Bush condoled the death of the victims of Haifa bombing and of the two leaders’ agreement on the need to continue fighting terrorism but also on the need to avoid heighten tension in the region. It may be recalled tat the US had been for quite sometime calling upon Syria not to harbor terrorists. In March when US troops moved towards Baghdad Defense Secretary Rumsfeld complained that military gears were being smuggled to the Iraqi forces through Syrian border and threatened to hold Syrian government accountable. In mid-September Under Secretary John Bolton told the Congress that Syria was allowing militants to cross its border into Iraq to fight American soldiers and was seeking aggressively to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. At the UNSC emergency session China strongly condemned the Haifa bombing, opposed any measure that might threaten the peace process between the Palestinians and the Israelis and strongly urged Syria and Israel to contain themselves. Britain found Israeli air strikes “unacceptable (which) represented an escalation”. Russia urged upon the warring parties maximum restraint. Among EU members France and Germany expectedly were most critical of the Israeli adventure. Germany found the air strikes as not only unacceptable but representing violation of the sovereignty of a neighboring state that would further complicate an already existing difficult situation. France branded the Israeli actions as violation of international law. The Arab countries demonstrated total solidarity with Syria and described the latest Israeli aggrandizement  as representative of Israel’s aggressive nature and her lack of desire for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.

Israeli attacks on Syria are a proxy demonstration of the Bush doctrine of preemption which has been universally rejected as contrary to international law and UN Charter. Kofi Anan has already described the new interpretation given by Bush administration to article 51 of the Charter relating to the inherent right of self-defense as a “fundamental challenge to the principles on which, however imperfectly, world peace and stability had rested for the last fifty eight years”. Professor David Held of the London School of Economics reminded the world of Immanuel Kant’s assertion that a violent challenge to law and justice in one place had to have consequences for many other places and could be experienced every where( Violence .Law and Justice in a Global Age—David Held—Social Research Council). He added that people no longer lived in a world of discrete national communities but in a world he called “over lapping communities of fate” where the trajectories of countries were heavily enmeshed with one another. He asserted that any assumption that sovereignty was indivisible, illimitable, exclusive and perpetually entrenched in individual states was now defunct. In other words states, nations and societies can be judged, scrutinized and appraised by general and universally accepted standard. One of the greatest contributions of the Nuremberg Tribunal was the exposition of the principle that in case of conflict between international rules that protect basic humanitarian values and state laws the former should get precedence. While the shock, revulsion, horror, anger and the desire for vengeance towards the perpetrators of nine-eleven terrorism was understandable, David Held argues, any defensible, justifiable and sustainable response must be consistent with the founding principles and aspirations of international society for security, law and impartial administration of justice embedded in regional and global law and institutions of global governance. If  the means deployed to fight terrorism contradict these principles then emotion of the moment may be satisfied but the aggressor opens itself to greater vulnerability to retribution. 

Professor Cark McCauley (of Bryn Mawr College) sees no especial association between religion and terrorism. He cites the examples of radical socialist groups with no religious roots like the Red Brigade of Italy, Baader-Meinhof gang and the Red Army of Germany, and the Shinning Path of Peru. He also feels that a violent response to terrorism is a success to the terrorists who hope that a clumsy and over generalized strike against them will hit some who are yet not radicalized and thereby the radical elements would be able to extend their base of support and sympathy for their cause. This is where Israel and the US continue to err by shifting their response to terrorism from criminal justice to waging war. One can discern a growing realization even among the hawks that military solution to terrorism can not endure and perpetual threat of death and destruction can only make the aggrieved more resolute to face the impenitent and ferocious regnant authority. David Held suggests an alternative approach to counter the strategy of “fear and hate” through a movement  for global, not American, justice and legitimacy, aimed at establishing the rule of law replacing war and fostering understanding between communities in place of terror. He insists on a commitment to the rule of law and not the prosecution of war; a massive movement to create a new form of global political legitimacy to confront the reasons why the West is so often seen as self=-interested, partial, one sided, and insensitive, and, full acknowledgement that the ethical and justice issues posed by global polarization of wealth, income and power and resultant asymmetries of life chances, can not be left to market forces to resolve.

Westerners, particularly the Americans find it difficult to comprehend the hopelessness felt by an occupied people whose life and limbs are constantly being threatened by the occupation forces. Late Professor Edward Said  writing about the crisis of American Jews observed that public American Jewish support for Israel at present simply did not tolerate any allowance for the existence of an actual Palestinian people, except in the context of terrorism, violence, evil and fanaticism .He found that “guilt at being well off in America plays a role in this kind of delusional thinking, but mostly it is the result of an extra-ordinary self-isolation in fantasy and myth that comes from education and unreflective nationalism of a kind unique in the world”. Since the tragic events of nine-eleven the desire to exact vengeance notwithstanding, there are signs of sporadic introspection, albeit rare, among American Jews about the logic of blind support of Israel. One anguished American Jew writing in the Boston Globe posed the question whether the American Jews would have the courage to face the meaning and consequences of occupation and open their heart to narrative and aspirations of the Palestinian people who were also traumatized and weary. Jews, the writer observed, who have a long history of struggling against oppression, of fighting for the displaced and dispossessed, find themselves in the uncomfortable position of supporting policies that many of them disagree with.

Israel’s orgiastic display of force against Syria has the distinct possibility of encouraging increased recruitment of terrorists from among the Arab youth who are disenchanted with the impotence of their rulers to react to Israeli violence committed with impunity. They are convinced that Israel’s imitation of the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack would not have been possible without the total backing of the US. This conviction is further strengthened  by the certainty of the Congress passing the Syrian Accountability Act next month which would ban a number of exports to Syria, freeze Syrian assets in the US, and reduce diplomatic and business ties. Indeed the labeling of the Congress as “Our Vichy Congress” by Congressional staff George Sunderland reflecting the Vichyite subservience to Nazi regime may not be off the mark. Sunderland quotes EU Commissioner Chris Patten’s writing in the Washington Post of being told by a ranking Democratic Senator that “all of us here are members of Likud now”. Madeline Albright reflecting on the frustration of the Arabs admitted that for years Arab population have received a distorted message from Washington : that US stands for democracy, freedom and human rights every where except in the Middle East and for every one except for the Arabs(Bridges, Bombs and Bluster—Foreign Affairs 2003). Israeli preemptive policy would only help convince the Arabs and the Muslims of the futility of expecting an even handed US policy towards the Middle East crisis. Besides not content with the subjugation of the Palestinian people Israeli incursion into Syria could broaden the area of conflict. It may also bring convert to Samuel Huntington’s hypothesis that “the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The fault lines between the civilizations will be the battle lines of the future”. Israeli adventurism will most certainly deepen the fundamental fissure in the Muslim world between those who want to uphold liberal values of democracy and human rights and those who feel threatened by these values and want to retain or restore their fundamental ideals.

Israeli air strikes are a challenge to international law and the UN Charter. Customary international law generally accept  that preemptive use of force is permissible in self-defense under conditions of necessity and proportionality. The state seeking to use preemptive force must demonstrate the principle of necessity on grounds that “self-defense is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means and no moment of deliberation”. Secondly, the state using force in self-defense is obliged in a manner proportionate to the threat. Israeli military incursion into Syria respected neither of the two criteria. If the Israeli action was to teach the “Islamic terrorists” a lesson, then at least the Americans should be reminded of the argument relating to just war made by St. Thomas Aquinas who said “Among the true worshippers of God those wars are looked on as peace making which are waged neither from aggrandizement nor cruelty but with the object of securing peace, of repressing evil and supporting the good”. But then again Bush administration which totally disregarded Vatican reservation relating to the Iraq war could hardly have been expected to listen to Thomistic argument before it fully backed Israeli actions against Syria.

As it is the Quartet produced Road Map has lost credibility to most of the involved parties. Military adventure such as the one most recently undertaken by Israel in Syria would contribute further to the belief that Israel truly does not seek peace and there is no need to heed Kofi Anan’s appeal to respond to the root causes of terrorism which Anan believes can not be uprooted by military means. Civilizations are not built upon deadliest weapons but on propagation of universal values of democracy, human rights and every thing that is morally correct .If the Americans have entered into bondage with Israel then Europe and the rest of the world have to insist on a nomocratic society where values and laws are not protean but constant. The world simply can not afford the growing cancer of lawlessness to flourish which will deny the future generations the rightful heritage of peace and prosperity.