QUO VADIS MIDDLE EAST                                    25.03.04

By Kazi Anwarul Masud (former Secretary and ambassador)

British daily Financial Times described Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as an “extremely stupid action”. Even the Telegraph—a steadfast supporter of Israel—felt that the assassination “looks like a serious mistake”. Berlin based Die Welt wrote that the Sheikh’s violent death has forced moderate Palestinians into false solidarity with the Hamas while a Munich based paper called it a politically stupid action. Cologne’s Stadt Anzeiger wrote that any one that uses the state-of-the-art weapons technology to kill a paralyzed wheel chair bound man on an open street can no longer claim that this is legitimate self-defense against terrorists. New York Times failed to see how the martyrdom of Sheikh Yassin would make Israel any safer. The paper feared that the killing would redouble the efforts of Hammas to avenge Sheikh Yassin’s death, and that the US war on terror may suffer as moderate Arab states would feel compelled to distance themselves from the US.

While the Arab and the Muslim world have understandably voiced strong condemnation of the murder of Sheikh Yassin seen as a continuation of Israeli policy to decapitate the Palestinian leadership and to terrorize the Palestinian population; saner Western leaders have also condemned Israeli act of murder. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw condemning the assassination found the act unacceptable, unjustified and unlikely to achieve its objective. UNSG Kofi Anan strongly condemned the killing and reiterated that extra-judicial killings were against international law and would not help the search for a peaceful resolution of the Middle East crisis. The Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions of the UN Human Rights was “aghast at the planned and deliberate extrajudicial execution of Sheikh Yassin”. She expressed her deepest concerns over the use of brute force which would lead to escalating violence and urged the Israeli government not to resort to “targeted shootings” against civilian population. UNSC open debate on the assassination brought to the fore once again the Bush administration’s bias in favor of Israel.

Europe and the US once again appear divided on the question of terrorism .US ambassador Negroponte’s refusal to vote for the Algerian resolution in the UNSC denouncing Israel for the murder of Sheikh Yassin unless his role as Hamas spiritual leader and thereby describing him as a terrorist was mentioned in the draft resolution was to force the Council members to lend a sort of credibility to the Israeli policy of assassination. Negroponte’s description of Sheikh Yassin as a preacher of hatred, glorifier of suicide bombers, and as a saboteur  of two state solution of the Palestine issue evades the basic question as to why a paralyzed wheel chair bound old man could command the respect and loyalty of so many Palestinians. It has been alleged that Israel could not have pursued its genocidal policy in Palestine without the logistical support of the US military and intelligence and political support of the American political and media establishments. Washington Post( in August 2001) ran op-ed on three successive days labeling the Palestinians as inveterate terrorists and urging Israel to annihilate Palestinian Authority and build a Berlin type wall to keep the Arab population in permanent subjugation. Michael Kelly urged Israel to unleash overwhelming force “to destroy, kill, capture, and expel the armed Palestinians”, Charles Krauthammer advised a “lightening and massive Israeli attack on every element of Arafat’s police infrastructure”, and George Will prescribed “a short war and a high wall” for Israel.

It is interesting to note that ever since the six days war Israel has been trying to solve the dilemma as to how to keep both the occupied lands and their resources without taking any responsibility for the governance of the people living in the occupied lands. Particularly after the collapse of the Camp David negotiations at the fag end of the Clinton administration Israel has been pursuing a course of military aggression and provocation calculated to arouse Palestinian retaliation which is then used as a pretext for the  assassination of Palestinian leaders. Even a cursory glance at the lives of Menachem Begin, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon would suffice to establish the premise that political assassination has long been an established policy of successive Israeli governments.

At this point one may wish to enquire into the legality of assassination as a tool of state craft. Emmerich de Vattel described assassination as “treacherous murder”. Hague Convention IV described treachery as feigning a desire to negotiate a truce and then resorting to murder. Hugo Grotius, the father of international law, abhorred assassination by treacherous means. It is now common knowledge that President Reagan had codified President Ford’s executive order prohibiting any person employed or acting on behalf of the US government to engage in or to conspire to engage in assassination. Perhaps till Clinton administration such restriction was respected. It is not known whether as a result of nine-eleven terrorist attacks US policy on assassination of foreign leaders had changed. One can, however, argue that terrorists and non-state actors who fall under the category of “illegal combatants” are denied the benefits granted to legal combatants under the Geneva Convention on War. It appears from the discussions of the on-going deliberations of the National Commission investigating the September 11 attacks that assassination of Osama bin Laden was considered. Here one must make a distinction between bin Laden and Sheikh Yassin. The war against Al-Qaida (and terror) of which bin Laden is a part and parcel has been sanctioned by the world. But the assassination of Sheikh Yassin is not morally or legally defensible .Nelson Mandela and Jomo Kenyatta were once branded as “terrorists” but later garlanded as savior of their people. History is replete with such dichotomous contrasts. According to the noted writer Ziuddin Sardar( Development and the locations of Eurocentrism) the real powers of the West is not located in its economic muscle or technological might; rather in its power to define , for example, freedom progress and civil behavior, law, tradition and community, what is real and what it means to be human. The non-Western civilization, adds Ziauddin Sardar, have simply to accept these definitions or be defined out of existence. Sardar’s assertion is relevant here because the definition to the character and personality of Sheikh Yassin given by the US for the benefit of its client state Israel was the most important determinant of his fate and those of many others before him who were awarded the “ultimate penalty” and many others who may follow. Madrid bombing, notwithstanding its monstrosity and the terrible pain inflicted upon the European psyche, should have been another wake up call to end the cycle of violence. Historian Bernard Lewis is prescient in his observation that while the West must defend itself against terrorism by whatever means will be efficient, it will surely be useful to understand the forces that drive them( The crisis of Islam-2003).

That the impact of the assassination on the implementation of the Quartet Road Map will be devastating is to state the obvious. As a result of Sheikh Yassin’s assassination Palestinian Authority will find it almost impossible to dissuade the Hamas from taking revenge. Moderate Arab states, already jittery from Bush administration’s missionary zeal to “democratize” the Arab world, will be hesitant to embrace the American approach because the Arabs, in particular the youth, find American blind support to Israel as a betrayal of their loyalty to the US. The Western calculation that Iran’s clerical problem will solve itself due to the demographic pressure of sixty percent youth population who owe little allegiance to the clerical supremacy may prove to be wrong when young Iranians see such flagrant violation of a most basic human right to live go unpunished. Is the so-called “security” of Israel (possessing undeclared number of nuclear weapons) “threatened” by Arab states( who have already assured Israel its right to exist and can do nothing to undo it any way) be so important to the West that it should refuse to recognize the  widening gulf between the Islamic and the Christian worlds?

Often Bush administration’s public diplomacy remains inexplicable and appears to be dictated by short term goals e.g. awarding Pakistan with non-NATO ally status ignoring the realities of the Asia-Pacific region. It is because of such sudden foreign policy moves by the US that Europe could consider to bring about some semblance of maturity in the conduct of the Western foreign and defense policies. However heart rending it may be Schindler’s List should not be allowed to be the sole determinant of the fate of the as yet evolving world.