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Theater of The Absurd
By Omer Bin Abdullah
The 56-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has spoken - promising the Palestinians their full political and financial support while meekly condemning Israel.
Its grand proclamation of support emerged from the just concluded summit meeting of the heads of states of the OIC, held in Qatar.
The meeting as well as Qatar’s revolving chairmanship of the OIC were salvaged only after the tiny oildom obliged to pressures from other members by closing the Israeli trade office there, of course without stating whether or not this is a temporary or a permanent measure.
A young Muslim American once remarked that the OIC really means, “Only If I Could.” This assessment seems to bear out in its entirety.
The assemblage of African, Arab and Asian rulers – none of them democratically-elected – made the Palestinian-Israeli conflict the centerpiece of their opening speeches. However, it is common knowledge that such speeches are more for the consumption of their home constituencies rather than having any real meaning. The calls of OIC leaders to sever ties with Israel were clearly aimed at cooling tempers in their home states. Ironically, no one objected on March 18, 1998 when the OIC foreign ministers met in Doha at a time when Qatar, hosting this meeting as well, had the closest commercial links with Israel of all the Gulf states. Not only that, Turkey had just developed strong links with Israel too, and the two countries had embarked on a course of defensive cooperation.
It can be said that their current “tone of aggression” has replaced earlier hints of moderation. However, the question is just how much of this tone is reality.
Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia – the ostensible de facto ruler – urged Muslim countries to either freeze or drastically curtail their relations with Israel. He also called on Muslim leaders to break relations with any country that transfers its embassy to Jerusalem. The Saudi threat may appear to be a brave sound bite, but the question is how much of it is real. Today, a huge American military encampment lies only a few miles from the Saudi capital of Riyadh – shifted inland after the Al-Khobar bombing. In addition, Saudi Arabia is a pivotal American ally in the Middle East and its silent partner in the ‘peace’ process, buying out the Palestinian movement. Moreover, the post-Faisal Saudi Arabia has always followed American dictates on oil production.
The crown prince’s bravado was carefully punctuated with an endorsement of the American-led ‘peace’ process when he advised that OIC states should “link all contact with the Jewish state to concrete progress in the peace process, not only on the Palestinian track but on all the tracks…” – a reference to Israel's frozen peace talks with Syria and Lebanon.
The most vocal calls for action were issued by Iran, Iraq, Sudan, and Syria – states that have long worn the American-bestowed “rogue” nameplate. Thus, neither America nor its western allies will give much weight to what these states say because this is what they are expected to say.
The call to boycott Israel also contains nothing lethal because 20 of the members of the OIC – most of them African and Central Asian nations – maintain full diplomatic relations with Israel. Moreover, in most cases, such recognition has been extended to garner American favors.
Egypt, Turkey, and Jordan have openly rejected the calls for a complete severing of relations with Israel.
Spineless Supplications
It was widely expected by the people that the Doha summit would give Yasser Arafat full support in his demand that Israel relinquish control over Arab East Jerusalem. The Palestinian leader, stressing that he cannot make any decisions about Jerusalem without other Muslim and Arab leaders behind him or without the participation of Palestinian Christians, brought three Christian clerics to the meeting.
None of this was really heard in the final communiqué. Instead, the Muslim leaders lived up to their past record of leaving it to Arafat to negotiate a final status with Israel. Ironically, the Jerusalem committee of the OIC was set up in 1975 to help free East Jerusalem from Israeli control. Today, this committee has nothing to its credit except a string of meetings in obnoxiously luxurious hotels and conference halls.
The OIC meeting did not take note of the Camp David II meeting of July 2000 where, in reality, the state being proffered to the Palestinians would be far from independent – its borders being controlled by Israel – and would not include the majority of East Jerusalem nor its religious sites. Not only had Israel taken pre-1967 Palestine – which no Palestinian can forgive or forget – it was also trying to take land from the remnant that was left over after 1967. The Palestinian economy, already in a crisis, would be even more dependent on Israel, and Palestinian natural resources would remain under Israeli control.
The Palestinian masses have now bloodily demonstrated that the Oslo model for sharing an inequitable division of land and resources – one that massively favors Israel backed by a partisan U.S. – is not one it will accept. And on the contrary, the Saudi crown prince’s linking of the ‘peace’ process to his rhetoric regarding severing ties contains the requisite subliminal message to the U.S. and Israel that the Saudis are not seeking to upset the duo’s policy goals. The 1993 Oslo Process stood primarily to benefit Israel, and it finally achieved the goal of depriving Palestinians of 78% of the old mandated Palestine.
Another indication that this OIC meeting was another theater for the absurd was when U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, a summit observer, said that the Palestinian dream of statehood could only be achieved through the peace process – read Oslo – rather than through violence.
Annan also set limitations on the summit by offering pre-summit advice, “Do we achieve peace by encouraging violence, promoting hatred, and perpetuating mistrust, or by fostering cooperation and dialogue?” This was an apparent call for “moderation” – the euphemism used by Israel and the U.S. to demand that Palestinians accept a Native American-like status – from the summit.
The question remains how many more Palestinians will lay down their lives before Muslim countries realize that the return to the old-style peace process, so enamored of the West, is futile and will be resisted by the Palestinian people who seem to have reached a point of no return.
Another puzzling issue is the unelected head of whatever Palestinian state exists at present. Yasser Arafat’s refrain of the ‘peace’ process being “almost dead” has lost its meaning. On March 16, 1998, he told the OIC foreign ministers, “I am not exaggerating when I say that the peace process is almost dead because of the obstinate and irresponsible policies of the Israeli government.” Almost three years later, we are listening to the same rhetoric from him, and likewise seeing him in and out of the White House.
The other twist to the situation is that the Arab leaders are far more concerned about the success of Islamic movements than the loss of Muslim lives. The presence of Yasser Arafat as a slavish entity under Israel – bottling up the triumph of Hamas, the Islamic movement – is a scenario that is more congruous than a free Palestine run as an Islamic state to these western-supported rulers who know that the victory of an Islamic movement in any country means an inevitable end to their rule.
The late Syrian President Hafiz al-Asad, addressing the OIC summit in Tehran on December 9, 1997, had cited Prophet Muhammad's saying, “A Muslim is for other Muslims exactly like the bricks that strengthen each other in a solid building.”
Regrettably, none of the 56 bricks are solid, and thus, their building, OIC, is also merely a house of straws more concerned with sending appeals to the U.N. than doing something for themselves.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak scornfully rejected the spineless OIC communiqué, declaring, “Israel strives for peace but a peace that will be reached around the negotiating table rather than through imposing of the will of one side on the other or through international activities.”
The Sharm el-Sheikh meeting earmarked $1 billion for the Palestinians. However, this amount has long lost its significance because Israeli blockades of Palestinian areas and the past weeks of fighting have already cost the Palestinian economy $900 million.
The solo achievement of the three-day Doha meeting was the symbolic change of guard when Qatar took over the presidency of the Organization of Islamic Conference from Iran, its president for the past three years.
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