Lessons from Palestine

Throughout the period that this conflict has persisted, the Palestinians have been, have lived, and are still living the life of the under-dog. The people of Palestine have experienced suffering, betrayal, emotional and physical anguish like no other people in living memory. Even the Holocaust, with its monstrous, one-sided propaganda machinery does not compare to […]

Throughout the period that this conflict has persisted, the Palestinians have been, have lived, and are still living the life of the under-dog. The people of Palestine have experienced suffering, betrayal, emotional and physical anguish like no other people in living memory. Even the Holocaust, with its monstrous, one-sided propaganda machinery does not compare to the prolong torture and humiliation that the Palestinian people have been subjected to from 1948 when the State of Israel was casually and dubiously created by the British Government to date. It is indeed a sad irony that the same people who are the noisiest claimants to victimhood are now responsible for the greatest act of injustice in human history. In this the Jews have surpassed even themselves in the way they manipulate facts and distort truth to achieve their objectives. It is amazing that after sixty years of serial acts of betrayal, there are people who still believe that Israel is committed to any kind of peace deal with its victims and neighbours in the Middle East.

But even more amazing than this unprecedented display of cruelty by those who should know better, is the enduring spirit of the victims, the Palestinian people. If the Jews and their chief supporters, the American conservative elements were not deaf, dumb and blind, they would have realized by now that the will of the Palestinian people is stronger than whatever cruelty they can conjure up; and that the only solution to this needless  crisis is a compromise, a give-and-take based on mutual respect. Anything short of that can only prolong the conflict; several peace agreements that were elaborately designed and signed in good faith by parties to the conflict, have been blatantly breached by Israel. The 1978 Camp David Accord signed by late Anwar Sadat of Egypt and late Menachem Begin of Israel; and the 1993 Oslo Agreement signed by both Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) are poignant reminders that the only peace Israel is prepared to accept is one that excludes a free, dignified and viable Palestinian State.

It is in the light of this unpleasant reality that the rest of the world should view the latest and boldest step yet by the Palestinian people, to unilaterally apply to the 66th Session of the United Nations General Assembly for recognition as a Sovereign State with all the perquisites that go with it. Currently meeting at the UN headquarters in New York, USA, the UNGA is predictably agitated by the unshaken resolve of Mr. Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority to submit the application. Before the Session got off, the USA, Britain and France (all of them permanent members of the UN Security Council) have tried unsuccessfully to dissuade Mr. Abbas from submitting his peoples’ bid. But President Abbas must’ve reasoned, wisely, that he’d heard all that before.

The UNGA’s agitation over the Palestinian action is understandable; every member of the UNGA and the five permanent members (including Russia and China) know that they are morally bound to support the Palestinian demand. There can be no morally acceptable reason why anyone should oppose the just demand of this long suffering Palestinian people. There is, indeed, widespread expectation that the Palestinian bid would receive popular support at the UNGA, and that such support would be a moral victory for Palestine even if it is blocked through the veto power of the permanent members of the Security Council.

Such expectation is valid even if a little too optimistic, given the moral scale by which the UN judges itself. What cannot be in doubt though is the moral victory that the Palestinian bid will score (with or without popular support at the UNGA), and the political strength the Palestinians can generate from it. In that respect the Palestinians may as well begin to celebrate their modest achievement; already all the major players in the conflict are being forced into making desperate concessions: Britain, France and Israel are calling for resumption of talks; while in- between his multiple domestic woes, US President Barack Obama is chocking on his equivocation where Israel is concerned. After separate fruitless meetings with Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama was forced to shade all pretences and declare (to nobody’s surprise) that America would veto the bid. But then, incredibly, the man is calling for resumption of talks that have achieved nothing in more than 60 years!

Mahmoud Abbas must never allow himself to be swayed into standing down his peoples bid through ambivalent promises of peace deals with an unreliable partner as notoriously unreliable as Israel. If he is to agree to any talk of “talks”, it should be from a position of relative strength. At the moment, the Palestinian peoples’ only strength is their resilience, doggedness and of course the moral high ground they occupy. These are the qualities that have seen them through 63 turbulent years.

As for the rest of the world, the second lesson we can learn from the plight of the Palestinian people is the measure (not the exact value) of nationhood, of identity, of a homeland, of, if you like, a roof over the head. This lesson is particularly instructive for Nigeria which leaders are inexplicably bent on throwing her people into a state that could be worse than that of the Palestinian people. And what is more, while the Palestinians had trouble thrust upon them, we are actively seeking it out!

Meanwhile it is unlikely that many people would be surprised that Nigeria, a temporary member of the UN Security Council has given its support to the Israeli lobby against the Palestinian bid. Even though not unexpected, this is yet another diplomatic blunder by the Nigerian government. This is because Nigeria would lose nothing by supporting what is morally correct and proper; at the very least Nigeria could abstain from voting.

But that kind of complex diplomatic arithmetic is probably asking for too from our current leadership; after all if the Nigerian government could stampede itself into recognizing a rebel group in Libya which is being accused of human rights abuses without recourse to the African Union position, what should stop our leaders from jumping into another blunder in the mistaken belief that they are serving Christianity? Well for the record, all the Christian denominations living in the occupied Palestinian lands have submitted a document in support of the Palestinian bid; so if the Nigerian leadership, ever so ready to exploit religion, thinks it is serving Christianity, then it would have to give Christianity another definition. The Middle East conflict is not between Muslims and Christians; it is between Jews on the one hand, and Muslim/Christian on the other.

(This article was written 24 hours before Mr. Mahmoud Abbas made the Palestinian People’s demand for full recognition as a sovereign state to the United Nations General Assembly currently meeting in New York, USA).