An older covenant

Engagement with Israel may well be a political and economic compulsion, but we will lose face with the international community if we let down our Arab friends

SAID HAMLET: "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a God!" This is half the truth. If you wish to know the other half, turn to Palestine where the people’s urge for freedom and independence is trampled upon by the Israel government. Today, Israel’s legitimacy as a nation state is not in question, but its military occupation and the denial of basic human rights to the Palestinian people.

The inescapable fact is that Israel, having illegally occupied territories and violated numerous UN resolutions, is eminently qualified to be a "rogue" state. The stark and painful reality is that the Jewish people, having been brutalised by the Nazi regime in Germany, have not learnt their lessons from history — the virtues of religious tolerance and the futility of fanatical beliefs. Instead of realising that the continuation of Arab-Israel conflict is disastrous to both, and that the gain to both to be derived from concord is one of immeasurable magnitude, rulers in Tel Aviv have unleashed a reign of terror in the territories they have occupied since 1967.

Yet so few are moved by the live images of Palestinian mothers mourning the death of their youthful children, by the destruction of homes, and the dispossession and displacement of thousands of people. Though Israeli soldiers and warplanes continue to mow down Palestinian youth with the hope of ultimately reducing the other side to impotence, the international community is quietened by the weight of Israel/Jewish propaganda. Major powers act in unison against Iran and Iraq, but Israel’s outrageous conduct is not even mildly censured. Arab governments, having vacated the moral ground they once occupied, have also abandoned the beleaguered Palestinians. Strange are the ways of the world we inhabit.

Cynical observers way well argue that India, tied to a globalised economy and poised for a major economic breakthrough, should eschew involvement in the Israel-Palestinian imbroglio. Such a myopic view needs to be contested. It is true that, in the realm of foreign policy, India must demonstrate a modicum of flexibility and common sense. At the same time a nation staking its claims in the comity of nations, including a berth on the UN Security Council, needs to take a resolute stand against Zionisation, the belligerence of ultra orthodox groups in Israel, and the ill treatment of minorities, notably the Palestinians, by their government. The old shibboleths of the Cold War are shorn of meaning and significance, and yet there is still some space, despite the premature demise of the non-aligned movement, for principled positions in international affairs.

For these reasons Yasser Arafat’s recent letter to the Indian prime minister, in which he has urged India to use its weight and influence for resolving tensions in West Asia, is timely. Admittedly, the Government of India cannot broker a peace deal in West Asia. Yet it is possible for us to take the position that the situation requires a different line of conduct, no longer governed by the motives of the contest for power, but by motives appealing to the common welfare and the common interests of the rival parties. Above all, the foreign minister must join hands with his like-minded counterparts in other countries to ask for a change of mood and a change of aim in Israel’s policies towards the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. After all, it is no longer possible for the Jewish people, or some of them, to desire a world containing no Palestinians. We will do well to recall our long-standing moral and ideological commitment to the Palestinian cause. Is it now the case that our national interests conflict with that covenant?

The Arabs have been our natural allies, a point underlined by Arafat, and it would be a mistake to abandon them in preference to a regime that wields the big stick to humble its neighbours. Engagement with Israel may well be a political and economic compulsion even though it is playing such an incredibly dangerous game, and yet we will lose face with the international community if we let down our Arab friends in their hour of peril.

Jawaharlal Nehru, who had prophesied that Arab nationalism would not be crushed, maintained long ago "that Palestine is essentially an Arab country, and must remain so, and the Arabs must not be crushed and suppressed in their own homelands." Gandhi, too, talked about the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany but argued that a solution to their problems did not lie in founding a homeland in Palestine: that land in his view belonged to the Arabs. "You see I have come out of my shell and begun to speak to Europe," the Mahatma wrote to C.F. Andrews in October 1938.

Let us not forget that leaders of the Indian national movement were not just concerned with the country’s independence but with freedom struggles all over the world. During the inter-war years, in particular, home and international affairs were closely intertwined. The Spanish Civil War — a battle between fascism and democracy in Europe — dominated the attention of the Congress party. The gates of Madrid had become the symbols of human liberty, Nehru organised the collection of funds to send foodgrains from India and an ambulance unit.

Nehru’s initial interest in international affairs, kindled as early as 1927, a good 20 years prior to independence, developed in the 1950s around two vital issues — decolonisation and disarmament. To him, both of these issues had pragmatic and moral components to them. Thus he campaigned for the abolition of nuclear weaponry — "these frightful engines of destruction" — because the emergent arms race between the superpowers would have disastrous consequences not only for the newly decolonised countries in general, but for India in particular. In short, his crusade for decolonisation and disarmament and his articulation of an explicit vision for India’s foreign policy and his moral crusade enhanced the country’s stature worldwide.

The world is no longer cast in Nehru’s image. Yet the Congress, claiming a part of his heritage, needs to learn a few lessons from his record on international affairs. At the same time, we need to know if the party has, in the light of post-Cold War developments, prepared a blueprint for guiding the foreign policy of the nation. If the studious silence on the Palestinian crisis is any indication, the Congress leadership appears to have relegated major foreign affairs into the background. This is bad news for a national political party.

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