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By Dr Ramzy Baroud

There is a saying that goes: “Be careful what you wish for, for you may get it.” This has been Israel’s dilemma from the very beginning.

The Zionist movement, which held its first conference in Basel, Switzerland 120 years ago, wanted Palestine but not the Palestinians. They achieved this objective 50 years later, in what Israel termed as its ‘war of independence.’

Then, in 1947-48, the Palestinian homeland was captured, but millions of Palestinians were cruelly evicted following a harrowing war and many massacres.

That dynamic was not at work when the rest of historic Palestine was occupied during the war of 1967.

Ali Jarbawi, a professor of political science at Birzeit University, told the Economist that Palestinians were ‘lucky’ that they “were defeated so fast and so massively.”

The rapid events of the war made it too difficult for Israel to ethnically cleanse East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, as it did to hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages, during what Palestinians call the Nakba of ’48 –  the ‘Catastrophic’ loss of their homeland.

Well, perhaps ‘lucky’ is a bit of a stretch, since the last 50 years of military occupation has wrought untold pain and misery on occupied Palestinians. It has been a period in which international law has repeatedly been broken by Israel. It has been a period in which Palestinians escalated their resistance, non-violent for most of it, but violent at times. The price was, and remains, terribly high.

This resultant reality drove Israeli commentator, Gideon Levy, to declare in a recent article in ‘Haaretz’ that in the “terrible summer of 1967,” Israel had “won a war and lost nearly everything.”

The loss that Levy refers to is hardly material. “A state that celebrates 50 years of Occupation is a state whose sense of direction has been lost, its ability to distinguish good from evil, impaired,” he wrote.

The loss for Palestinians, however, was far greater. They watched as Arab armies were either defeated on a massive scale, or simply evacuated their positions, conceding East Jerusalem without much fighting.

Indeed, the defeat brought shame, but also the realization that Palestinians must claim their own position at the center of the fight. The events of the war made that realization quite effortless.

On the morning of June 5, 1967, the entire Egyptian Air Force was destroyed, its entire fleet still sitting on the tarmac. Within the next 24 hours, the air forces of Jordan and Syria were also pounded.

By June 7, Jordan had ceded Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.

By June 10, Israel had captured the Gaza Strip and the entire Sinai Peninsula, from the Suez Canal and down to Sharm-el-Sheikh.

Syria was forced to concede its strategically and economically prized Golan Heights.

Thanks to American and Western support, Israel soundly defeated the Arabs. Within days, Israel had occupied three times more territories than it did post-1948.

While Palestinians experienced another ‘Nakba’ as a result of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, Israel celebrated its ‘liberation’ of Jerusalem, and the redeeming of biblical ‘Judea and Samaria’.

In Israel, and around the world, Jewish nationalism took on a new meaning. Israel’s ‘Invincible Army’ was born, and even cynical Jews began to view Israel differently, a victorious state, maybe once an impulsive colonial gambit, but now a regional, if not international, force to be reckoned with.

So much had abruptly changed during those short, but painful, days of war. The existing refugee problem was now exacerbated and compounded by the war and the creation of 400,000 new refugees.

The international response to the war was not promising. The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 242, on November 22, 1967, reflecting the Johnson administration’s wish to capitalize on the new status quo, suggesting Israeli withdrawal “from occupied territories” in exchange for normalization with Israel.

The rest is history, and an agonizing one. Israel entrenched its occupation; built hundreds of illegal settlements and is yet to implement a single UN resolution pertaining to the Occupation, or previous violations.

The Washington-led consensus on Palestine perceives no other solution to the conflict but the two-state solution; it deems armed resistance as a form of terrorism; and it sees the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees as impractical.

Palestinians who dare operate outside this “acceptable” paradigm are to be ostracized, boycotted and forced to change.

But the war and occupation has also entrenched the sense of nationhood among Palestinians. Prior to the war, the Palestinian people were fragmented between those who remained in their original homeland – later renamed Israel; those who lived in the West Bank and Jerusalem under Jordanian control, and those in Gaza, under Egyptian administration. Indeed, the Palestinian identity was in tatters.

The 1967 war united Palestinians, although under Israeli political and military control. Within years, the Palestinian national movement was thriving and its leaders, mostly intellectuals from all Palestinian regions, were able to articulate a new national discourse that remains in effect to this day.

On June 7, 1967 when Israel’s Prime Minister at the time, Levi Eshkol, learned that Jerusalem was captured he uttered his famous quote: “We’ve been given a good dowry, but it comes with a bride we don’t like.” The ‘dowry’ being Jerusalem, of course, and the ‘bride’ being the Palestinian people.

Since then, that unwanted ‘bride’ has been shackled and abused; yet 50 years of such mistreatment are yet to break her spirit.

And in that, there is a source of hope. Now that Israel, rich and powerful, has control over the whole of historic Palestine, it also controls a Palestinian population nearly of the same size as the Jewish population living in that same land.

The land is already shared between two people, but under entirely different rules. Jews are governed through a democratic system almost exclusively tailored for them, and Palestinians subsist under an Apartheid regime designed to keep them marginalized, occupied and oppressed.

50 years later, it is crystal clear that military solutions have failed; that Apartheid can only contribute to further strife, bring more pain and misery, but never true peace.

The 1967 war is a lesson that war is never the answer, and that a shared future is possible when we all understand that violent occupation can never bring a just peace. Only co-existence, based on equal rights for both peoples, will.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include “Searching Jenin”, “The Second Palestinian Intifada” and his latest “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story”. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.

6 June 2017

By Anandita Ghosh and Milind Champanerkar

“Not war against our own citizens, but dialogue with all stakeholders in Kashmir, including emerging youth leadership, is the only way to resolve the Kashmir issue.” – This was a common view expressed by all the speakers at a lecture programme on ‘Kashmiriyonka Najariya :Vastavaur Mithak’ (Kashmiri Peoples’ Perspective : Myth & Reality’) held on 3rd June 2017 at Shramik Patrakar Bhavan, Pune. The programme was organised by the Pune chapter of ‘Pakistan India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy’ (PIPFPD). The speakers included Ms. Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal (Editor of ‘Kashmir Times’, Jammu), Mr. Bashir Manzar (Editor of ‘Kashmir Images’, Sri Nagar) and Mr. Jatin Desai (Senior journalist, Mumbai). The programme was presided over by Mr. Milind Champanerkar (Chairperson, PIPFPD, Pune).

At the outset, while explaining the objective of the programme, Mr. Milind said, “Although Kashmir is a burning issue today, most of the electronic media has chosen to sensationalise the issue and present a one-sided picture. The objective of the programme is to enlighten people about the objective reality in Kashmir, give insight into situation at the ground and understand the plight of common people there.” Mr.  Anwar Rajan, the national executive committee member of PIPFPD, explained how the PIPFPD has been consistent for the last two decades in emphasizing the need for involving Kashmiri people of both sides to resolve conflict.

Mr. Bashir Manzaragreed that the scene in Kashmir today is indeed very dangerous and frightening. However, the death of Burhan Wani was not the cause of the present unrest. While explaining how tension had been building up since 2010, he drew attention towards stone pelting at its peak in 2010.  More than a hundred children were killed during the agitation due to military action. “This gave rise to intense discontent.” he said. While criticizing the present government for not making any efforts to calm down tempers, he said that previous governments had at least made an effort. Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee appealed to  kashmiri peoples’ hearts by mentioning accepting that the people of the valley had been wronged, and he was with them in their pain. He initiated dialogue with the people. Mr.Manmohan Singh sent a parliamentary delegation to meet all the stakeholders and set up a team of interlocutors headed by a senior journalist, Late DilipPadgaonkar. Mr. Bashir asserted, “If the government had implemented the recommendations of the report, the situation would not have have worsened to the extent it has today.”

He drew attention to 65% turn out people in the valley during the assembly elections of 2014 which he said was a reflection of their faith in the Indian system. He said “Domestic parties fought the elections on the singular agenda of keeping the BJP out of J&K. The youth from South Kashmir voted in favour of PDP led by Mufti Mohmmed Syed wanting to keep BJP’s Hindutva agenda out of Kashmir.” However, after the results as the PDP had to form a coalition government with BJP, whom Kashmiri people in the valley had rejected, the youth felt betrayed and frustration started setting in. The disturbance in South kashmir and growing tensions is largely owing to this felt betrayal and discomfort with BJP’s Hindutva agendas. MrManzar asserted, “Burhan Wani incident in July 2016 was merely a trigger, anything could’ve resulted in a crisis. Burhan’s killing happened to be a pretext.”

Mr. Bashir also said that the situation in the Islamic world cannot be ignored. He emphasised, “These elements are ‘politically religious’, and their influence is gradually growing among the youth. To resist such radicalisation, spaces have to be created for other voices.”  Mr. Bashir felt that New Delhi was not serious in its efforts and was only trying to exhaust the people. While people will certainly be exhausted, they will also slowly become radicalised. However, he reminded the gathering that in 1990s there were four to five thousand militants in Kashmir, but there are barely 100 militants today. “So Isn’t the present government exaggerating the situation?” he asked. Mr. Bashir concluded saying, “But I am very optimistic. I have hope that 2017 won’t be as bad as 2016. But, the way I see things on the ground, I can see that anger is slowing evolving into hatred.”

AnuradhaBhasinassertedthat the situation in Kashmir impacts all of us, as Indians and as South Asians. While commenting on the role of biased mainstream, she said that the government and its power circles, including businesses and the media, create a picture that fails to convince the people. Falsities are presented, contradictions appear, and it leaves the public confused. A picture is created wherein all Kashmiris are portrayed as villains, suggesting people don’t want peace. But one begs the question, why are Kashmiris pelting stones?

Emphasizing that the situation in Kashmir is a dire one, she criticised the methods of responding of security forces to the agitating stone-pelters. She said, “The forces, without any hesitation, have been retaliating with bullets, pellet guns, or tear gas; these shells are shot at targets, point blank. Since 2010, many have been killed due to tear gas shells. Many, including small children, have lost their eye sights due to pellet guns.” And yet the debates continue on whether these pellet guns should be used or not!

Condemning the Army chief’s recent statements that young people should take guns up guns instead of stones or that the public should be afraid of the army, Ms.Anuradha said, “He blurred the lines between the general public and enemies.” Alleging that people of Kashmir are meted out discriminatory treatment, Ms. Anuradha said, “Although there have been violent protests in the other parts of India, including in Haryana, the army retaliation has never been as brutal as in Kashmir. You say Kashmir is an integral part of India. Then why so many rules, restrictions and interference in its day to day functioning, its politics, economy and so on?”

She further said that there have been atrocities in the valley for a very long time now, and they have been affected due to the conflict- the Pandits moving out, killing of 70,000 people, illegal arrests and missing persons. These people were ignored, and the anger had been building up. “What we see today, the stone pelting or guns, has been an evolution. It wasn’t sudden.” she emphasised.

Ms.Anuradha believes that war is not the answer to any issue. Communication is key to arriving at a solution. She felt that there is also an emerging leadership among the youth in Kashmir who are socially engaged, excellent writers, lawyers, or pursuing other professions. It is important to include them in this dialogue and begin grooming leaders.Ms.Anuradha believes it’s necessary to have athree-tier dialogue- first, between india and Pakistan; second, between India and Kashmir and Kashmir and Pakistan; and third, intra Kashmir dialogue with Kashmir as it stood in 1947. While peace talks will not mean that conflicts will be resolved immediately, she believes the violence will eventually fizzle out.Lastly, she said, “The peace process requires consistency and political will. There is a dearth of both.”

Mr.Jatin Desai, senior journalist and the national general secretary of PIPFPD, began with saying that PIPFPD sees the Kashmir issue as a tri-lateral issue between India, Kashmir and Pakistan. The fate of Kashmir cannot be decided by India and Pakistan without taking the people of Kashmir into confidence. It is crucial that voices of Kashmiris and their aspirations be heard. The lack of communication has led to a worsening of situation in Kashmir.

Since the 8th of July last year, when Burhan Wani was killed, there has been no dialogue with the people of Kashmir. This lack of communication is leading to dangerous levels of frustration and resentment among Kashmiris and a gradual radicalisation of the youth in Kashmir. Furthermore, statements like the one made by General BipinRawat wishing the youth came with guns instead of stones, only worsen the situation. Mr.Jatin stated that this was a systematic attempt to provoke the population of Kashmir. He said, “The government policy is non-communication. Their strategy being exhausting the people, following which, they will surrender.”

The lack of interest in dialogue on part of the government has led to a coming together of the various extreme and moderate Hurriyat factions. Mr.Jatin said that the government must initiate dialogue with all stakeholders including the Huriyat and take them in confidence. Mr.Jatin concluded by saying, “When talking about Kashmir, the conversation is either about the militancy or about Kashmir’s natural beauty. But between these two, are the people of the valley, and it is high time we think about them.”

In times when the media does not offer the entire truth, this program certainly filled a gap in the Kashmir narrative.

6 June 2017

By Kevin Zeese

President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement follows the path of previous presidents who have undermined international climate agreements. We disagree with Trump but it is important to understand his actions in the context of the history of the United States regarding previous climate agreements. Once again, the political problems in the US are bigger than Trump. His action brings greater clarity to the inability of the US government to confront the climate crisis and clarifies the tasks of people seeking smart climate policy.

The US Has Always Prevented Effective International Climate Agreements

The US has consistently blocked effective climate agreements because both parties in power have put the profits of big energy before the climate crisis when it comes to domestic and international policies. The Republicans proclaimed themselves the “drill baby drill” party while the Democrats are the “all of the above energy” party. Both slogans mean the parties seek to ensure US corporations profit from carbon energy. Both have supported massive oil and gas infrastructure and extreme energy excavation including the most dangerous forms, i.e. tar sands and fracking. Both parties have also supported wars for oil and gas. All of these positions will be viewed as extreme as the world confronts the great dangers of the climate crisis and the US will be deservedly blamed.

If we go back to the Clinton-Gore administration and the Kyoto Protocol we find the US pushing a “free market” trade in pollution credits, where corporations would buy the right to pollute in other places around the world, i.e. poor and developing countries. Gore made sure other countries understood the US’ position. As Mitchel Cohen writes:

Gore commandeered the Kyoto conference. The U.S. government, he said, would not sign the Accord – as limited as it was – if it imposed emissions reductions on industrial countries. Instead, he demanded that the rest of the world adopt his proposal that would allow industrial nations like the U.S. to continue polluting by establishing an international trade in carbon pollution credits. Gore’s “solution” – like Obama’s – was to turn pollution into a commodity and buy and sell it in the form of “pollution rights”. The free market trade in “pollution credits” would simply shift around pollution and spread it out more evenly without reducing the total amount of ozone-depleting greenhouse gases. It would allow the United States and other industrial countries to continue polluting the rest of the world.

The Kyoto Protocol failed. Rather than reducing climate gas emissions by the 5 percent target, there was a significant increase of 58 percent from 1990 to 2012.

In Copenhagen, the story is more complex but has the same result — the US undermined efforts for an agreement with enforceable reductions in climate emissions. The US role in Copenhagen become more fully understood when Edward Snowden leaked documents showing intense US spying on other nations participating in the climate talks. The most important spying was on the Danish government where the US leaked a draft of a plan for enforceable emissions standards; and on China where the US intruded into a meeting where the Chinese, Indians and others were working on a similar plan.Chinese negotiators entered into the talks willing to undertake mandatory emissions cuts but instead the US falsely turned China into the villain. The editor of the Ecologist, Oliver Tickell, summarized what happened:

Looking at the evidence as a whole there can be little doubt that the Copenhagen climate talks were deliberately and highly effectively scuppered by a ‘dirty tricks’ operation carried out by the NSA and other US security agencies – including the pivotal leak to The Guardian of the Danish text.

Following Snowden’s revelations, we know that they had the ability to do that in spades. They also had motives. The US wanted:

• to protect their politically powerful fossil fuel industries, and their right as a nation to carry on polluting;

• to avoid having to pay out billions of dollars in climate funding to developing countries;

• to deny China the global leadership role it sought to secure for itself, and instead leave it humiliated;

• to present the USA and its President Barack Obama as trying against the odds to secure a climate agreement, in the face of obdurate resistance by other countries.

The operation was, in other words, spectacularly successful. The rest of the world were played for suckers. China emerged with a bloody nose. And the US was free to carry on letting rip with its emissions.

Making this more confusing for people in the United States are the false statements of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign where she claimed the she and Obama came to the rescue and saved the world from China. This falsehood is described as an alternative reality by some of those who covered the meetings.

The US Undermines the Paris Agreement

We reported extensively on the Paris climate agreement when it happened noting that it was a small and inadequate step because the goals were not strong enough and there was no enforcement to ensure countries met their promised reductions in climate gasses. We were not alone in this analysis. In a newsletter after the agreement, COP21 An Opportunity For Climate Justice, If We Mobilize, we wrote:

Friends of the Earth International described the agreement as “a sham.” The New Internationalist, measuring the deal against the People’s Climate Test developed before COP21, described it as “an epic fail on a planetary scale.”  Climate scientist James Hansen said it was a “fraud . . . fake . . . bullshit.”

Analysts blamed the United States for the weakness of the agreement, writing COP 21 crafted “the deal according to US specifications in order to insulate Obama and the agreement from attacks.” Obama insisted that the 31-page agreement exclude emissions reductions targets and finance requirements from the legally binding parts of the deal because making those binding would have required US Senate approval, which he could not achieve due to the power of the oil, gas and coal lobbies influence, especially over the Republican Party. Also excluded from legal enforcement was a clause in the agreement that would expose the US to liability and compensation claims for causing climate change.

While we are critical of the shortcomings of the Paris agreement we also recognize it is a step to finally — after 21 years of trying — get an international agreement approved by all but two countries (Syria and Nicaragua). Dahr Jamail correctly summarizes the situation when he describes the Paris Accord as not going far enough but Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement endangering life on Earth. He points to the reaction of the world in response to Trump, with uniform opposition to his decision. The new French president Emmanuel Macron urged US scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs to come to France and help “make the world great again” by working to confront the climate crisis. Environmental groups focused on climate change were uniformly critical with some describing the action as making the US a rogue nation. Trump was already unpopular around the world, protested wherever he went, but now he has become a pariah.

The Task of the Movement is Clarified

There was an immediate reaction to Trump’s decision with protests at the White House and around the world, with mayors and governors saying they will abide by the climate pact and with business leaders leaving Trump’s business advisory board in protest. The climate justice movement, already growing, will build on this decision by growing even more. The long history of US climate inaction from both parties demonstrates we must build independent political power that undermines those who profit from the status quo and makes both parties face the reality of climate change.

Persistence is a key. The day before Trump’s announcement ExxonMobil shareholders and investors voted to require the company to report annually on climate related risks to the corporation. This took decades of work by shareholders inside ExxonMobil. Similar shareholder resolutions are being passed by shareholders of other companies and other votes are very close to passage at energy utilities. The oil and gas industry must be held responsible for their role in the climate crisis. Litigation against ExxonMobil for hiding the truth about climate change for four decades is advancing in what will be the crime of the century with great liability.

There is tremendous momentum around transitioning to a clean energy economy. Jobs in clean energy in the US are at 800,000 and growing and around the world at 10 million workers. In the last three years there has been an 83 percent increase in solar jobs and 100 percent increase in wind jobs. Solar employs more people in the US than oil, gas and coal combined. This January all new energy came from solar and wind without any increase in oil, gas, nuclear and coal. Renewables now account for 18 percent of total installed operating capacity in the US. Renewables accounted for 64 percent of all new electrical generating capacity installed last year in the US. Researchers report that gas powered cars will disappear in the next decade and the oil industry will collapse. Investor advisers are telling people to expect the demise of the industry. The US is just scratching the surface potential of this new economy.

Keep protesting because resistance to the oil, gas and coal agenda continues to be critical. People power has been reported by the industry as the greatest threat to their expansion. Infrastructure protests continue to grow at a time when science tells us to stop developing such infrastructure. Similarly protests are occurring against oil trains turning into a nationwide resistance against the oil trains’ high risks to communities.

Another national effort is focused on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which serves as a rubber stamp for the oil and gas industry. For the past five moths, the FERC has only had two commissioners out of five seats, leaving it without a quorum and unable to approve new fossil fuel projects. Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE) is working to prevent the conformation of new commissioners until FERC stops serving the oil and gas industry and starts serving the health and safety of communities impacted by its projects. On May 25, BXE disrupted a Senate hearing focused on the FERC commissioners. More actions are planned. Visit BeyondExtremeEnergy.org to get involved. There is something for everyone to do.

Another form of extreme energy is nuclear power. Indigenous communities in the Southwest are mobilizing to stop uranium mining on the rim of the Grand Canyon in a sacred site. If the Canyon Mine succeeds, toxic ore will be trucked 300 miles through tribal lands to a mill close to the Ute Mountain Utes. This month, a Haul No! Tour is being held to raise awareness and hold actions. There is a long legacy of poisoning the air, land and water from abandoned uranium mines throughout the US. On a related note, Ban the Bomb actions are planned on June 17 in support of a new treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons.

On the electoral front, Trump’s move ensures climate will be a centerpiece of the 2018 and 2020 elections as the US cannot actually withdraw from the Paris agreement until after the 2020 presidential race. We cannot allow the fraudulent debate commission (really a front for the two corporate parties) to not ask a single question about climate change. There are massive majorities in favor of staying in the climate agreement – 70 percent of all voters, majorities in both major parties and among independents. In every state this is a majority position. But the reality is the US has a government owned by big energy and Wall Street investors who profit from climate pollution.

The current Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, attended a meeting in Saudi Arabia where ExxonMobil made a multi-billion dollar deal to explore gas off the coast of Mexico and build a refinery in Texas. The US government has been marinated in oil for decades, with presidents and vice presidents who have come from the oil, gas and related industries. Now is the time to change that. We need to make 2020 an election that produces a president who leads on effective actions to address the climate crisis.

Finally, we agree with Ken Ward, a former deputy director of Greenpeace facing felony charges for shutting down an oil sands pipeline, that Trump’s action is an opportunity. The fig leaf of the inadequate Paris agreement has been removed. The world can advance in creating an agreement not held back by the United States. The movement for a new energy economy must now build enough power to put in place real solutions to the climate crisis. As with many other issues, Trump’s actions crystallize the reality we have been facing for many presidential administrations so the movement now knows what it must do.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers are co-directors of Popular Resistance.

5 June 2017

By Alain Gresh

Fifty years after the June 1967 war, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands continues. Whatever new plan is devised will concern the entire region and the wider Muslim world.

This April a number of Republican congressmen set up an Israel Victory Caucus in Washington (1). Its co-chair Bill Johnson said: ‘We believe Israel has been victorious in the war and that this reality must be recognised for any peace to be achieved between Israel and its neighbours.’ Historian Daniel Pipes added that ‘victory means imposing your will on your enemy.’ As if in response, hundreds of Palestinian political prisoners acted on a call from their best-known member, Marwan Barghouti, to go on hunger strike, their way of saying loud and clear that the Palestinians’ resistance continues and all ideas of their destruction are illusions.

This was not the first time Israel and its allies had fantasised about the Palestinians’ capitulation or even disappearance. After the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-9, Moshe Sharett, the influential Zionist Labour leader and future prime minister, had prophesied a grim future for the 700,000 Palestinians expelled from their homes: ‘The refugees will find their place in the diaspora. Through natural selection, some will survive, others won’t. The majority will become the dregs of the human race and melt into the poorest strata of the Arab world’ (2).

The Palestinians had just suffered a heavy defeat. The territory designated for their state under the UN partition plan of 29 November 1947 had been divided in three: Israel had conquered one part (including Upper Galilee); Jordan had annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem; and the small Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control, though with limited autonomy. Their institutions were in turmoil and political leadership was lacking.

This catastrophe — the Nakba in Arabic — followed another defeat, the crushing of the Arab Revolt of 1936-9, the civil and military uprising demanding British withdrawal and a halt to Jewish immigration. It was put down by British troops allied to Zionist militia, who acquired experience and UK-supplied arms that made possible their subsequent victory over the Arab armies in 1948-9.

With their people scattered in camps in neighbouring countries or under Israel’s control, the Palestinians seemed destined to disappear as Sharett had predicted, like the indigenous peoples exterminated in the conquests of North America, Australia or New Zealand. Perhaps they would be absorbed into the wider Arab world? After all, they shared the language, culture and often religion of the countries that had taken them in.
First act of resistance

Israel condemned the Arab countries’ refusal to assimilate the refugees. But it was the Palestinians themselves who, in a first act of resistance, rejected any attempt to settle them permanently in the host countries. Initially they even rejected the idea of building lasting structures in the camps. And though Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser signed an agreement with UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) in July 1953 to settle tens of thousands of refugees in Sinai, Palestinians violently protested in Gaza against this. Going home remained the only dream.

Israeli peace campaigner Uri Avnery reported an exchange with a child when he was serving as a soldier during the 1956 war (3) and first, brief Israeli occupation of Gaza: ‘I asked a young Arab living in a refugee camp where he came from. “From Al-Kubab” he said. I was struck by this response because the boy was seven. So he had been born in Gaza after the war and had never even seen Al-Kubab, a village which had long ceased to exist’ (4). Now, 60 years on, most Palestinians have been born in exile but the response of adults and children remains the same: they belong to the village their family was expelled from. The Zionist movement, which turned a millennia-old prayer — ‘next year in Jerusalem’ — into a political slogan, should be able to understand this attachment.

After the Nakba, the Palestinian national movement built on this determination. And the regional context contributed to it. The creation of Israel shook the Middle East and hastened the collapse of pro-western Arab regimes. Nasser came to power in Egypt in 1952, revolutionary nationalism grew across the region, and Iraq’s monarchy fell in 1958. This ferment, and the rivalry between Arab countries keen to erase the memory of their humiliating defeat by Israel, led the Arab League to create the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1964, while, Fatah, a then unknown organisation, launched its first armed operations against Israel in January 1965. The Arab defeat in June 1967 (5) created the conditions in which the Palestinian struggle would become autonomous. In February 1969, Fatah leader Yasser Arafat was elected president of the PLO’s executive committee.

The Palestinian national movement became part of the international landscape with other wars of resistance: Vietnam, East Timor, Latin America, South Africa. The writer Jean Genet summed up these aspirations in his last book, Prisoner of Love (1986): Palestine, he wrote, was at the heart of ‘a great firework display of a revolution, leaping from bank to bank, opera house to opera house, prison to law court.’
More limited aims
These hopes have endured. For the Palestinians — caught up in internal Lebanese conflicts, targeted by Israeli operations in the occupied territories and Lebanon, and victims of divisions in the Arab world and regional meddling (by Iraq, Syria, Jordan) — had to learn to live with more limited aims, and accept the idea of sharing Palestine. They gradually abandoned the armed struggle and ‘external operations’ — especially plane hijackings — that had brought their cause to international attention and led western states to classify them as terrorists. Instead, they focused on diplomacy and political efforts, building relatively stable institutions such as youth organisations, trade unions and writers’ unions.

The PLO gained international stature, bolstered notably by the increasing mobilisation of the populations of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, all occupied in 1967. Arafat was invited to address the UN General Assembly in 1974, and the PLO was recognised by the vast majority of states — though not Israel or the US. (The latter changed its position in the 1990s.) In the 1980s, Europe, including France, helped establish two principles: the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, and the need for dialogue with their representatives, the PLO.

But it took the first intifada, which began in December 1986, and the end of the cold war, to reach the Oslo accord, signed in Washington on 13 September 1993 by Yasser Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, sponsored by US president Bill Clinton. Arafat established the Palestinian Authority on 1 July 1994, initially in Gaza and Jericho. Despite the vagueness of the Oslo accords, there was to have been recognition of a clear principle: ‘the exchange of land for peace’, with the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel within the 4 June 1967 borders.

As we know, this ‘peace process’ failed. Though Palestinians were given limited autonomy, their daily life deteriorated, freedom of movement was increasingly curtailed by checkpoints, and settlement-building continued inexorably under Israeli governments of both right and left.

Which way to go?
Various explanations for this failure are possible, but the main one is the colonial nature of the Zionist project, which has fuelled a feeling of superiority over ‘indigenous’ peoples and encouraged Israeli leaders’ de facto refusal to recognise the Palestinians’ equality and right to self-determination. To the government in Tel Aviv, an Israeli’s security is precious. A Palestinian’s is worth little.

The quashing of the second intifada, which broke out in September 2000, led to a weakening of the Palestinian Authority, with a division between Gaza, under the control of Islamist Hamas, and the West Bank, under Arafat’s Fatah. But there were diplomatic successes, including Palestine securing UN observer status and diplomatic acceptance by around 100 states. Another achievement was the consolidation of a strong brand of nationalism that went beyond local allegiances and diverse experiences of exile. Neither internal divisions nor Israeli efforts have caused the Palestinians to give up. Not only have they held on to their homes, they have also proudly claimed their identity, under occupation and in exile. On the territory of mandatory Palestine, there are more Palestinians (seven million, counting those in Israel) than Jewish Israelis (six million), a nightmare for Zionist leaders who once dreamed of a ‘land without people’.

Even so, ‘reviving the peace process’ now seems an illusion, except in the eyes of President Mahmoud Abbas and the ‘international community’, which views keeping his administration going on life support as vital, to justify its own failure to act or to come up with any innovative proposal grounded in international law.

What new strategy can the Palestinians adopt? It will take time to construct a new plan, for the phase that began with the June 1967 war came to a definitive end with the failure of Oslo. The debate is divisive: should the Palestinians abandon the idea of sharing the land and demand a one-state solution? Or dissolve the Palestinian Authority? And what about the use of violence? Even Hamas, known for its discipline, has not escaped the debate, as seen in its new programme, which for the first time clearly accepts the idea of a state within the 1967 borders.

Meanwhile, in the words of two Palestinian academics, ‘in the absence of clarity about the ultimate political solution, the core goals must be the fundamental rights that are the essential elements of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people and that, as such, must form part of any future political solution. These are freedom from occupation and colonisation, the right of the refugees to return to their homes and properties (6), non-discrimination and the full equality of Palestinian citizens of Israel. These three goals … were laid out in the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] against Israel’ (7).

New roads to freedom

The BDS movement, launched in July 2005 in response to calls from 171 NGOs, marked a new phase in Palestinian history: civil society has taken up the baton out of frustration with the impotence of political forces. This non-violent movement for equal rights, which some western governments have tried to criminalise, has had widespread support, from Latin America to Europe and Asia. This was seen during the war in Gaza in the summer of 2014. The question is why.

During the latter half of the 20th century, two main causes mobilised support beyond national borders: Vietnam then South Africa. The number of people killed was not the main cause of outrage; international public opinion is also sensitive to a situation’s symbolic resonance. At certain points, a conflict can go beyond the narrow confines of its own geography, acquiring universal significance and expressing the ‘truth’ of a period. Despite their dissimilarities, Vietnam and South Africa were both situated on a fault line between North and South, and both conflicts had a colonial dimension. This is also true of Palestine, though the context is different. The South African experience, with the African National Congress’s project of a ‘rainbow nation’ that integrated whites rather than pursuing theories of ‘black power’, showed that times had changed. Armed struggle was no longer the only way; there were new roads to freedom, and equal rights were central.

More than a question of land, Palestine is a question of justice, or rather of continuing injustice
With Palestine, the longest-running conflict of the present age, we go beyond purely territorial differences. More than a question of land, Palestine is above all a question of justice, or rather of continuing injustice. In the occupied territories, the population faces a phenomenon that has disappeared elsewhere: encroaching colonialism. Since 1967, Israel has moved more than 650,000 settlers to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a practice that the International Criminal Court considers a war crime. Palestinians’ daily life is marked by the confiscation of their land, destruction of their homes, arrests (a majority of the adult male population has at some point been imprisoned), torture, an army that shoots on sight, and a wall that does not separate two populations but contributes to containing one of them. An archipelago of Bantustans is being created, bounded by roads reserved for Israelis, a form of segregation unknown even in South Africa. The Palestinian population is governed by special laws, a regime that resembles apartheid in many ways — two peoples on the same land (the West Bank and East Jerusalem), Palestinians and settlers, subject to different laws and courts.
Millions of people worldwide can empathise with the Palestinians’ struggle, relating it to their own revolt against discrimination and for equal rights. A young person in the West who feels marginalised can imagine himself in the situation of a Palestinian, as can an Indian expelled from his land or an Irishman proud of past struggle against British colonialism. Even if this solidarity does not guarantee the victory of their cause, it remains one of the Palestinians’ major advantages, ensuring that beyond their own determination, their cause will live on.

On 2 November 1917 Lord Balfour signed a letter declaring that the British government ‘view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’ (a first draft mentioned ‘the Jewish race’) and ‘will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.’ As Arthur Koestler, who fought for Zionist organisations, later wrote, ‘one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third.’ This colonial enterprise initiated a long century of instability, wars, bitterness and hatred. It fed and continues to feed all the frustrations in the region (see Exploiting Arab anger). Resolving the Palestinian situation will not instantly bring peace, but for as long as the occupation lasts, there will be no peace or stability in the Middle East.

Alain Gresh is editor of the online journal OrientXXI.info. His many publications include Un chant d’amour: Israël-Palestine, une histoire française (illustrated by Hélène Aldeguer), La Découverte, Paris, 2017.

2 June 2017

By Sara Flounders

Imperialism is worried that China’s huge global infrastructure projects could challenge the U.S.-led world order

The People’s Republic of China hosted a summit May 14 called the “One Belt, One Road” initiative, also known as the New Silk Road project. Twenty-nine heads of state and representatives of 130 countries attended from across Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. Seventy countries signed agreements with China to participate.

The “Belt” refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt. It encompasses land route development from central China to Central Asia, Iran, Turkey and Eastern Europe. The “Road” refers to the Maritime Silk Road. This involves ports and coastal infrastructure from Southeast Asia to East Africa and the Mediterranean.

The plan projects a network of trade routes with new rail lines, ports, highways, pipelines, telecommunications facilities and energy centers linking countries on four continents. It includes financing to promote urban planning, potable water, sanitation and food development. China is calling it the “plan of the century.”

China describes the project as a revival of the ancient Silk Road with 21st-century technology. It is projected to be 12 times the size of the U.S. Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Western Europe after World War II.

Major corporate media around the world warn that the gathering signals the end of the American Century — the U.S. claim to be the world’s sole superpower. Numerous analysts suggest the project could shift the center of the global economy and challenge the U.S.-led world order.

Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles Freeman described the OBOR project as “potentially the most transformative engineering effort in human history. China will become the center of economic gravity as it becomes the world’s largest economy. The ‘Belt and Road’ program includes no military component, but it clearly has the potential to upend the world’s geopolitics as well as its economics.” (NBC News, May 12)

In a May 13 article, “Behind China’s $1 Trillion Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order,” the New York Times predicted: “The initiative … looms on a scope and scale with little precedent in modern history, promising more than $1 trillion in infrastructure and spanning more than 60 countries. Mr. Xi is aiming to use China’s wealth and industrial know-how to create a new kind of globalization that will dispense with the rules of the aging Western-dominated institutions. The goal is to refashion the global economic order, drawing countries and companies more tightly into China’s orbit. It is impossible for any foreign leader, multinational executive or international banker to ignore China’s push to remake global trade. American influence in the region is seen to be waning.”

U.S. infrastructure is collapsing

Meanwhile, the U.S. infrastructure is literally falling apart. Crumbling roads, bridges, dams and schools have been given an overall D+ grade by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Investment in infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and wastewater treatment plants, is at a 30-year low.

Donald Trump, with his “America First” campaign slogan, pledged to rebuild the country’s broken infrastructure. But since becoming president, his administration has instead opted for cutting taxes on the rich while increasing the military budget. Meanwhile, the U.S.-initiated Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which was designed to exclude China, has collapsed.

China’s OBOR project has generated enormous interest because U.S. imperialism has less and less to offer any developing country, except weapons sales and military bases. Weapons quickly become obsolete, leaving only debt and underdevelopment.

Where U.S. infrastructure projects are in place around the world, they are focused on building and maintaining a vast high-tech network of 800+ military bases and servicing an armada of aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and destroyers. Each base is an expense to and an attack on the sovereignty of the host country. U.S. foreign aid ranks near the bottom of such expenditures of all developed countries, amounting to less than 1 percent of the federal budget. It is largely military aid to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Egypt and Pakistan.

U.S. wars have resulted in great profit for U.S. corporations while massively destroying vital civilian infrastructure in developing countries under attack. Water purification plants, sanitation, sewage, irrigation, electric grid, communication centers, hospitals and schools have been intentionally destroyed in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. By contrast, China has no foreign military bases. Its ambitious OBOR initiative does not include military equipment or facilities.

Nevertheless, U.S. corporate power sees all other economic development as a threat to its global domination. Its aim is to protect at all costs the irrational capitalist system.

Response to U.S. pivot to Asia

The pivot to Asia begun during the Obama administration is an aggressive military plan that includes the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the Pentagon’s new THAAD missile battery in South Korea. Its focus is containing and threatening China’s growing economic influence in the region.

U.S. military planners brag of their ability to strangle China and cut its vital shipping lanes, such as the Straits of Malacca. This narrow transit point between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea handles 80 percent of China’s crude oil and other vital imports.

China, now the world’s largest trading nation, has responded with the nonmilitary OBOR plan that will open many trade routes through surrounding countries. Trade routes, unlike U.S. military bases, offer immediate benefit to the development of these countries. China is expected to invest up to $1.3 trillion in OBOR infrastructure projects.

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank: Challenge to IMF and World Bank

Past U.S. practices of seizing the assets of countries holding substantial funds in U.S. banks meant that the $1.26 trillion that China has held in U.S. Treasury notes was especially vulnerable. Until six months ago, China was the number one investor in U.S. Treasury notes. Now China is divesting.

China has used a part of its significant reserves to establish the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The AIIB plays an essential role in encouraging trade and economic cooperation with other countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. This Chinese initiative is seen as a counter to the U.S.-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

As the Cuban news outlet Granma wrote on March 6: “AIIB aims to rescue those areas of the region somewhat abandoned by both the World Bank and the Asian Investment Bank (AIB), as well as encourage trade and economic cooperation.”

Both the IMF and the World Bank exert enormous leverage through “structural adjustment” policies. Debt repayment requires countries to cut spending on education, health, food and transportation subsidies. Their real goal is to force developing countries to privatize their national assets.

Phony concern for environment

Corporate-funded nongovernmental organizations and social media campaigns claim that China will not show the same respect for the environment and human rights as the U.S. and other imperialist powers do. They claim that China might not follow environmental restrictions on loans imposed by the World Bank and IMF.

This is sheer hypocrisy. The U.S. military machine is the world’s biggest institutional consumer of petroleum products and worst polluter of greenhouse gas emissions and many toxic pollutants. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.

U.S. wars have contaminated the soil and water of vast regions under U.S. occupation with depleted uranium, benzene and trichloroethylene at air base operations and with perchlorate, a toxic ingredient in rocket propellant.

Despite U.S. pressure, AIIB grows

Despite strong U.S. efforts to discourage international participation in the OBOR infrastructure fund, Russia, Iran and Latin American countries promptly joined and contributed substantial capital. Breaking ranks, Germany and South Korea then became major shareholders, followed by Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Australia. The Philippines and even Saudi Arabia saw the advantages of participation. The AIIB, founded on June 29, 2015, began operations last year.

According to a Times editorial of Dec. 5, 2015, “Countries are finding they must increasingly operate in China’s orbit. The United States worries that China will use the bank to set the global economic agenda on its own terms.”

In addition to the AIIB, the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China already finance big-ticket projects in Asia and Africa. By Chinese estimates, their combined overseas assets stand at $500 billion — more than the combined capital of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

Socialist planning to overcome underdevelopment

China’s past decades of development and modernization and its current surpluses are what make these new global plans possible. China has an estimated $4 trillion in foreign currency reserves. Its granaries are full and there are surpluses in cement and steel.

In 1949, when the revolution led by the Chinese Communist Party took power, China was an underdeveloped, war-torn country with a largely illiterate, majority peasant population. Western and Japanese imperialist powers had looted and carved up China for their own profits. Breaking their hold was the first step in liberation, but China was deeply impoverished.

After nearly 30 years of heroic efforts to modernize the economy based on the organization and efforts of the masses, the Chinese Communist Party in 1978 opened the country up to some forms of capitalist ownership and foreign capitalist investment.

This still risky policy has continued for nearly 40 years. It has allowed Chinese millionaires and even billionaires to develop and spread corruption. Foreign capital, ever hopeful of totally overturning the Chinese state, invested because profits could be made. But the Communist Party has used the years of capitalist investment to build up a modern, state-owned infrastructure alongside the growth of private capital.

Now China ranks as a developing country with a majority urban population living in modern, planned cities. The working class is now the largest social class in China. Wages for shop-floor workers in China have tripled in the last decade to become the highest in developing Asia.

China adopted a new industrial policy in 2015: “Made in China 2025,” which intends to upgrade manufacturing capabilities for high-tech products. These plans are supported by $150 billion in public or state-linked funds. It is this kind of long-term socialist planning that is the motor behind China’s new One Belt, One Road plan.

While the U.S. attempts to block these needed infrastructure efforts, move missiles and aircraft carriers off China’s coast, and send the lowest possible diplomatic delegation to China for the OBOR summit, Washington had the audacity and arrogance to warn China against north Korean participation. The DPRK sent a high-level delegation.

28 May 2017

By  Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai

The struggle for self-determination of the people of Kashmir is at a critical juncture. A youth-led, indigenous and spontaneous mass movement is underway. This movement is both internal, within Kashmir, and external throughout the world. It is mostly non-violent, pluralistic and resilient. This movement reverberates with cries of freedom and believes in a simple truth: a fair and impartial referendum in Kashmir. Time and time again, Kashmiris have surprised even the most hardened of their detractors. Attempts at delegitimizing the Kashmiri struggle have fallen entirely on deaf ears. No amount of wishful thinking has successfully persuaded growing international opinion that Kashmir, is not an integral part of any society other than its own. This belief is unshakeable, consistent and formidable.

The latest re-polling in Srinagar – Budgam Parliamentary constituency that took place on April 13, 2017 has given enough indications by now to the Government of India that its attempts to assemble some fake leadership in Kashmir on a collaborationist or capitulationist platform will take it nowhere. Kashmir has had enough of traitors and opportunists. These so-called leaders are so thoroughly discredited that they could not even get 2 % of the votes in this re-poll. By persisting in these attempts, Indian leadership betrays not only cynicism but also an uncharacteristic lack of political sense. This latest election is the proof that the resistance in Kashmir has not weakened, and will not weaken, on account of the paucity of its resources. The hunger of the people of Kashmir for the freedom, which has been denied to them supplies it an inexhaustible store of strength.

Fresh thinking is needed to cut the Gordian knot in Kashmir, which has been flailed at for more than half a century bilaterally between India and Pakistan without result. I do not mean to suggest, however, that tackling Kashmir will not be difficult. I do not want to expose myself to Hotspur’s derisive retort to Glendower when the latter boasted he could call spirits from the vastly deeps: Yes, but will they come when you call for them?

We are fully aware that the settlement of the Kashmir dispute cannot be achieved in one move. Like all qualified observers, we visualize successive steps or intermediate solutions in the process. It is one thing, however, to think of a settlement over a relatively extended period of time. It is atrociously different to postpone the beginning of the process on that account.

The people of Kashmir also understand that it cannot move immediately into a plebiscite. They have watched other processes in East Timor, Montenegro, Bosnia, Southern Sudan, Kosovo and recognize that a transitional period is necessary to build the confidence of all parties and to create a conducive atmosphere for stability.

We owe it to our people to take a rational and responsible position. Accordingly, we have confined ourselves to demands only for those actions at the preliminary stage, which do not involve any prejudice to the claims of any party to the dispute – India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir. However, if India or Pakistan or any other power would like to bring pressure on the people of Kashmir to capitulate, or to agree to any terms which will compromise their freedom, then any so-called peace process is foredoomed. The people of Kashmir wish to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind on that score.

It is known to all that any talks between India and Pakistan on Kashmir will be a charade unless some basic conditions are fulfilled. There must be the end to the campaign of killing of innocent civilians. The representatives of the Kashmiri resistance must be associated with the negotiations. The talks between India and Pakistan must be held at the level of their political leadership.

We do not wish the future dialogue on Kashmir between India and Pakistan to stagnate or be broken off. Nor do we want it to be just make-believe. We remind all concerned that there are equal dangers for peace in the two possibilities. Each of them can be averted only by the mediation of an impartial third party or the United Nations or a person of an international standing, like Kofi Annan or Bishop Desmond Tutu, etc.

Here are my thoughts about a new approach to set a stage for the settlement of the Kashmir problem.

An intra-Kashmir dialogue between the leadership of All Parties Hurriyet Conference, Dogras, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Pandits. This kind of dialogue is not only desirable but also possible because Kashmir is a pluralistic society. It has a long tradition of moderation and non-violence. Its culture does not generate extremism. Can anyone deny the fact – of no small significance – that while the Subcontinent under British rule was the scene of recurrent murderous strife, communal riots were unheard of in Kashmir? That unquestionable fact brings out the real character of Kashmir’s heritage.

Both India and Pakistan should be persuaded to issue relevant travel documents to enable the representatives of the different components of the population of Jammu and Kashmir (The Valley, Ladakh, Jammu, Azad Kashmir and Gilgat-Baltistian) to meet at a place outside South Asia and formulate their proposals for the procedures of a just and lasting settlement. Our concern goes beyond the Kashmiri speaking majority of the State. We are mindful of the interests of the Dogra and the Buddhists communities as well. We demand the establishment of genuinely peaceful conditions in which we can earnestly welcome Kashmiri Pandits back to their homes. Their future as a community lies in Kashmiriyyat with us. They too have suffered, though in a different way, because of then the Governor of Kashmir, Jagmohan’s cruel and shortsighted policies.

India does not want to give up its claim that Kashmir is an integral part of India. Pakistan insists that Kashmir is its jugular vein. And the people of Kashmir do not want to compromise on their right to self-determination. That means a deadlock, which has proved catastrophic not only for the people of Kashmir but for both India and Pakistan as well. Only an impartial mediator can help initiate a process of ‘negotiations without pre-conditions’ whereby all sides can sustain the necessary political support in their respective constituencies to participate in the process. Without an intermediary, our differences will forever keep us divided.

The negotiations should leave aside the question of the end result of efforts towards a settlement. This is most wise. We must stress it again and again that the immediate question is not what is the best solution of the problem but how the problem should be put on the road to a comprehensive solution. Since, we are concerned with setting a stage for settlement rather than the shape the settlement will take, we believe it is both untimely and harmful to indulge in, or encourage, controversies about the most desirable solution.  Any attempt to do so amounts to playing into hands of those who would prefer to maintain a status quo that is intolerable to the people of Kashmir and also a continuing threat to peace in South Asia.

It is equally true that the peace in South Asia will not come without sacrifices. Each party will have to modify her position so that common ground can be found. It will be impossible to find a solution of the Kashmir problem that respects all the sensitivities of Indian authorities, that values all the sentiments of Pakistan, that keeps intact the unity of the State of Jammu and Kashmir and safeguards the rights and interests of the people of all the different zones of the State. Yet this does not mean that we cannot find an imaginative solution. However, a workable solution demands some compromises and modifications from each of the parties.

The world powers should be persuaded to play a more activist role in regard to Kashmir by strengthening a peace process. This can take the shape of:

i). a polygonal dialogue – USA, China, India, Pakistan, and Kashmiri leadership; OR
ii). an appropriate use of the newly developed procedures and mechanisms at the United Nations.

In neither case would the handling of the dispute be a rehash of the old arid and acrimonious debates at the U.N. The U.N. would supply the catalyst that is needed for a settlement.  There are alternative courses of action, which can be spelled out and involved in a sequence of interactive steps over a period of time. None of them would put the peace process in the straitjacket of rigid adherence to old texts. But if a solution of the problem will be a graduated process, consisting of incremental measures, the violence in Kashmir needs to be brought to a quick end in order to set the stage for a solution to the problem.

These ideas need refinement, but they build on the ineluctable truth that nothing fruitful is possible in Kashmir without the primary participation and willing consent of the Kashmiri people. Schemes and negotiations that neglect that truth are doomed to failure, as proven by 70 years of grim conflict in Kashmir with no end in sight.

Finally, win-win solutions are further important because they safeguard against prospective bitterness or humiliation that are the fuel of new conflict. If one party to a solution feels exploited or unfairly treated, then national sentiments to undo the settlement will naturally swell. We must not belittle, embarrass, or humiliate any party.  Every participant should be treated with dignity and humanity. Charity, not the triumphal, should be the earmark of the negotiating enterprise. Also, we should not sacrifice the good on the altar of the perfect.  Compromises are the staple of conflict resolution. To achieve some good is worthwhile even though not all good is achieved.

— Dr. Fai is the Secretary General of World Kashmir Awareness Forum. He can be reached at:  gnfai2003@yahoo.com

5 May 2017

U.S. strategy seems to be shifting toward creating a buffer state between Iran and Israel.

By Sharmine Narwani

BEIRUT—Given the rhetoric of most U.S. policymakers, one might conclude that the conflict in Syria is about establishing freedom and democracy in the Levantine state. But no genuine aspiration for democracy ever came from a line-up of allies that includes countries like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar, and Turkey. Seen from the Middle East, American intervention here appears to be aimed at putting the last genuinely independent Arab state under Washington’s sphere of influence—and cutting off a key Iranian ally in the region.

Today, after six years of regime-change operations that failed to unseat Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and install a compliant regime in Damascus, the west’s strategy seems to be shifting toward partitioning Syria. Specifically, the new U.S. policy would seek to sever the unimpeded geographic line between Iran and Israel by creating a buffer entity that runs through Iraq and Syria.

But here’s the twist: in Syria’s northeast/east and in Iraq’s northwest/west, where the Islamic State once occupied a vast swathe of territory, ISIS has helped to enable this U.S. goal by delineating the borders of this future buffer zone.

The only question is which U.S. “asset” will rule that buffer zone once it is liberated from ISIS. Would it be Sunni Arabs of the sectarian variety? A declassified 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency report seemed to suggest this option when it confirmed U.S. and Western support for the establishment of a “Salafist Principality” on the Syrian-Iraqi border.

Or will it be a Kurdish-ruled zone? U.S.-Kurdish machinations have, after all, borne a similar Shia-thwarting buffer on Iran’s western border with Iraq, with the creation of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) headed by the famously opportunistic and corrupt Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) leader Masoud Barzani.

Either way, what transpired is this: ISIS occupied the areas flanking Syria and Iraq’s northern border. The U.S.-led coalition has had a presence in these territories for several years, without impairing ISIS control. At the right time, under U.S. cover, Kurds are moving in to “recapture” them.

Kurds constitute a minority in all these governorates, which is how the presence of ISIS became a valuable U.S./Kurdish strategic asset. ISIS’s invasion of these areas is delineating the borders of the new entity and depopulating it—creating an opportunity for Washington to champion the Kurds as the primary “liberating” force within those borders, after which Kurds can claim this territorial bounty.

“This is conquest masquerading as liberation,” says Assyrian writer Max Joseph, who explains how KDP Peshmerga forces disarmed Assyrian Christians and Yezidis two weeks before ISIS invaded in August 2014, then retreated from their promise to protect those populations just as ISIS entered Sinjar and the Nineveh Plains.

In the immediate aftermath of the ISIS invasion, Reuters quoted a KRG official saying: “Everyone is worried, but this is a big chance for us. ISIL gave us in two weeks what Maliki couldn’t give us in eight years.”

“By disarming and disabling communities who live in territories the Kurdish leadership have designs on controlling, then letting a ready-made aggressive foreign force invade and uproot native communities, forcing them to flee, KRG forces backed by Western airstrikes will be seen as ‘retaking’ land never even theirs,” explains Joseph.

Two years later, in July 2016, the KRG’s Peshmerga ministry gave credence to those claims by announcing that “Peshmerga forces will not withdraw from areas they have recaptured from the Islamic State.”

This is nothing less than an attempt to establish “Kurdistan,” a nation for the historically stateless Kurds, which has long-envisioned swallowing up parts of Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran.

Some context helps explain the current situation. The KDP-ruled Kurdish entity in Iraq currently governs vast areas stretching from Iran’s western border to the Turkish border, stopping short east of Mosul and Kirkuk (an oil-rich city it openly covets). But the KDP has aspirations that run through Mosul to the western province of Nineveh—the historic home of a Christian Assyrian population—which would create a contiguous line across the north of Iraq to the Syrian border.

Last week, the “Kurdistan” flag was hoisted above all government buildings in Kirkuk—a move deemed unconstitutional and opposed by local non-Kurdish leaders and the Iraqi government alike.

A Syrian-Kurdish Entity?

In Syria, one can see a picture developing that mirrors Iraq’s experiences with the Kurds, Americans, and ISIS. Under U.S. patronage, areas occupied by the terror group are allowed to be “recaptured” by Kurdish forces, with a smattering of subordinate Arab Sunni forces to lend broader legitimacy.

Kurdish-controlled territory now traverses much of Syria’s three northern governorates where Kurds remain a minority—Hasakah, Raqqa, and Aleppo—and has earned the wrath of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has sent in troops and Arab proxies to break this “Kurdish corridor,” placing him in direct confrontation with the objectives of Washington, his NATO ally.

The Kurdish Nationalist Party (PYD) and its military wing. the People’s Protection Units (YPG), have unilaterally declared Hasakah a federal Kurdish state, a designation that is unrecognized by the Syrian government and other states. But Kurds barely make up 40 percent of the governorate’s population, which consists of Assyrians, Arabs, Armenians, Turkmen, and other ethnic groups as well. Likewise, in Aleppo, the most populous of Syria’s 14 governorates, where 40 percent of Syrian Kurds reside, Kurds make up only 15 percent of the population and are a majority only in Afrin and Ayn al-Arab (Kobane).

Meanwhile, Kurdish nationalists identify all of Hasakah and northern Raqqa/ Aleppo as “Rojova”—or Western Kurdistan—even though significant Kurdish populations live outside these areas and significant non-Kurdish populations live within them. Furthermore, many of these Kurds are not of Syrian origin, but fled Turkey last century after several failed uprisings against that state. The entire Kurdish population of Syria amounts to about 10 percent (although figures are slightly disputed both upward and downward). Hundreds of thousands of Kurds have since fled the conflict in Syria for safer shores. And there is not a single contiguous line of Kurdish majority-populated areas from the northeast to northwest of Syria.

Yet the U.S. is storming ahead with Project Buffer State, erecting military bases left, right, and center, in violation of Syria’s sovereignty and international law. Various news reports claim the Pentagon and its 1,000 or so troops in Syria have established up to six bases in the north of the country—in the Rmelan region near the Iraqi border, in Qamishli (Hasakah), Kobane (Aleppo), and now in Tabqa, several dozen kilometers west of the ISIS capital of Raqqa.

But the American plan to storm Raqqa has stalled due to Turkey’s refusal to be excluded, and its objection to Syrian Kurdish involvement. Washington wants its Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) allies to liberate the city, but this group consists mainly of YPG Kurds who are aligned with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), a Turkish and U.S.-designated terrorist group. The U.S. pretends these Kurdish militias are the only fighting force that can defeat ISIS. Never mind that the Syrian army and its allied troops have been defeating ISIS and al-Qaeda-affiliated militants around the country for years.

The inconvenient fact is, besides the Kurds—not all of whom back the U.S. project on the Syrian-Iraqi border—no forces have fought ISIS and other terrorist groups more successfully than the Syrian army and its Iranian, Russian, and Hezbollah allies.

By contrast, ISIS actually expanded and strengthened after the U.S.-led coalition began its strikes against the terror group. Recall ISIS trekking in plain sight across the Syrian border from Iraq to capture Palmyra—or tankers filled with ISIS oil crossing over to Turkey with nary a U.S. strike. It wasn’t until the Russian air force entered the fray and shamed the U.S. coalition that ISIS began to suffer some defeats. Washington had only really contained ISIS within the borders it was shaping, not struck any serious blows to the group.

After all, it is Washington’s awkward alliance in the region—Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Britain, France, Israel—that has supported the growth of ISIS and like-minded extremists. U.S. President Donald Trump even went so far as to accuse his predecessor Barack Obama of being “the founder of ISIS.”

Certainly, Obama watched as his Turkish NATO ally allowed ISIS freedom of movement across its borders and purchased its stolen oil in bulk. We also now know via email leaks that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was aware that U.S. anti-ISIS coalition allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar were funding ISIS.

Why would Washington tolerate allied support of the very terrorist group it claims to want to destroy? By portraying ISIS as the worst of all terror groups, al-Qaeda and its affiliates—by far the most efficient fighting force against the Syrian army and its allies—were able to fly under the radar to fight for regime change. Furthermore, a globally demonized ISIS has also provided justification for direct Western action that might otherwise have been impossible after “humanitarian interventions” lost their allure, post-Libya. Finally, this supposedly very dangerous ISIS was able to invade and occupy, for great lengths of time, territories on the Syrian-Iraqi border that would create the boundaries for a buffer state that could eventually be “liberated” and led by Western-controlled proxies.

Stealing Syria

If the U.S. forges ahead with plans to lead its Kurdish allies into the Raqqa battle it will risk further alienating Turkey. Don’t expect ISIS to be defeated, however. Instead, expect ISIS to be driven southward toward Deirezzor and other eastern points along Iraq’s border, where the terror group’s presence can act yet again as a U.S. strategic asset—specifically, by moving the fight away from Washington’s Kurdish project in the north and hindering the ability of Iraqi militias to cross the border in aid of Syrian troops.

That’s not such a leap. Deirezzor is where U.S. fighter jets bombed the Syrian army for an hour straight last September, killing over 100 Syrian forces. The strikes enabled ISIS to capture several strategic points around Deirezzor airport, which the Syrian state was dependent on to protect populations in the ISIS-besieged area. The Pentagon swore it was an error, the Syrians and Russians swore it was not.

Meanwhile, in Syria’s south, U.S.-backed militants, aided by Jordanians, Saudis, and the usual Western suspects,  are rallying their forces to expand the ground battle inside Syria.

Why the sudden surge of activity? Mainly because the Syrian government and its allies have, since the liberation of East Aleppo in January, succeeded in pushing back terrorists in key areas, regaining strategic territory, and striking reconciliation and ceasefire deals in other parts of the state.

“Western states with the United States at their head interfere in favor of the terrorists whenever the Syrian Arab Army makes a significant advance,” Assad observed in a recent interview.

But the U.S. overestimates its capabilities. With few troops on the ground, radical militants as allies, and pushback from Syria, Iran, Turkey, Russia, and Iraq, Washington will face a steep climb ahead.

In fact, all U.S. gains could be abruptly reversed with this one Kurdish card. Nothing is more likely to draw Syrians, Iraqis, Turks, and Iranians together than the threat of a Kurdish national entity that will seek to carve itself out of these four states. And as the U.S. tries to establish “self-rule” by its allies in the northeast of Syria, it will once again be confronted with the same crippling infighting that comes from foisting an un-organic leadership onto populations.

Syria will become an American quagmire. Washington simply cannot manage its partition plans with so few troops on the ground, surrounded by the terror forces it so recently spawned, as able adversaries chip away at its project. Stealing Syria will not be an easy trick.

Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Mideast geopolitics, based in Beirut.

11 May 2017

By Stephen Lendman

In response to violence allegedly instigated by ISIS in the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law in Mindanao, imposed military rule, and threatened to extend it nationwide to defeat the threat.

What’s going on? Why did ISIS begin operating in the Philippines? Weeks after taking office in mid-2016, Duterte blasted Western imperial Middle East policies, saying the Obama administration and Britain “destroyed the (region)…forc(ing) their way into Iraq and kill(ing) Saddam.”

“Look at Iraq now. Look what happened to Libya. Look what happened to Syria.”

He blasted former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for failing to act responsibly against what’s gone on for years – on the phony pretext of humanitarian intervention and democracy building.

He called Obama a “son-of-a-bitch” for his unaccountable actions – no way to make friends in Washington, especially if his geopolitical agenda conflicts with US aims.

On the day he declared martial law, he met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow for discussions on future military and economic cooperation.

He seeks improved economic and military ties with China. Ahead of visiting Beijing last October, he said

“only China…can help us,” adding:

“All that I would need to do is just to talk and get a firm handshake from the officials and say that we are Filipinos and we are ready to cooperate with you, to help us in building our economy and building our country.”

“If we can have the things you have given to other countries by the way of assistance, we’d also like to be a part of it and to be a part of the greater plans of China about the whole of Asia, particularly Southeast Asia.”

He promised to cool tensions over South China Sea disputes.

“There is no sense fighting over a body of water,” he said.

“We want to talk about friendship (with Beijing). We want to talk about cooperation, and most of all, we want to talk about business. War would lead us to nowhere.”

He announced no further joint military exercises with America, saying he’s open to holding them with China and Russia.

Shifting away from longstanding US ties doesn’t go down well in Washington. Are efforts by ISIS to establish a Philippines foothold part of an anti-Duterte Trump administration or CIA plot independent of his authority?

According to a June 2 Duran.com report, retired Philippine military official Abe Purugganan claims ISIS violence in Mindanao is part of an opposition Liberal Party plan to undermine Duterte and oust him from office – citing information from a party whistleblower.

Below are the comments The Duran posted, saying:

“There is a lot of noises and chatters flooding the cyberspace, you got to use your discernment to filter all these information.”

“LETS PLAY FIRE WITH FIRE,” explaining “(t)hese are the exact words stated by Loida Lewis and her fellow oligarchs on a meeting months ago with Liberal Party members abroad,” adding:

Their plan is to use ISIS or ISIS-connected terrorists to instigate violence and chaos in Mindanao, wanting Duterte’s government destabilized and ousted.

If the information reported is accurate, it explains what’s now going on, likely to worsen, perhaps spread to other parts of the country.

Last week, Duterte said

“if I cannot confront (ISIS terrorists threatening the country), I will resign. “If I am incompetent and incapable of keeping order in this country, let me step down and give the job to somebody else.”

If US dirty hands are behind the ISIS insurgency, he’s got a long struggle ahead, trying to overcome the attack on him and perhaps Philippine sovereignty.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

2 June 2017

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Pakistan is reconsidering its position on the so-called 41-nation Islamic military alliance, led by Saudi Arabia, to avoid straining its relationship with neighboring Iran, according to Pakistan media reports. The military alliance was to be commanded by General Raheel Sharif, the former commander-in-chief of Pakistan army who retired from the Pak army last year.

Its decision comes after statements by Saudi authorities at the Arab Islamic-US summit in Riyadh on 20-21 May suggested that the military alliance was meant primarily to counter Iran, the media report said adding that the Riyadh summit focused on isolating Iran — which was kept out of the summit.

The officials argued that the Pakistan government in-principle agreed to be a part of the initiative if its sole purpose was to fight terrorism. It was believed that the government had joined the alliance when in April it allowed General Sharif to leave Pakistan to lead the alliance.

But the officials said a final decision will be made once the terms of reference (ToRs) of the alliance are finalized. The ToRs would be finalized during a meeting of the defense ministers of the participating countries in Saudi Arabia soon.

Pakistan, according to the officials, would recommend that the military alliance should have a clear objective, that is to fight terrorism. Any deviation from this goal, they added, will not only undermine the alliance but lead to more divisions in the Muslim world. “We are very clear that we will join this alliance only to fight terrorism,” the officials emphasized.

Defense minister Khawaja Asif on the floor of the National Assembly has said that Pakistan would withdraw from the alliance if it turns out to be sectarian in nature.

Pakistani lawmakers have said that they do not want their country to be part of any sectarian alliance as it also goes against the country’s constitution.

Pakistan’s two main opposition parties — Tehreek-i-Insaf and Pakistan People’s Party — have been calling for maintaining “neutrality” in the Arab-Iran rivalry. But given the longstanding strategic ties with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan is unlikely to completely withdraw from the alliance.

Iran has expressed its reservations regarding the appointment of the former army chief, retired Gen Raheel Sharif, as head of the Saudi-led 41-nation so-called Islamic military alliance, saying it is not ‘satisfied’ with the coalition.

Iran expresses concern

“We are concerned about this issue… that it may impact the unity of Islamic countries,” Iran’s Ambassador to Pakistan Mehdi Honardoost was quoted as saying.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency quoted Honardoost as saying that Pakistan had contacted Iranian officials before issuing the no-objection certificate (NOC) to Gen Sharif to lead the Saudi alliance. “But that does not indicate that Iran is satisfied with this decision or it has accepted the same,” the envoy said.

The ambassador proposed that all important Islamic countries come together to form a “coalition of peace” in order to resolve their issues “rather [than] forming a controversial military alliance”.

A controversial appointment

The appointment of General Sharif as the leader of the military alliance sparked debate over how the move will impact Pakistan’s foreign policy, and whether it was fully sanctioned by parliament.

Pakistan had initially found itself in the crosshairs of Middle Eastern politics as Saudi Arabia named it as part of its newly formed military alliance of Muslim countries meant to combat terrorism, without first getting its consent, the daily Dawn reported.

However, after initial ambiguity, the government had confirmed its participation in the alliance, but had said that the scope of its participation would be defined after Riyadh shared the details of the coalition it was assembling.

General Sharif last March accompanied the prime minister to Raadal Shamaal, the first military exercises of the alliance in which Pakistani troops also participated.

The Saudi government had surprised

The Saudi government had surprised many countries by announcing that it had forged a coalition for coordinating and supporting military operations against terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan. Iran was absent from the states named as participants.

Last April, Saudi Religious Affairs Minister Sheikh Saleh bin Abdul Aziz described the Pakistan-Saudi Arabia military alliance a “victory of Islam” and its main objective is “renaissance of Islam”.

Addressing a well-attended public meeting on the first day of centenary celebrations of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (F) in Pakistan , Sheikh Saleh bin Abdul Aziz said that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would jointly take on the enemies of Islam and the holy places in Saudi Arabia.

According to Tribune Express, in order to avoid any strain with Iran, Pakistan pushed for mediation between Tehran and Riyadh. Islamabad even mooted the idea of inclusion of Iran in the alliance.

However, all those efforts could not succeed since Saudi Arabia and Iran have serious differences on regional disputes particularly the current hotspots in Middle East.

But given longstanding strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan is unlikely to completely withdraw from the alliance. Nevertheless, its participation would only remain confined to counter-terrorism efforts, the Tribune report said.

The 41-nation armed coalition was initially proposed as a platform for security cooperation among Muslim countries and included provisions for training, equipment and troops, and the involvement of religious scholars for devising a counter-terrorism narrative.

Senator Syed Dilawar Abbas

Pakistan Muslim League Quaid (PML-Q) Senior Vice President Senator Syed Dilawar Abbas has said that former army chief General Raheel Sharif should quit the Saudi-led force’s command as it will not prove useful for Pakistan in the prevailing situation.

He said that Iran is a brotherly Islamic country and above all our immediate neighbor, who always supported Pakistan in time of need. We can’t afford to let our friends get upset for the sake of others, he added. He said that the United States had always played a key role in division of Muslims for securing its own interests in the region. He also condemned US President Donald Trump’s remarks that Iran is sponsoring terrorism in the region.

Senator Abbas said that the coalition was not an Islamic army but a Saudi-led alliance. If Saudi Arabia wants to safeguard the rights of Muslim world then all should have included all Islamic states in the force. Why some countries are part of the army while highly important Muslim states, including Iran, Syria and others, have not been included in it, he questioned.

He said that it clearly indicates that Saudi Arabia had their own interests and as a nuclear Islamic State, Pakistan must clearly inform the Saudis that we cannot become part of American hidden agenda against any Muslim state. Why should we become stooges of the United States, he added.

The Nation

In a comment on the current controversy, a Pakistani newspaper the Nation, asked: Did the fact that the coalition was first announced in December 2015 – ninth months into Saudi military intervention in Yemen and a month before the execution of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr – also not give Islamabad an idea who this alliance would be aligned against?

One would’ve been prompted to even hint that this belated suggestion of a potential back-peddling, if not complete retraction, is a reaction to the snub at the summit where Trump and King Salman collectively humiliated Pakistan by first not allowing the premier to speak and then by even refusing to include him in any publicized meetings or photo-ops.

Commenting on Pakistan’s stance that it will join this alliance “only to fight terrorism,” the Nation said that the term ‘terrorism’ is loaded, or aligned with state policies.

“A Kashmiri freedom fighter who picks up the gun is a terrorist for India. A separatist militant in Balochistan is a terrorist for Pakistan. A mujahid can be a terrorist or strategic asset depending on whether s/he is waging war against the military establishment or against it. So maybe it’s a good idea to modalities of terrorism as well, before we agree to defend Saudi Arabia against terrorists,” the paper said adding:

“A country that has unequivocally upheld that ‘atheists are terrorists’, clearly doesn’t even need an individual to take up arms for them to be lumped into the bin of terrorism. It also underscores that terrorism for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is primarily based on ideological affiliations. And there are no prizes was guessing the one ideology that Wahabbism is antagonistic to even more than non-belief.”

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net) email: asghazali2011 (@) gmail.com

1 June 2017