Revisiting
the historic
commitment
[JI
Media Digest gratefully acknowledges the contribution of Impact
International – London for publishing a title story on “ Pakistan and
Palestine” in its August 2003 issue. Appreciating the historical
importance of the issue and its reopening once again, Impact’s artcile
is reproduced for the common benefit of readers]
In Lahore, 56
years ago, was adopted the celebrated resolution that inaugurated the
glorious freedom struggle of the Muslims of the South Asian
subcontinent under the leadership of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah
(d.1948). It is a fact of no small significance that the same session
of the [All India] Muslim League which adopted the Pakistan resolution
also adopted unanimously a resolution on Palestine. The resolution
recorded and I quote, ‘the considered opinion, in clear and
unequivocal language, that no arrangements of a piecemeal character
should be made in Palestine which are contrary in sprit and opposed to
the pledges given to the Muslim world’. The resolution further warned
against the danger of using force in the holy land ‘to overawe the
Arabs ….into submission’.
Pakistan’s
support for the just causes of the Muslims world is organically
related to its own national vocation. It has never suffered a
severance between national impulse and the urges of the Muslim
emancipation. When the partition of Palestine was decided, a
demonstration was held here in Lahore at which [the great Islamic
poet] Iqbal [d.1938] was present. On that occasion, he emphasized the
problem of Palestine, I quote his words ‘does not concern Palestine
alone but will have wide repercussions in the entire Muslim world’.
Later, in
October1947, soon after our emergence, The Quaid-i-Azam warned that
the partition of Palestine would entail and I quote his words ‘ the
gravest danger and unprecedented conflict’ , and that the entire
Muslim world revolt against such a decision which cannot be supported
historically, Politically and morally’. Soon afterwords , Pakistan
said at the United Nations that all the Holy Land was being nailed
and stretched on the cross. All these words are still timely. Fifty
Six years ago, there was no Palestine problem; there was only a
country named Palestine. Only the right arrogated to itself by western
colonialism enabled one western nation to promise to a section of
another people, namely Jews, the country of a third, the Arabs. It
needs to be reiterated that it is this fundamental injustice , this
uprooting of a people from their homeland and planting alien
population on it, that evokes the resentment of the entire Muslim
world.
The malady
consists of cancerous outgrowth of colonialism, The establishment of
settler regimes or the imposition of immigrant minority rule. The
root cause of the conflict is not an innate animosity between the
Muslims and the jews or even between the Arab or the jews. As Muslims,
we entertain no hostility against any human community; When we say
this, we do not exclude the Jewish people. To Jews as Jews we bear no
malice; to Jews as Zionists, intoxicated with their militarism and
reeking with technological arrogance, We refuse to be hospitable. The
pogroms inflicted on them during the centuries and to holocaust to
which they were subjected under Nazism fill some of the darkest pages
of human history. But redemption should have come from the western
world and not have been exacted, as it was, from the Palestinians.
The tragedy of
Palestinians has agitated Muslim minds for half a century. The outrage
of its partition in 1947 and the graver injury of its occupation by
Israel in 1967 have been intolerable because the territory is part of
the spiritual center of the Muslim World. The Palestine question was
referred to the UN at a time when the organization was hardly
representative of the international community. The plan, which it put
forward for the partition of Palestine, would not obtain a passing
consideration today from the majority of its membership, consisting of
third world nations that are sworn to the principle of
self-determination of peoples. Even at that time, the Muslim nations
reminded the western world of its own long term interests and of the
folly of forcibly driving a wedge into the middle east . These
reminders proved fruitless. These importunities were scorned.
After 1967,
Israel became more and more arrogant ; It derided the censure of its
action by the United Nations. Its advocates became increasingly
apathetic to the growing signs of the untenability of the situation of
arising from the war of 1967. The result was that an iniquitous,
Indeed and absurd, situation was frozen and forces of sanity became
immobile.
The
[October 1973] war has released currents which could flow towards a
just settlement of the Middle East problem. The Arab cause has been
actively supported by a vast segment of humanity. The nations of
Africa have demonstrated their solidarity with Arabs and placed
principle above expediency. Under the pressure of the economic forces,
if not through a perception of the rights and wrongs of the situation,
the western powers have awakened to the urgency of a definitive
settlement of the Middle East problem. The mediatory processes which
have thus been put into are not to be disdained.
These
are good auguries. But they can vanish if apathy towards the root of
the problem, and a satisfaction at partial solutions, begins to sway
the policies of those who have supported Israel. On their part, the
Arab states have shown that their approach to the problem is not
theological, like Israel’s, but one which visualizes a series of
peaceful adjustments beginning with disengagement. Disengagement,
however, is not peace. It can turn peace into a mirage if it operates
as a substitute for a comprehensive settlement.
We
have a right to expect that the peace which is negotiated in Geneva
will deal with all the issues integral to the Middle East conflict.
The withdrawal of Israeli forces from all Arab territories occupied
since 1947, the restoration of the Holy City to Arab sovereignty and
the restitution of the rights of the Palestinian people are the
essential elements of a settlement. All these elements derive from the
rational principles of a just and durable peace. All of them come
within the four corners of resolution 242, if that resolution is
rightly interpreted.
The
exponents of the Israeli view contend that the Security Council
resolution envisages the possibility of Israel retaining part of the
occupied Arab territories. This contention is sought to be based on
the provision regarding the right of every state in the region ‘to
live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries’. The perversity
of such an interpretation is evident from that fact that the
resolution as a whole states its objective to be ‘the fulfillment of
the Charter principles’. What principle is more basic to the Charter
of the United Nations than the inadmissibility of the acquisition of
territory by the use of force?
Furthermore, no state can arrogate to itself the right to determine
its secure borders even if these encroach on the territory of another.
No state claims such a right. The security of a state’s frontiers
depends on their conformity to international law. A nation’s defence
strategy is based on its recognized frontiers and not on its
aggressive appetites.
Finally the question arises: whose security comes first? Certainly, on
the record of the aggressions committed during the last 27 years, it
is the Arabs who need the secure borders against Israel and not Israel
against the Arabs.
Among
the Arab territories occupied by Israel, Al-Quds holds a special place
in Muslim hearts. A unique symbol of the confluence of Islam with the
sacred tradition of Abraham, Moses and Jesus, all of them Prophets
whom Muslims hold in the highest reverence, Jerusalem is inscribed on
our souls as the site of, in the words of the Holy Qur’an, ‘the
Farther Mosque, the precinct of which Allah has blessed.’ Associated
as it is with the Ascension of the Last Prophet, it is tied to our
inmost spiritual fibre. Except for an interval during the Crusades, it
has been a Muslim city – I repeat a Muslim city – from the year 637.
For
more than 1300 years, Muslims have held Jerusalem as trust for all who
venerated it. Muslims alone could be its loving and impartial
custodians for the simple reason that Muslims alone believe in all
three prophetic traditions rooted in Jerusalem.
We
gladly recognize that Jerusalem affects the cherished sensibilities of
men and women of the three world faiths. But there are 2000 million
Muslims and Christians, and 15 million Jews, in the world. Out of
these, less than three million owe their allegiance to Israel. What
principle of justice would confer on this minority right to hold
dominion over the Holy city. What except a kind of cynicism can allow
the City of Peace to be treated by Israel as the spoils of war?
I
must make it clear that is not our position on Jerusalem but Israel’s
which is contrary to the objective criteria by which the status of
territories is determined. It is Israel which cites the name of
religion and culture and invokes its memories or emotions in order to
lend justification to acts that are wholly illegal. Such attempts can
only make a conflict implacable and bring in its train a religious
war.
Viewed in non-religious perspective, the question of Jerusalem’s
status cannot be unrelated to the sovereign rights of the people of
Jerusalem itself, the majority of whom were Arabs, violently expelled
and uprooted from the western part in 1948. Nor can the special
attachment of Jewish people to Jerusalem override the principle of
admissibility of territorial acquisition by force. The Jewish right to
Jerusalem certainly connotes the right of access worship.
On
the basis of all these considerations, the issue of the Holy City of
Jerusalem admits of no doubt or division in our ranks. Let me make it
clear from this platform that any agreement, any protocol, any
understanding which postulates the continuance of Israeli occupation
of the Holy City or the transfer of the Holy City to any non-Muslim or
Arab sovereignty will be worth the paper it is written on.
This
is not a threat. [But] Not to give this warning would be to encourage
an illusion which will be fatal of the establishment of lasting peace
in the Middle East. In this respect, there is a fire in our hearts
which no prevarication, no skilful evasions on the part of others,
will ever be able to quench.
The
international community and particularly those states which sponsored
the partition of Palestine in 1947 bear heavy responsibility. They
have to redress the injustices perpetrated on the Palestinian people.
If it were not so tragic, what could be more bizarre than the
phenomenon of a people being dispossessed of its homeland and
condemned to live in agony and dispersion, not in imperialism’s hoary
past but in our day and age? Who can not understand their anger at
seeing immigrants from all over the invited, nay cajoled, to settle on
their own homeland? It is not the eruptions of insensate violence,
disowned by their leadership, but the purity of their rights which
must influence the world’s attitude to their problem.
The
states gathered here today are committed by the very fact of their
adherence to the Charter of Islamic Conference to strive for
restitution of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. This
is our obligation not only to the people of the Palestine, not even
merely to the cause of the Islamic brotherhood, but also to the larger
cause of universal peace.
[Courtesy:
Impact International London, August 2003]
