I have translated a current op-ed by Kåre Willoch, Prime Minister of Norway for the Conservative Party 1981-1986, on the Palestinian question.
Mr. Willoch, b. 1928, is one of the most respected former statesmen in Scandinavia and polls as the most admired living man in Norway. His views on this subject matter are somewhat removed from those of the US establishment.
The Road to Disaster
By Kåre Willoch, former Prime Minister of Norway
In Aftenposten
Translated by Sirocco
Those who defend the Israeli policy towards the Palestinians support a policy generating a hatred that could spell disaster for Israel.
A hundred years of double standards. The misfortunes of the Palestinian people in our time are tied to nearly 100 years of double standards in the Western world. Words about freedom, democracy, and peace have been combined with an unparalleled tolerance for the occupation and oppression of Palestinians. The censure of injustice has been rendered ineffectual by consistently being directed towards the oppressed and the oppressors at once. Whenever the abuses generate extremism among the oppressed, this is used to prove the legitimacy of the oppression. Whenever the oppressed rise up, the oppressors’ right to self-defense is underlined.
Liberty promised. It all began during World War I. Then the Arabs — including those in Palestine — were given expectations of liberty in reward for joining in the war against Turkey, a German ally. However, France and Great Britain simultaneously forged an agreement to divide the Middle East between themselves. In order to secure Jewish support for the Allies, the Jews were promised a “national home” in an area where 90 percent of the population were Arabs. The Palestinians’ attempts between the wars to retain the country in which they had roots preceding the Saga Age in Norway were brutally crushed by the Brits.
Crimes against the Jewish people. After the Europeans’ unfathomable crimes against the Jewish people during the last world war, the Western world considered that the Jews must get a state of their own in an area still having far more Arabs than Jews. Arab states then proposed to ask the International Court of Justice in the Hague whether the UN had any basis in international law to establish a state for a people in an area where another people lived. The West then refused to invoke the law pertaining to the rights of peoples in a matter concerning the rights of a people. But at least the UN resolved that no one living in the area should lose any rights or suffer any maltreatment due to the country’s partition.
Nevertheless, when Jewish terrorists in 1948 perpetrated massacres against civilians in order to make Arabs flee the land that was to be Israel, none of those who had passed the motion prohibiting such events did anything of significance to prevent them. These massacres have been described by the Israeli historian Benny Morris.
The UN’s terms violated. Even though the UN’s foremost term for the creation of the state of Israel had been violated, Palestinian refugees believed they would be allowed to return to their homes. But Israel refused them entry and confiscated their properties without compensation. In their case, no Western powers would enforce the human rights they had participated in guaranteeing. Thus arose the refugee problem. It was these abuses against Arabs in Palestine that provoked so strong reactions in Arab countries that many Jews felt they had to emigrate thence to Israel.
The war in 1967 proved another milestone. Israel’s former foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, wrote in his book Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: “After the defeat (in 1967), the Arabs might have made peace in return for the 1948 borders they had hitherto rejected. But now an intoxicated Israel wanted more, and the failure to make peace led both to a revival under Israeli occupation of a fierce Palestinian nationalism and the birth, under the spell of the six-day victory, of a Messianic national-religious Jewish expansionism.” (Economist, February 11 2006).
Since then, Israel has settled ever more of its own citizens on Palestinian land, in breach of international law, to which Western countries ostensibly give great weight. No one has done anything of significance to protect the Palestinians from this.
The Oslo Accords. The Oslo Accords of 1993 gave the Palestinians hope for a state of their own. But the emerging message to the Palestinians was: If you want your own state, you have to cease all violent resistance to the occupation. Meanwhile, the expanding Israeli settlements on Palestinian land showed that they would not gain their own state without violent resistance. When the Oslo Process began, 116,000 Israelis lived on the West Bank and in Gaza. The number is currently approaching 300,000. (Numbers from Foreign Policy). When the confiscation of Palestinian land provoked Palestinian resistance, Israel subjected them to brutality in breach of international law.
After the elections among Palestinians in 2006, Western powers demanded that the losers, namely Fatah, should be in power. They refused to talk to Hamas, which won. Such was the West’s attitude to democracy. Thus, one was able to divide the Palestinians against each other. The justification given was that Hamas wished to eradicate Israel. Signals to the effect that Hamas was willing to abandon such extremism were disregarded. (Economist, January 3). A condition of such willingness, however, was that Israel withdrew from the occupied territories. This Israel did not wish to do. Instead, the reply was what white oppressors always have said before being compelled to give up the oppression: We don’t talk to terrorists. By the oppressors’ definition, those who kill the most civilians are no terrorists. Their premise is that killing only amounts to terrorism when the oppressor’s people are affected.
Enemies must talk to each other. Nelson Mandela has said that peace requires enemies to talk to each other. Israel chose another path. Financial Times wrote on January 4 about the blockade of Gaza in response to the Palestinians voting for Hamas. The Economist believes that Israel and the USA hoped that the emergency caused by the siege would turn the people against Hamas. The opposite happened. Moreover, as The Economist wrote on January 3: The last straw arrived in November, when Israel, in spite of the truce, killed six Hamas people. Hamas responded with rockets.
The remainder of the tragedy has been seen every day on television. But how can the USA, which talks about spreading freedom and democracy, support the oppression of a people, breaches of international law, and the sidelining of an election result, as the USA does with respect to Palestine? Of the difference between American and European reactions, The Economist wrote in 2006 that “the most obvious answer lies in the power of… the Israeli lobby (AIPAC) and the religious right.” In explaining the role of religion, it mentioned that “Two in five Americans believe that Israel was given to the Jewish people by God, and one in three say that the creation of the state of Israel was a step towards the Second Coming.” No American politician has much of a chance to be elected to Congress without supporting Israel. However, former leaders — like Jimmy Carter — are able to protest the abuse of military superiority.
Disaster for Israel. Those who defend the Israeli policy towards the Palestinians support a policy generating a hatred that could spell disaster for Israel. They make it even more difficult for those Israelis who want another policy to make their country avert the course from disaster. Friends of Israel ought to work for Israeli acceptance of the Arab peace proposal. This calls, among other things, for borders as before the war of 1967, only with such adjustments as the parties reach agreement on, and guarantees for Israel’s security.
