Two states, key to managing Mid-East conflict

It comes as a great relief to those sections endorsing an equitable solution to the Middle East conflict that the Sri Lankan government is fully supportive of what has come to be known as the two-state conflict-resolution formula. In the words of the Lankan state, the latter solution envisages a Palestinian and an Israeli state ‘living side by side in harmony with one another on the basis of the 1967 borders’.

Considering that independent, secure statehood has been the prime demand of both main parties to the decades-long conflict, the above formula is eminently recommendable as articulating the most suitable political solution to the Middle East problem. In formulating a solution to the conflict, it is important that the principal concerns of both parties are adequately addressed and it ought to be plain to see that two states would go a long way in meeting these needs.

What is particularly noteworthy about this policy statement which was made by Sri Lanka to the UN Human Rights Council recently is the emphasis Sri Lanka lays on equity. That is, the Israelis, no less than the Palestinians, require an independent and secure state and these states need to peacefully co-exist with each other. Over the decades, there has been a marked tendency on the part of the global South to take-up the cause of the Palestinians in a major way and it was not wrong in doing this, considering the unmitigated, grave hardships of the Palestinians, but the Israelis were no less aggrieved than the Palestinians and the latter reality needed to be fully recognized as well. The Sri Lankan statement reveals that Sri Lanka has come to grips with this fact.

The historical reality is that the Israelis or Jews were as dispossessed and victimized over the centuries as the Palestinians. In fact, they were scattered all over Europe before the establishment of the state of Israel, through Western mediation, in the late forties, although they too possessed land in historic times in the Middle East and were very much indigenous to the region. The reality is that they were driven out of their regions of habitation by imperial powers of old, such as, the Assyrians and the Egyptians, and were subjected to the ruthless oppression of the Nazis in more modern times. Accordingly, voicing for the equal treatment of the Israelis is very much in order. It is one of the keys to conflict management in the Middle East.

However, in their haste to help in setting-up a Jewish state in the Middle East, the imperial powers of the West of the time, failed to uphold the rights of the Palestinian people. Basically, the Palestinians were dispossessed in the process of meting justice to the Israelis. The Palestinians too became landless as a consequence of giving the Israelis a state. Most Palestinians were condemned to refugee status when the Israel was born. Essentially, this was how the Palestinian problem came to be born. Of course, the crisis continues and is today at the heart of the ‘Middle East problem’.

While the need for equity in the Middle East conflict-resolution process is comparatively easy to come to terms with, it will prove a herculean task to establish stable land boundaries for the respective Palestinian and Israeli states. This is a problem of the utmost complexity and has accounted for the decades-long armed confrontations between Israel and the Palestinians, backed staunchly by sections of the Arab world.

Generally, the global South and its main representative organizations, such as NAM, recognize land boundaries which existed between the Israeli state and the Palestinians, prior to the 1967 armed conflict between the parties, as inviolable and representative of authentic Palestinian land holdings. These demarcations are contested by the Israeli side to this day. Accordingly, negotiations of the most exacting kind await those sections that are desirous of taking on the role of Middle East peace-makers. Among other things, the highly emotional nature of the debates at the heart of peace processes has rendered conflict resolution very difficult over the years.

However, the complex realities of the 21st century world ought to impress on the two sides that compromise rather than confrontation is the foremost need. Sections of the Arab world have already come to terms with this and interactions with Israel are already under way on particularly the economic plane. India realized that a policy change as regards Israel was needed as way back as 1991. This realization was occasioned by the fact that Israel is a number one military and economic power in the Middle East. Opening-up to Israel was seen as highly necessary by India.

Decades later though, Sri Lanka has come to the same realization. Rather discreetly Sri Lanka has opened up to Israel and today interacts on a number of fronts with the latter. The driving forces behind this change are mainly economic and security requirements. Pragmatism rather ideology guides Sri Lanka’s ties with Israel. Today, Israel provides Sri Lanka with considerable employment opportunities. Diplomatic relations too have grown in tandem.

It is hoped that the UN would get back to the forefront in getting the main warring sides in the Middle East to talk peace rather than war. The UN needs to be seen as a main stakeholder in Middle East peace on account of the fact that the big powers could not be expected to be impartial in this major undertaking. The US, for instance, is too staunch an ally of Israel. Russia too could not be expected to play its hand evenly. Accordingly, it is left to the UN and other relatively detached quarters to do the needful in this connection.