I’ve been writing yet another piece of journalism on the Egyptian uprising. (I hope I can share it with you soon.)
Writing truly does help me to think. So I was trying to think about– yes, this is a big topic in Washington DC!– what the attitude toward Israel of the post-Mubarak government in Cairo might be. I know the big fear felt– or anyway, propagated– by status-quo Israelis and their many friends and amplifiers here in the US is that a post-Mubarak government might speedily abrogate the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
There would be something of a precedent for that. In May 1983, the Israeli-installed Amin Gemayyel government in Beirut signed a very extensive Declaration of Principles with Israel… But then, the tides of power turned in Lebanon (read all about it in my 1985 book on the country) and by Feb 1984 Gemayyel was running cap-in-hand to Damascus to beg the forgiveness of the Syrians. The May 17 agreement went swiftly out the door and the Israeli “security liaison office” or whatever it was called that the agreement had allowed them to open in Beirut was closed.
However, that was not a full peace treaty. The abrogation of a treaty would, under international law, be a much weightier matter (and could provide a casus belli for Israel… more on that, later. Not here.)
What I’ve been thinking though is that if the popular movement now emerging so gloriously in Egypt has any single central organizing idea it seems to be one of support for the rule of law. Mostly, this has been expressed in terms of support for the rule of law at the domestic level: That no-one should be subjected to torture, elections should be fair, government transparent and accountable, the economy well and fairly run, etc etc.
Support for the rule of (a fair form of) law is indeed a powerful concept. But it need not, does not, stop at the water’s edge. People– In Egypt, in the U.S., or anywhere– should surely also support the rule of law in the international arena, and specifically as regards the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
For ways too long, my government here in the U.S. has almost completely ignored the application of the rule of law to Israel, and has given continuing de-facto support to Israel’s many transgressions of it. Mubarak’s Egypt– like Jordan under both Hussein and now Abdullah– have both for many years now been co-conspirators in the US/Israeli-led trashing of the rule of (international) law in Palestine. Indeed, the vast majority of the American “aid” sent to those two countries has been predicated precisely on their continuing unwavering support for the American policies that undercut, indeed completely violated, the rule of law there.
It is that aspect of Egypt’s foreign policy that, I think, any successor government in Cairo will have to change if it is to be seen as responsive to the Egyptian people’s wishes and demands. Yes, I am sure there will be some grassroots pressure on the new government to abrogate the peace treaty. Who knows whether or not that might end up happening? But abrogating the peace treaty is not the only thing the Egyptian government can do to express its support for Palestinian rights. It can also join– indeed become an important leader of– the global movement calling for the application of international law to the Palestine issue.
(And if Egypt joins the international law camp in this way, Jordan, which also has a large and growing popular movement– and which also has a majority of its population who are of Palestinian origin– will not be far behind. There go Israel’s two “peace partners” in the region!)
How would a shift to supporting the application of international law change Egypt’s policies in practice? In many ways!
- * It would end its support for this (now completely shredded) fig leaf of a US-led ‘peace process’ and demand that the Palestine Question be sent back to the UN– without the US shielding Israel every time with its veto.
* It would recognize the legitimacy of the PA elections of January 2006… Or perhaps, since actually the term of the PA “parliament” elected that year ended last month, Cairo would push for the holding of new elections there, to be held under free and fair conditions…
* Anyway, the role of Egypt as Israel’s “spear” in the fight against Hamas would end. Cairo could become truly qualified to be a place supporting the respectful, equitable, resolution of inter-Palestinian differences.
* The Egyptian and Jordanian governments could take concrete actions through international legal venues to help protect the property and other rights of Palestinians being repressed and ethnically cleansed from Jerusalem.
* Cairo could lead the Arab world and much of the rest of the world in demanding the speedy convocation of an international conference charged with finding a final end to all the remaining strands of the Israeli-Arab conflict– and one that is based on the equal rights of all persons, and on international law. No more support for endless Israeli colonization and racial superiority!
Well, those are just a few of the ideas I’m mulling around. As you see, none of them necessarily involves the abrogation of peace treaties. But any or all of them would be game-changers for the Palestinians and the whole region…
(read all about it in my 1985 book on the country)
The Making of Modern Lebanon.
One more very important thing, a new Egypt can do – and will probably do: it can bring the Israeli nukes to the international agenda. Even Mubarak put this forward slowly, but a democratic Egypt could give this topic much more pressure and attention.
Deceptively simple isn’t it?
So far beyond the realm of either law or right reason has the matter of Israel been dragged that nothing more radical than the application of the most basic rules of justice is required.
Once the nonsenses of God having willed the land to the Jews, that the Arabs all left voluntarily in 1948, following the orders of ‘radio stations’, and other enormities, many of them given currency by dilettante intellectuals who had forgotten that they were racists, have been stripped away from the discussion, everything is capable of being negotiated in tribunals.
All that will then be necessary is to find a section of the legal or academic world that hasn’t been overwhelmingly polluted by time serving sycophants spouting sophistries for the approval of poweful zionists. We will likely have to look to Africa, Latin America or Asia to find them.
Ideally, Egypt and Tunisia (and then Jordan, and then Lebanon and Syria) would lead the pack by drafting and circulating UNSC resolutions. I think turkey and the south American group would join in readily.
1. The current one: the settlements are illegal.
2. Echoing UNSC 465 (980): the settlements and wall are illegal, the settlers must be removed and the settlements and wall must be dismantled: Israel shall do this in one year according to a published schedule. NO ENFORCEMENT SANCTIONS YET.
3. Same, but with enforcement sanctions assuming Israeli intransigence.
Tunisia/Egypt highlighted an important and long forgotten reality, pan-Arab,22 countries that stretch over two continents,one language and a shared history with an alien entity in its midst that hindered its growth since its founding.
I do not believe for a minute that this revolution is about poverty or jobs, it is about dignity ! The old had failed the young, they lived with fear, pain and shame, unable to defeat their oppressors. Dignity was realized and bestowed upon the Arabs by an armed group founded in 1982, by the young of Southern Lebanon, who achieved their first Victory in 2000, and by 2006 humiliated the strongest mercenary army.
Ben Ali and Mubarak are two of the strongest allies of a colonial power that still exist in their midst. A power that is installed by the former colonialists of the first half of the bygone century.
Israel has one option to make peace with the Arab people not Arab dictators, with the emerging democracies, not the only democracy, with the aspirations of the 300,000,000+ not the 5,000,000. We live in a changing world, the Arabs will not be held hostages any longer, for a price that they have been paying for 63 years, for a crime that the “other” committed.
Even if a new Egyptian government felt compelled to reject the treaty, that does not mean it has to have a war. It could again put forward the Arab peace plan, ignored by Israel so far, and insist on international law and your suggested actions towards the Palestinians. This gives peace with all the Arab countries, and I think Iiran is also in agreement. It may even be a relief to Obama and the USA, if AIPAC does not die of fright!
If you abrogate a peace treaty, you get a state of war, there really is very little way to finesse it, so at least the MB have outed themselves as holy warriors. Maintaining the treaty and the multinational peace-verifying force in Sinai might be in the interests of the next Egyptian government, if it is not dominated by the MB. There will be no international law ganging-up on Israel without a traditional “Kauft nicht bei Juden” 1933 boycott by the EU and the Europeans will both have to be seen to be doing this by the world and admit they are doing it to their own (quickly vanishing to the US, Canada, and Israel) local Jewish communities. But good luck trying for the dissolution of Israel by non-violent means, it will be less damaging to the Palestinians.
It is not the case that countries that do not have bilateral peace treaties are therefore by definition at war with each other.
For what it is worth, war is a war crime, and the principal and primary war crime at that.
War itself is the greatest of war crimes, and if you want rules-based international relations of a general kind then you have already accepted that much.
Otherwise, you are no better than a wild beast, to quote Christopher Caudwell “On Liberty”.
Humans are human and free by virtue of their institutions, and are not lone beasts reluctantly constrained by each other.
The treaty explicitly ended a state of war that the Egyptians previously insisted continue through the disengagement agreements and the Framework for Peace, so that Israel would not be seen as getting something for nothing, so yes, abrogating it restores a state of war. Israel is still in a state of war with Arab nations that intervened in the 1948 war without a concluding agreement of any kind, like Iraq and Lebanon, for much the same reason as it would be at war with Egypt, a continuous declared state of war maintained by hostile action. (While Jordan and Egypt have, however briefly, maintained treaties of peace.)
From that perspective, it depends where the start date of hostilities is situated, and whether one is willing to countenance pre-Mandatory Jewish settlement in Palestine. From your perspective, the Jewish quest for sovereignty is illegitimate, and could only be gained by aggressive war. Also, historically (December 1947-June 1948) and personally (March-April 2001) there have been periods (and I have lived through one) where the physical capacity to do harm was the only limit on the conflict, certainly in April 1948 on the outskirts of Jerusalem and in the Hebron Hills everyone who could bore arms and there were no protections for civilians at all. I don’t think South Africans ever lived through such extreme phases of conflict since 1901, Namibians have, admittedly at the hands of the SADF.