The Palestinian question at Al-Janadriya

There was no doubt about it: The Palestinian question loomed large in the festival of Arabic culture and tradition. What King Abdulaziz said in 1945 "that the Palestinian question is the most important thing that occupies the thoughts of Muslims and Arabs" in still true today. A seminar on the Palestinian question entitled Palestine: the Land and the Man was held for two days. At the time, television news in Riyadh were showing clips on Yasser Arafat virtually imprisoned in his home.

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The Philippines may be thousands of miles from the Palestinian conflict but after September 11, we would be wise to understand what it is all about. The Palestinian problem is at the heart of the present conflict between the Anglo-Americans on one side and militant Arabs and Muslims on the other. Among those I sought in the Festival of Heritage was a Frenchman, former Ambassador Eric Rouleau who is considered one of the world’s foremost experts in Middle East politics. He was also Chief Editor for Le Monde in Middle East Affairs for more than 30 years. He is greatly respected that his government has appointed him envoy to trouble spots in Muslim countries such as Tunisia and Turkey among others. He also teaches on Middle Eastern Affairs in American universities principally in Princeton.

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Asked whether he thought the Palestinian conflict would ever be resolved peacefully he said it could, but there had to be adjustments in the way the contending parties sees the issue, particularly the Americans. The first adjustment to be made, he said is to keep firmly in mind that the problem is not religious or social but territorial.

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"This problem has been going on now for 40 years. But it could have been easily solved in 1988 when the PLO in Congress agreed to implement an old UN resolution in which it recognized the state of Israel, Monsieur Rouleau told The STAR. But the US did not take the steps necessary to see this implemented. The PLO’s agreement to a state of Israel was a tremendous breakthrough because that was what was holding it up in the first place. But the Americans failed to follow this up. In Rouleau’s view, America must bear the responsibility for this failure.

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"The Americans’ great mistake since 1967 has been to refuse to settle the conflict within agreements and consensus of international organizations and UN resolutions. Until today they have insisted on bilateral negotiations between the PLO and Israel. This is not possible because of the inequality of the warring sides. Palestine has no government, no economy, no army, no intelligence while Israel is strong it has money, government, army. Palestine is like a lamb forced into the lion’s den but the lamb refuses to be devoured. It refuses to capitulate because if it does, what would be at stake is its survival as a people," Rouleau argued.

"We are talking here only of the 22 percent of territory allocated to Palestine with 78 percent already given to Israel. The trouble is that the Israelis want to divide what is left to Palestine into cantons and that these be governed as cantons to be controlled politically and economically by Israel including the provision of basic necessities like water, electricity and telephone not unlike apartheid in South Africa then. Palestinians are a strange people. They will not accept being treated this way. They want autonomy. What is being disputed now is the 22 percent recognized by US in exchange for a viable state of Israel" continued Rouleau. But he is pessimistic that Americans will come around to resolve the conflict given the strength of the Jewis lobby in Washington.

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How Islam came to the Philippines. (Continuing on the Paper I submitted to the 17th Al-Janadriya 5). The eminent Filipino Muslim scholar, Cesar Majul was my primary source for this topic which more Filipinos should know about to give them a background of the present Christian-Muslim conflicts here and other parts of the world. On the differences between the way Christians and Muslims approached their conquest of territories in this part of the world, Majul quotes from the work of John Crawford’s "History of the Indian Archipelago:

"On the success of the Mahomedan missionaries, contrasted with the failures of the Christians, it is not difficult to trace to the true cause. The Arab and the other Mahomedan missionaries conciliated with the natives of the country, — acquired their language, followed their manners, intermarried with them and melting into the mass of the people did not on the other hand give rise to a privileged race. Their superiority of intelligence and civilization was employed only for the instruction and conversion of a people, whose religious opinion was ready to be directed to any channel into which it was skillfully directed. They were merchant as well as the Europeans, but never dreamt of having recourse to the iniquitous measure of plundering the people of the produce of their soil and industry."

But these early beginnings of the non combatant intercourse between Muslims and the indigenous population of the Philippines would soon be broken by the arrival of the Spaniards in the early sixteenth century. To the Spaniards who found the Muslims before them on the shores of the islands, it was a continuation of the war fought in Europe between Spaniards and the Moors.

"The Christianizing spirit of the Spaniards, their awareness of the centuries struggle with the Arabs and Moors, and their meeting Muslims in the Philippines after circling part of the earth, made them look at the war against the Moros as a continuation of the old war between Christians and Muslims. It will be recalled that the fall of Granada, the last Moorish kingdom in Spain, took place less than seventy five years before the coming of Legaspi to the Philippines; moreover, the Moriscos were not yet expelled from Spain. All these contributed to a crusading spirit among the Spaniards."