Muslims need a reality check
Amir Taheri:
...
"Few in the Muslim world would understand why their leaders had to rush to convene a summit because of Rantissi's assassination. All Islamic governments have already registered their anger at the 'targeted killing.' Another condemnatory resolution is unlikely to get anyone any further.
"And people might wonder: Why didn't the OIC call for a summit when 8,000 Muslim men and boys were murdered by the Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina? Why hasn't it held a single session on Chechnya - where, these past four years, 50 times as many Chechen Muslims have been killed as Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza?
"Indeed, don't we in the Muslim world have other pressing problems that merit emergency summits? Hunger, poverty, illiteracy, the absence of law and order, corruption, lack of basic human rights and freedoms and the prospect of spiraling terror?
"Shouldn't Muslim leaders meet to develop a common strategy to stop the terrorists who are killing innocent Muslims in Riyadh, Baghdad, Algiers and Casablanca?
...
" Even before the conference, the proposed drafts of the Kuala Lumpur final communiqué exposed the meeting's true goal - a fig leaf to cover the OIC members' failure to develop even a rational analysis of the issues, let alone offer considered positions on them. What is the point of calling on the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and the mythical 'international community' to 'take all necessary measures' to stop the 'Sharon Plan' - without making the least suggestion that the Muslim states themselves should do anything at all, not even offer a prayer?
"A resolution is primarily about what its authors commit themselves to doing. And the Muslim states don't control what President Bush or the 'international community' might do. They should focus their attention on what they themselves can do.
"The first thing they can do is develop a clear and rational policy towards Israel.
"Are the Muslim states prepared to accept the Jewish state as a reality with which they must live and, in time, develop relations? Or do they think that the destruction of Israel is the key to solving all other problems that the Muslims have faced for the past half-century?
"The worst possible policy is one based on a secret dream of wiping Israel off the map in the long run while accepting it in the short run. That requires the Palestinians to continue living a life of misery and acting as cannon-fodder until the day Arab states are militarily strong enough to annihilate Israel.
...
"For half a century, most Arab and other Muslim states have supported a strategy that has pushed the Palestinians into an ever-weaker position.
"In 1947, they rejected the United Nations' partition plan which gave the Palestinians some 80 percent of the old mandate of Palestine. They accepted it in 1967 - after Israel was already in control of the entire mandate. Next, the Arabs for two decades rejected Resolution 242, which demanded the restoration of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians in exchange for secure borders for Israel. On every occasion the Palestinian leadership, like French generals of the last century, was one war behind reality.
"Today, the Palestinian leadership rejects the Sharon Plan - ensuring that something worse, from the Palestinian point of view, will be on the table five years from now. In 2010, Arafat, if he is still around, will emerge as a passionate supporter of today's Sharon Plan -which will no longer be on offer.
"Why not start by telling the truth?
...
" Meaningless resolutions may make the Al-Jazeera audience happy for a few days. But they are a betrayal of the Palestinian people, who have been sacrificed at the altar of Arab and other Muslim vanities for two generations."
Amir Taheri:
...
"Few in the Muslim world would understand why their leaders had to rush to convene a summit because of Rantissi's assassination. All Islamic governments have already registered their anger at the 'targeted killing.' Another condemnatory resolution is unlikely to get anyone any further.
"And people might wonder: Why didn't the OIC call for a summit when 8,000 Muslim men and boys were murdered by the Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina? Why hasn't it held a single session on Chechnya - where, these past four years, 50 times as many Chechen Muslims have been killed as Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza?
"Indeed, don't we in the Muslim world have other pressing problems that merit emergency summits? Hunger, poverty, illiteracy, the absence of law and order, corruption, lack of basic human rights and freedoms and the prospect of spiraling terror?
"Shouldn't Muslim leaders meet to develop a common strategy to stop the terrorists who are killing innocent Muslims in Riyadh, Baghdad, Algiers and Casablanca?
...
" Even before the conference, the proposed drafts of the Kuala Lumpur final communiqué exposed the meeting's true goal - a fig leaf to cover the OIC members' failure to develop even a rational analysis of the issues, let alone offer considered positions on them. What is the point of calling on the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and the mythical 'international community' to 'take all necessary measures' to stop the 'Sharon Plan' - without making the least suggestion that the Muslim states themselves should do anything at all, not even offer a prayer?
"A resolution is primarily about what its authors commit themselves to doing. And the Muslim states don't control what President Bush or the 'international community' might do. They should focus their attention on what they themselves can do.
"The first thing they can do is develop a clear and rational policy towards Israel.
"Are the Muslim states prepared to accept the Jewish state as a reality with which they must live and, in time, develop relations? Or do they think that the destruction of Israel is the key to solving all other problems that the Muslims have faced for the past half-century?
"The worst possible policy is one based on a secret dream of wiping Israel off the map in the long run while accepting it in the short run. That requires the Palestinians to continue living a life of misery and acting as cannon-fodder until the day Arab states are militarily strong enough to annihilate Israel.
...
"For half a century, most Arab and other Muslim states have supported a strategy that has pushed the Palestinians into an ever-weaker position.
"In 1947, they rejected the United Nations' partition plan which gave the Palestinians some 80 percent of the old mandate of Palestine. They accepted it in 1967 - after Israel was already in control of the entire mandate. Next, the Arabs for two decades rejected Resolution 242, which demanded the restoration of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians in exchange for secure borders for Israel. On every occasion the Palestinian leadership, like French generals of the last century, was one war behind reality.
"Today, the Palestinian leadership rejects the Sharon Plan - ensuring that something worse, from the Palestinian point of view, will be on the table five years from now. In 2010, Arafat, if he is still around, will emerge as a passionate supporter of today's Sharon Plan -which will no longer be on offer.
"Why not start by telling the truth?
...
" Meaningless resolutions may make the Al-Jazeera audience happy for a few days. But they are a betrayal of the Palestinian people, who have been sacrificed at the altar of Arab and other Muslim vanities for two generations."
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