I am a retired academic,
former head of the Politics Department at Macquarie University.
I would like an opportunity to talk to you about foreign policy,
especially the conflict between Israel and the Arabs. I
will contact your office staff and ask for an appointment.
I think the US and its allies have made a serious
mistake in not calling for an IMMEDIATE ceasefire between Hezbollah and
Israel--they should
have called on both sides to cease attacks immediately, and they should
then press for a negotiated settlement of ALL the issues between Israel
and its neighbours. It is not enough to seek a long-term settlement with
respect to Lebanon
and northern Israel;
no such settlement is possible except in the context of a comprehensive
settlement between Israel
and all other interested parties, including the Palestinians.
Concerning the need for an
immediate cease fire, a letter I noticed recently in the New York Times
makes the vital point: “Of course Israel has every right to
defend itself. That is not the question. The question is whether
reducing Lebanon to
rubble, bombing power plants and hospitals, and killing hundreds of
trapped, terrorized civilians defends Israel”.
(I
will paste the letter in below.)
The US argument that a
ceasefire is of no value unless there is an assurance of long-term peace
is simply false (and in my opinion disingenuous). Every day the death
and destruction continues, the possibility of peace becomes more remote.
The US attitude
makes sense only on the assumption that if Israel is allowed to
destroy Hezbollah the prospects of peace will improve. That might be
true in the short term, but death and destruction now leads to hatred
into the distant future.
The two best books I have
read on the background to the conflict are A Peace to End
All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the
Modern Middle East, by David Fromkin, and The Iron
Wall: Israel and the Arab World, by Avi Shlaim. Fromkin’s account
makes it clear that the Balfour Declaration and the British League of
Nations Palestine Mandate were designed by the British to improve the
security of the British Empire, especially to secure communications with
India.
The British for their own purposes encouraged the Jews to go into a
hostile environment, they went in the hope of restoring Israel. But they now find
themselves in what may be an untenable position. (It is like a military
unit sent in “a bridge too far”: either they retreat, or they surrender,
or they are wiped out.) At any rate they are in a position from which
they find it difficult or impossible to retreat, in which they are
suffering serious casualties in terms of lives lost and in economic and
cultural terms. Shlaim’s book makes it clear that among the Jews in Palestine there
were people, more recently represented by the Likud party, who did not
seek to conciliate the Arabs but believed they must be subjected by
force. The British plan and the Likud attitude has led to a terrible
tragedy for both Jews and Arabs, and we are all being dragged into it. Australia’s
neighbour is the most populous Muslim nation in the world.
I don’t see any good
prospect of a comprehensive settlement between Jews and Arabs. The “two
state” proposal has been on the table off and on since 1938, and it
always fails because of the mingling of populations. Ethnic separation
involves serious disruption and injustice, the people made to move never
believe that the compensation is adequate (if any compensation is
offered at all). Where there is mingling, as there is in most countries
of the world, the groups have to learn to live together--the
multicultural state is now the norm. A comprehensive settlement would
therefore probably mean the abandonment of the Zionist project of a
separate state and territory for Jews in the territory of Ancient
Israel. [I no longer think this. What I
hope for is not one multicultural states but two--Israel with a Jewish
majority and Palestine with a Muslim majority, but protection for the
rights of minorities.] The best tenable position for them that I can see
is a unitary multicultural state of Israel/Palestine covering the whole
of the old Palestine,
perhaps with separate Jewish/non-Jewish citizenships and representative
institutions, but sharing the same territory within some overarching
polity (see Mathias Mossberg’s suggestion, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1812242,00.html).
On
the other hand, Muslims would have to change their position
significantly. Their religious leaders would have to repudiate the use
of force to impose religious orthodoxy and religious uniformity in
territories traditionally Muslim. They would have to undergo the same
intellectual revolution as Christians did in the course of the 17th
century and adopt religious toleration (see http://www.libertyfund.org/details.asp?displayID=1951).
Any
comprehensive settlement would have to involve the religious leaders of
the Muslim world, who would have to pledge themselves to work to change
Muslim attitudes in these matters.
The growth of tolerance in
18th and 19th century Europe, the dismantling of Soviet and Eastern
European communism, the end of apartheid in South Africa, show that
surprising changes can take place. But maybe no comprehensive settlement
between Jews and Muslims is possible. In that case my grandchildren will
live in a grim world. The future shortage of oil (which will strengthen
the power of Arab states, and intensify struggles within them for
political power and wealth), the demographic trends in the middle east,
nuclear armament of states like Iran and Pakistan, the probability that
nuclear material and other dangerous substances will eventually come
into the hands of terrorists--on top of global warming, continued
unfairness in the international trading system, not to mention conflicts
apart from the clash between Muslims and “the West”--will bring about a
general breakdown of international order, increasing flows of refugees,
and in countries like US and Australia the undermining of the rule of
law on the pretext of a need for security and the management of
immigration.
[On another
topic, not unrelated] The
current Australian government is very ready to provide troops in support
of the US.
I would like to see a law requiring parliamentary approval for the
deployment of Australian forces overseas. At present, as you know, the
use of armed force comes under the royal prerogative (in practice, it is
the decision of the prime minister alone) and does not require
parliamentary approval. I would also like to see a law requiring
Parliamentary approval of treaties. I would like to see these two
proposals part of the ALP’s policy for the next election. I attach a note
on Parliamentary approval of overseas deployments.
-------------------
Letter in New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/04/opinion/l04mideast.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fLetters
To the Editor
Re “The Long-Term Battle:
Defining ‘Victory’ Before the World” (news analysis, Aug. 3):
Of course Israel has every right to
defend itself. That is not the question.
The question is whether
reducing Lebanon to
rubble, bombing power plants and hospitals, and killing hundreds of
trapped, terrorized civilians defends Israel; or whether
instead, such actions turn it into an international pariah without
friends anywhere.
The question is whether,
along with the Bush administration’s disastrous policies in Iraq,
this war plays into Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s hands, undermining moderate
Islam and strengthening radical hard-liners everywhere.
The question ultimately is
whether, without anyone in power in Washington
or Jerusalem or Damascus
or Tehran
having the wisdom and courage to say “Enough!,” with violence begetting
more and more violence, we are all drifting mindlessly, like people in a
dream, toward the ever-increasing likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe.
Eric Chivian (The writer is
a co-founder of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear
War, which won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.)
------------------------
I was to have met with you
on Tuesday afternoon, but the meeting has been postponed until late
November. So let me make by email the point I would have wanted to make
if we had met on Tuesday.
I would like to persuade
you to put the Israeli/Arab conflict higher on your agenda of foreign
policy issues. I would like to persuade you to talk publicly about this
conflict as often as possible, expressing concern for the well being of
people on both sides, deploring the atrocities perpetrated by both
sides, and urging that there be a comprehensive and lasting settlement
as soon as possible. [omission]
But in fact I don’t care
much exactly what you say on this subject. I’d just like you to talk
about it publicly from time to time. I’m sure that whatever you say will
be sensible [I thought so then!], and anything else that needs to be
said can be said by others in the public discussion your comments would
stimulate.
You may feel that
Israel/Palestine is far away, out of reach of the influence of even a
“middle power”. I would not agree. I think people in the US would take some notice
if an Australian government began to take an interest in the issue. But
in any case, there is a good reason why this matter should be put on the
Australian political agenda. Many Australian citizens and residents,
Jewish and Muslim, feel personally concerned about middle eastern
conflict. Silence can be equivalent to a statement. The silence of Australia’s
political leaders suggests indifference. Silence also suggests that
Australian are happy to follow the lead of the USA, which consistently
backs Israel and does little or nothing toward a comprehensive
settlement and peace. Can we expect Australians with middle-east
connections to become sincere believers in Australian values if
Australians show no interest in justice and peace in the Middle
East? Justice and peace are core ALP values, and settling
the conflict between Israel
and its neighbours should be high on the ALP’s foreign policy agenda. We
ought to “tell the truth” on this subject, whether anyone is listening
or not, even if some don’t want to hear.
Even if Australia cannot have
much influence over events in the middle east, Australian leaders should
express concern and even put forward proposals. Public diplomacy is
addressed not only to foreigners, but also to the citizens of this
country. Even if the US
government pays no attention, citizens of this country will be
listening, and perhaps also people in Indonesia,
Malaysia
and others in our region who may be concerned about conflicts that
involve Muslims in the middle east.
Anyone who says anything
that could be construed as criticism of Israel can expect to be
attacked. See for example the editorial in The
Australian, August 25, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20242721-7583,00.html. The attack on Mr Burns
is nasty and personal, and there are insinuations of appeasement and
anti-Semitism. (The reference to an Israel lobby is probably
an allusion to the article: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html,
which is in no way an expression of anti-Semitism.)
The suggestion of
appeasement is made because many people say that the conflict over Palestine is one
of the motivations of Islamic terrorism. I think they are likely to be
right, and I think concern about terrorism is one of the good reasons
for trying to settle that conflict, despite the appeasement accusation.
But even apart from concern for terrorism, the establishment of a just
peace should have our support. My view on this matter was formed many
years ago, before terrorism became an international issue. As a boy at
school in Brisbane I used to read every week the Melbourne Catholic
Advocate, where the commentator on foreign affairs held two
points I found convincing: (1) that the establishment by the British
under the League of Nations mandate, and later by the UN, of a “national
home for the Jews” in a territory where the overwhelming majority of the
population were Arabs had led to serious injustice to the Arabs, and (2)
that the injustices could not now be corrected by driving the Jews out
of the places that had become their home. It still seems to me that
these two points are valid. As things have gone over the years, the
injustice to the Arabs has become worse, and the determination to drive
the Jews out of Israel
has become stronger.
The Lebanon
war, about which I emailed you on 6 August, is now in a sense over, but
it did a lot of damage from which Lebanon will take years
to recover. There are also many “bomblets” from US-supplied cluster
bombs, used by the IDF in the last few days of the conflict. Perhaps you
could consider what Australia
could do to assist in the reconstruction of Lebanon.
-----------
On Iraq:
I think the ALP has made a mistake in saying that it will unilaterally
withdraw troops from Iraq.
This is a return to Mark Latham’s “home by Christmas” promise. I was
opposed to the Iraq
war, but now that it has happened we can’t simply withdraw on the
grounds that we shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
What the ALP should say is
that it will, with the US
and other allies, negotiate with the Iraqi government a phased
withdrawal in the near future, in accordance with which Australian
troops will be withdrawn. The US
may be considering such a thing anyway, and they could hardly refuse if
Australia wanted such
a negotiation - if they did, an ALP government could then reasonably
announce that Australia
by itself would negotiate with the Iraq government. The ALP
should also say, (1) punish the Liberals-Nationals for going to war in
Iraq by voting them out – even if the ALP has no good solution, it is
right to vote out the people who made the mess (similarly in the US the
Democrats should not pretend to have a good solution, but should call on
the electorate to punish the Bush party); and (2) for the future, let’s
make it law that any overseas deployment of Australian troops needs
parliamentary approval. Further, (3) I would like the ALP to commit
itself to electoral reform, to make it less likely that a future ALP or
a Lib-Nat coalition government will ignore informed public opinion: see
http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/Submission_Kilcullen.html.
This news item will
reinforce Mr Beazley’s contention that Iraq
was a distraction from Afghanistan:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1924794,00.html
I would like to hear you
voice support for a surprising change of direction on John Howard’s
part. What he said has not been well reported. If you support him, it
will in effect put him in a position where he has to follow up and
actually try to do what he has now said needs to be done.
There are two reports. The
first is from a draft of the speech Howard gave to the Australian
American Association Dinner, 14 November: “By all means let us talk to
countries such as Syria
and Iran
… Far more importantly, let us intensify our efforts towards a
sustainable and just solution to the Palestinian solution.[sic]..” See
Alan Ramsey:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/a-man-of-far-too-many-words/2006/11/17/1163266776744.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2
A fuller version from
Howard’s web site: “By all means let us talk to countries such as Syria and Iran, but let us do so
with a realistic mindset about the motivation and the behaviour of those
countries. Far more importantly my friends and
not withstanding the difficulties and the setbacks of recent times, let
us again intensify our efforts towards a sustainable and just solution
to the Palestinian issue. Wherever one goes in the Muslim world and
whenever one talks to moderate Islamic leaders such as Yudhoyono and
Musharraf who are so vital to the struggle against Islamic extremism,
there is a legitimate desire for a lasting settlement to this issue. Any
settlement must of course be fundamentally based on a secure Israel
behind internationally accepted borders and free at last from the
constant harassment that it has endured for decades. Second, it must
establish a viable and independent state for the Palestinian people.” http://www.pm.gov.au/news/speeches/index.cfm
The second is from remarks
Howard made recently in Hanoi.
I have not seen any print report, but you can listen at http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200611/r116367_367919.asx. The introductory remarks
say that Howard said that Palestine is
“emotionally at the heart of all the problems in the Middle
East”. He says: “Whenever I talk to moderate Islamic
leaders, ultimately the conversation ends up on the Palestine issue.”
In recent emails I drew
your attention to statements by Javier Solana (http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20653497-38201,00.html)
and Tony Blair (http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,,1947191,00.html),
in
which
they also made the point that the Israel-Palestine issue is at the root
of troubles in the middle east (Blair: “We should start with
Israel-Palestine. That is the core”). At a recent UN sponsored
conference the same point was made: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/world/14clash.html
Please make a public
statement of support for Howard’s call to “intensify our efforts towards
a sustainable and just solution to the Palestinian issue”.
May I suggest that you plan
during the Parliamentary vacation to make a study tour of Israel, Palestine
and Lebanon
(take Tanya Plibersek and Michael Danby, perhaps). This would focus your
own mind on the issue, and reports of your tour would also convey to the
electorate the fact that you are thinking seriously about how the
conflict should be solved, without committing you to any particular view
as to how that should be done.
I will paste in below a
message I sent on 16 November to a journalist: it will serve to
summarise what I have been saying to you in a number of messages since 6
August.
Best wishes,
John Kilcullen
------------------
I would like you and other
journalists to take any opportunity you get to ask Kevin Rudd, Kim
Beazley and their government counterparts some questions about how they
see Australia’s
role
in helping to bring about a settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
They may say that it is not
Australia’s
business,
but this is obviously not true: conflict in the middle east, and in
Israel-Palestine in particular, is a major factor in terrorism. The core
terrorists may be psychopaths, but their supporters include people who
really do care about the plight of the Palestinians--that is why
propaganda by the terrorist leadership always mentions this.
It may be said that Australia
can have no influence in the middle east or over the Americans. I think
that that is largely true, but I believe that US public opinion, or at
least elite opinion, would be influenced and encouraged by advice on
this topic from Australian leaders. (Rudd himself is optimistic about
the role of a “middle power”, but Israel-Palestine is notably absent
from his agenda; see http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20442118-7583,00.html.)
A
friend
in the State Department tells me that in US government circles they
refer to the Israel-Palestine conflict as a “third rail” -- “Touch it
and you die!” Intelligent US politicians and public servants would be
glad to hear Australians saying some of the things they don’t dare say
themselves. Further, some of our Australian fellow citizens and
residents, and our neighbours in the region, would be glad to hear
Australians pressing for a settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines
and Thailand are
“secular” states with large Muslim populations: exacerbation of Muslim
feeling by the continued atrocities in Israel and its
neigbourhood is a threat to their stability. (This is also true of Turkey
and various other countries.)
And in any case it is a
matter of humanity and justice: the populations of Israel and Palestine and the other countries
affected include many, let’s hope a majority, of decent people who want
to live a normal life and don’t want their families and other people
(even people they dislike) killed atrociously. The rest of us ought to
do what we can to free them from a conflict their political “leaders”
don’t seem able to settle.
The media are full of
reports of the events of the conflict, notably recently the war in Lebanon.
But our politicians never comment on these events, or, if they do, echo
the views of the Bush administration. This conveys a clear message to
Arab and other Muslim residents of this country--that their concerns are
of no interest to white Australians, that their interests are not our
interests, that “Australian values” don’t include justice and humanity.
Email to Kevin Rudd, January 2007
Some time ago I wrote to
you about the Israel-Palestine conflict and asked for an appointment to
discuss it with you. Meanwhile a good deal has happened--you are now
federal leader of the ALP, various world leaders have called for a
comprehensive settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict, some
discussions have been held between the two principal parties, and more
recently fighting has broken out between Fatah and Hamas. I would still
like to discuss this matter with you. [omission]
You have described yourself
as a “life-long supporter of the state of Israel”. My position
since before you were born has been that
(1) the establishment by
the British of a “national home” for the Jews in the mandated territory
of Palestine was a major injustice to the Arab Palestinians and the
beginning of a long train of injustices, but
(2) Israel is an accomplished
fact constraining what can be done to rectify the injustices.
Whatever can be done ought
to be done, and Israel’s
true friends would urge the Israelis to admit and try to
rectify the injustices and make a comprehensive and just peace
settlement. In fact, Israel’s
continued
existence is in jeopardy if the conflict continues. Since the 1920s the
right wing of Jewish politics, represented these days by Likud and its
offshoot Kadima, have followed the policy of the “iron wall”:
A voluntary agreement [with the arabs] is unattainable… We must
either suspend our settlement efforts [in the mandated territory of Palestine]
or continue them without paying attention to the mood of the natives.
Settlement can thus develop under the protection of a force that is not
dependent on the local population, behind an iron wall which they will be
powerless to break down. (Jabotinski, quoted Avi Shlaim, The
Iron Wall (Penguin, 2000), p. 13.
In the face of the
disorders of recent years, the Israeli government has been “staying the
course”, continuing with the “iron wall” policy, now a literal wall of
concrete and steel. Staying the course might be an expedient policy if
there were reason to think that after a few more years the conflict
might begin to die down. But there are three reasons for thinking the
opposite: (1) demography, (2) growing oil shortages in years to come and
therefore rising prices, and the instability that will bring to the Middle East, and (3) the likely eventual success
of terrorists and certain states in acquiring dangerous substances and
weapons.
Staying the course is not
going to be an option for much longer. Time is running out for peace
between Israel
and its neighbours. The Washington Post commentator
Robert Novak wrote recently, a propos the Baker-Hamilton report:
Commission members feel the urgency of progress on the Israeli
front more deeply than is reflected in the formal language. They are not
Israel-bashers. One commission member with a long record of support for Israel
feels the country’s very existence is at stake. He reported to me warnings
from experts friendly to Israel
that staying on the present track will threaten the Jewish state within 40
years.” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/17/AR2006121700970.html)
The parties to the conflict
will work out the settlement, but in my own view it will require
something much more generous than Barak’s allegedly generous offer,
something like the plan of union once put forward by Shimon Peres (see
Shlaim, op. cit., p. 332) and more recently revived in a different form
by Mathias Mossberg (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1812242,00.html)--namely,
a
single state [I no longer support this; see See Gorenberg,
Shimon
Peres and Walt.]
of Israel incorporating all the “occupied territories”, but a
multi-cultural state in which all citizens will have equal political
rights and safeguards for their security and their cultural identity.
What I would like you to do
is this: Go on a study tour to Israel, the Occupied
Territories and the Lebanon, accompanied by some other ALP members
of Parliament (e.g. Michael Danby and Tanya Plibersek) and by some
expert on the region, and when you
come back visit some of the Australian communities with connections to
that part of the world and tell them what you think--or at least give
them a report of what you saw and what various people said to you and
invite them to express their opinions. That is, inform yourself better
(and be seen by the public to be doing so) and start talking about the
conflict between Israel
and its neighbours as an issue of peace and justice that concerns Australia.
Put it on Australia’s
foreign
policy agenda.