Criminally Unhelpful

BEIRUT-- If rhetoric is the first step towards action, then one of the rhetorical trends of our time that indicates a giant step backwards towards inaction is the American and European tendency to describe Israel’s aggressive and illegal actions in the occupied Palestinian territories in increasingly soft and imprecise terms. 

For years, the US government used to call the Israeli settlements “illegal” and an “obstacle to peace,” but in recent years those terms have been replaced by a mere “unhelpful.” On her first official trip to the region earlier this month US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton referred to the Israeli demolition of Palestinian Arab homes in East Jerusalem as “unhelpful.” Earlier this week, the European Union presidency said that Israel’s demolition of homes in the Silwan neighborhood of Jerusalem “threatens the viability of a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement, in conformity with international law.”

If I were the Israeli government, I would be laughing all the way to my next colonial adventure in destroying Palestinian homes and infrastructure, uprooting Palestinian Arabs and replacing them with imported settlers from Israel, or Brooklyn, or Russia, or from wherever the world’s longest running modern colonization venture gets its human ammunition and reinforcements. It is bad enough when two of the world’s most powerful governments pull back from their previous positions of branding Israel’s contraventions of international law and UN resolutions as illegal and impermissible and instead call them “unhelpful” or just a threat to a lasting settlement. It is infinitely worse when the United States and the EU spend half their waking hours trying to spread democracy and the rule of law to the rest of the world while watering down a central Israeli contravention of the rule of international law. t Israel must be quietly and comfortably amused at every American and European official in sight.

The rhetorical downgrading of Israel’s criminality is a problem in many respects -- assuming that it is still OK to use the word criminality to describe the contravening of the law. That, at least, is what my beloved British and American teachers in primary and high school taught me when I learned English: Use the precise, accurate word when you have it at hand, and do not beat around the bush. Clarity is good for communication.

The first problem with Western obsequiousness before Israel’s intimidation is that it perpetuates the Zionist colonial enterprise in a manner that is harmful to all concerned, including Israelis and Palestinians of course, but also Westerners who end up being sucked into our maelstrom of violence. The second problem is that it helps to disqualify the United States, the EU and others who share their position -- such as the UN, increasingly -- from playing the role of active, credible mediator. Arabs and Israelis cannot solve their conflict on their own, and mediation by the Turks or Egyptians can only move things forward so much. A permanent, comprehensive negotiated peace agreement requires intensive American and European involvement in negotiations, in consummating an agreement, in peace-keeping, and in promoting post-peace economic growth. This is impossible if the US and EU have no credibility.

A third problem with the cowardice of sheltering in the safe world of “unhelpful” rather than “illegal and impermissible” Israeli colonies is that those Western powers who choose this route send a terrible message: They have been denying and ignoring the rule of law when it comes to Israeli actions over more than four decades, but enthusiastically preach and promote the rule of law when it comes to their aspirations to transform the Arab and Islamic world. A little bit of hypocrisy is standard fare for politicians; but when this has been elevated to the level of official policy that transcends administrations, decades and then generations, it enters the realm of the pathological.

Great powers and noble organizations that disrespect their own rules are not so great in the eyes of a bewildered world that thought that decolonization concluded about half a century ago, but wakes up every morning to find itself the continuing victim of new forms of criminal colonization -- in the form of Zionist-Israeli settlers, or Western diplomats whose forked tongues make them resemble rattlesnakes walking on two feet.

Colonialism is either legal or illegal, acceptable or criminal. Laws matter, or they don’t matter. There is no such thing as “unhelpful” colonialism, any more than there is merely "naughty" rape, "awkward" murder, or "unfortunate" incest. Why is it that those in the West who celebrate and seek to export their commitment to the rule of law find it so hard to adopt both the rhetoric and policies that acknowledge the criminal illegality and political catastrophe that is the modern and continuing Israeli colonial rampage?

What is it that makes giants in the West become eunuchs in the face of Israeli deeds?

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.