A diplomatic slapfest

Editorial

A surprisingly dramatic diplomatic slapfest has taken place in the last week between United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, and Alan Baker, Israel's ambassador to Canada.

Baker accused Arbour of arbitrarily equating Palestinian terrorists with Israel's efforts to target such killers. He did so in response to a numer of comments that Arbour made about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which she placed high expectations on Israel, while holding the Palestinians and their elected representatives responsible for little.

Arbour was quoted by CanWest as saying, "Civilians, particularly the most vulnerable, such as children, women and the elderly, should not pay the price for the neglect of human rights and humanitarian obligations." She said that "both Israel and Palestine are under an obligation scrupulously to observe the rules of international humanitarian law, one of the paramount purposes of which is to preserve civilian life."

All of this, of course, is absolutely true. And Arbour is certainly correct that the Palestinian people are "on the brink of a human rights and humanitarian crisis" - due primarily to reduction of aid to the Palestinian Authority caused by the election of Hamas. But the equivalency that Arbour implies does not recognize that such scrupulous observance is already taking place among Israelis, while Palestinians continue to move further from the objective, most recently by electing a government whose explicit tenet is unreconstructed opposition to the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East.

Arbour's comments and others like them by Canadian and international observers over many years have failed to acknowledge the fundamental differences between Israeli and Palestinian violence. We have said in this space, and Israelis and Zionists have said in a million ways in recent years, that there is no moral parallel

between murderers who seek to kill as many civilians as possible and the acts of a national government protecting its citizens. Yet the equivalency is still accepted as legitimate. In the comments of Arbour, and others, Israel's self-defence is no more morally justifiable than the genocidal targeting of civilians by Palestinian jihadists.

"As the occupying power, Israel bears responsibility under international humanitarian law, particularly under the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, for the welfare of the Palestinian people...," said Arbour.

While she is correct, Arbour is too selective. Her comments exhibit the too-common tendency among the world community to insist that Israel fulfil its obligations, while making no equivalent demand of the Palestinians. True, Arbour said that the Palestinian Authority "has the urgent duty to do everything in its power to maintain law and order, prevent attacks on Israeli citizens, investigate those attacks that have taken place and bring to justice those responsible."

The fact that the Palestinian Authority has done none of this does not gain Arbour's wrath to the same extent that she reserves for Israel's targeting of armed combatants.

Ambassador Baker, in a statement released by the Israeli embassy in Ottawa, expressed surprise "that the person carrying the responsibility for monitoring human rights in the world arbitrarily chooses to equate the actions of Palestinian terrorists, who wantonly and indiscriminately kill innocent members of the public dining in restaurants and travelling on buses, with the action of Israel in targeting such killers."

Baker said that the solution to the current violence in the Palestinian territories "rests solely with the governing Hamas terror organization."

As the Independent argued here recently, international pressure to force the Palestinian government to express even the most insincere acknowledgement of Israel's right to exist is the absolute least the world and the Palestinians can do. If Hamas did recognize Israel, it would probably mean little, but even tacit acceptance of Israel's presence, however forced and insincere, would be better than explicit genocidal intent.

Yet even that tiny gesture is not apparently forthcoming, though this causes far less concern to international observers than does Israeli self-defence. Indeed, if Arbour and others were honest and open-minded about the cause of Middle East violence, they would see that it is not Israeli actions that perpetuate the situation, but the Palestinian Authority's refusal and/or inability to "maintain law and order, prevent attacks on Israeli citizens, investigate those attacks that have taken place and bring to justice those responsible."

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