Steve Hutcheson

If you read the “about me” on this blog you will see that between 2003 and 2005 I spent two and half years in Afghanistan working on large job creation programs with the UNDP. These were aimed at employed large numbers of local workers at rebuilding public infrastructure such as roads, schools, clinics and irrigations systems particularly in the rural areas of Jalalabad and Kandahar while aiming to find alternatives to the cultivation and production of opium. In the early days I was with Relief International managing their “Creating and Restoring Alternative Livelihood’s Sources” (CRAWLS) program that was funded by USAid and that flowed over to my engagement with UNDP. It was one of those vexing problems that the wages we paid to build these roads, schools and irrigation systems although common for the region were less than the poppy farmers paid to the labourers causing our programs to suffer during the planting and harvesting periods.

Afghanistan as you may appreciate has some 80% of the population working in agrarian based industries where correspondingly free water is one of their major deficiencies, a cause towards which we were often engaged to overcome the seasonal irregularities building or restoring irrigation systems and wells.

To that end, working with my partner Akiyo, we are now looking at a small investigative project that involves utilizing the worst of one situation in Malaysia in solving the worst of another in Afghanistan and hopefully arrive at a genuinely positive outcome.

We are soon moving from Thailand and Malaysia and in doing so we looked at what we could usefully do there. One of the things we came upon was the millions of tonnes of waste materials resulting from palm oil production and that prompted me to consider how they may be used beneficially in resource poor Afghanistan.

My niece first put me to the idea of using a compost in plant propagation and initially I was thinking along these lines and will come back to that as we get more established. What we are looking at initially is to investigate the use of the fibrous material waste material as mulch/weed mats around certain crops, in particular cotton or various vine crops and other arboriculture projects that have a high demand for moisture retention. The idea of a mulch mat around the plants slows down the process of evaporation that 40 degree heat will induce giving the plant a greater chance to survive.

One outcome of poor water supply we found in Afghanistan was that the farmers were prone to plant opium and hashish in lieu as they were more drought tolerant than normal crops.

Successful trials of the material have apparently been conducted in similar climatic conditions in Australia and we want to establish similar trials in Afghanistan. What we are initially pursuing is to:

• produce a mat material that meets with the agricultural demands in Afghanistan.
• design a suitable configuration that can be easily shipped and distributed
• field test in comparative plots the effectiveness of using a mulch/weed mat during the formative growing periods.

In that respect we are seeking to link up with interested parties who may have the programs, resources and the capacity to support the design process and research in Malaysia and to then conduct the field trials in Afghanistan.

If you would like to assist our quest please contact me. We are currently in the process of setting up a legal entity in Malaysia that will enable us solicit funding specifically for this purpose.

Water is going to be one of the world’s major problems of the future. Doing something now will soften the damage it causes.

American politics and the outcome of the campaign for the US Presidency is still any ones guess for the moment however the three front runners who are the primary contenders, are McCain as the Republican candidate and either Clinton or Obama for the Democratic candidate. The next few days will establish which of these last two carry the bulk of voting delegates and receive the final nomination but it would seem that Obama has gained sufficient impetus to carry the day.

In the meantime there is an interesting survey being conducted by a major Israeli English language daily where a media panel has been monitoring the various candidates with the express purpose of establishing which would be better for Israel. The acknowledgment being that Israel relies heavily on the US for financial and military support in addition to its current unfettered political support in the Middle East conflict.

All of the candidates with the exception of Texan Ron Paul who has not been included in the survey err on the positive side of the scale. Of the front runners however, Obama is the least attractive for the Israelis only registering a figure that is near neutral with a score of 5.2 while both Clinton and McCain are registering around 7.5 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Maintaining the status quo is obviously important to the Israelis in their present escalation of hostilities with the Palestinian militants in Gaza and simultaneously in either reaching consensus or inserting a protracted delay of the peace process that is presently being undertaken as a consequence of the Annapolis conference.

The peace process should be simple however the terms of peace for both sides remain some distance apart as elements of the demands by the Palestinians continue to be intractable to the Israelis.

A shift in the political climate support for the present Israeli regime and their stonewalling may have significant import in the final outcome however. To date Obama has been cautious with his words however he publicly maintains support for the Israeli government’s position and has so far divorced himself from any separation from the status quo for obvious reasons.

The Jewish vote in America is less than 2% however the political influence they have over the electoral process and the US government is far more significant than that small sector of the community represents. Through the efforts of AIPAC and other Jewish lobby groups there is no US politician currently prepared to speak out against Israel or the special relationship that exists between the two countries. As a number of American politicians have found out, to do so is tantamount to political suicide.

So is Obama the voice of reason that the world and particularly the Arab world needs and is that why the Israeli panelists have rated him less favorably in measuring their own interests?

In his words, Obama argues that US politics has become so partisan and gummed up by money and influence that they are unable to solve the world’s problems that demand solutions.

Quoting from his campaign website he states “I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists — and won. They have not funded my campaign, they will not get a job in my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president.” It is fair warning to the lobbyists and that would include AIPAC that their days of undue influence on the American political system will draw to a close.

In relation to Israel his platform is still more of the same although there are subtle caveats. Obama has stated that he supports a secure Israel that is capable of defending itself, and that the foreign assistance provided by America will be maintained and that a strong relationship between the two countries will continue to exist.

But Obama also supports the continuation and acceleration of the peace talks and is prepared to add emphasis to the US relationship with Israel to make that happen. In a recent Q&A with the Washington Post he stated. “The Annapolis conference was a worthy, but late, effort, and already the follow-up has been lacking. As president, I will commit myself personally, and I will assign high-caliber diplomats, to be engaged with both sides on an ongoing basis — encouraging communication, helping them develop and implement solutions, holding them accountable to their commitments by carefully monitoring and reporting on their implementation. I will also demand greater support for this process from the Arab world.”

So what does this mean for Israel and why have the panelists been so cautious in their assessment and finally why does the Arab world have much to gain by his presidency? Firstly it is apparent that he will neuter the capacity of the Israel lobby through his office to address the inordinate influence that as one lobby group that it exerts over the system of government controlling the very things that they use to apply leverage, the financial backing of candidates. Secondly, it is his intention to be more proactive and to press home the peace process until an equitable resolution for a settlement between the two parties is reached.

How his policy alters once he is in office remains to be seen however for the moment there is a positive sign for the Arab world that he is committed to a bringing forward a peaceful resolution to the Middle East crisis, that he will remove the friction that the US war on terror has created in Iraq, he will add emphasis to pursuing the leaders of the terrorist organizations and that he will enter into dialogs with those presently considered rogue states with all the changes within the US government processes necessary to do that.

For a large number of people in the west, there is a rather strange myopic view of the Israeli – Palestinian question and the Gaza issue in particular. One that sees the people of Israel as being those that suffer most in the conflict, that if Hamas (and Hezbollah in Lebanon) were to suddenly cease their armed resistance to its perceived oppression by Israel then peace would automatically prevail in the region.

Peace might prevail under those circumstances but at the same time, if history is to be any judge, the oppression being waged on the Palestinian people wouldn’t.

For the Palestinians, their plight is a situation that has gone on continuously since the ethnic cleansing of the Arab people that occurred in 1948 following the Arab-Israel war, the same sort of ethnic cleansing that occurred with the Kosovo Albanians in 1999. However, in that case the Serbians did not have any influence with the US or British government as does Israel that would fail to arrest it. The refugees in the camps surrounding Israel and the Palestinian territories have become grandparents in the process of waiting for a solution that will be agreed to by the Israelis.

In response to an article I wrote recently that highlighted certain parallels with the present treatment of Palestinians in Gaza with the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto I received a number of emails that all pointed to the indiscriminate firing of rockets by Hamas into Israel as being the sole cause of the dislocation of the peace process yet this is so far from the truth that it beggars belief.

Too much emphasis is given to the Israeli situation and far too little is given to the Palestinian arguments; a function of the undue influence Israel has over the major media in the US such that the enemies of Israel are simultaneously the enemies of the US. Ignorance has become a weapon. The rhetoric that surrounds the whole peace process fails to adequately acknowledge the position of the Palestinians. They are perceived as the protagonists. From the Israeli perspective, the rockets are the sole cause of destabilisation of the peace process. The obligations for peace rest fully on the Palestinians as an oppressed people with no agreed rights and largely not on their oppressors whom are simultaneously seen to be fighting for their rights.

Hamas itself formed in 1987 at the beginning of the First Intifada as the Palestinian uprising was known. That itself was a consequence of the stalled peace negotiations the PLO had been engaged in over a 20-year period as well as protest to the brutal treatment then being meted out by the Israelis, treatment that included then and still includes today, mass detentions, extra-judicial killings and the wanton and unjustified destruction of Palestinian property. It is said Mossad supported Hamas in its early days as a means to counterbalance the political strength the PLO had at the time. It was a deliberate interference by Israel to destabilise the domestic politics of the territories. The converse of course is now the case, Israel currently provides support to Fatah to contest Hamas in a continued process of divide and conquer.

But why did Hamas form? What were the core tenets that gave rise to its base? The answer being that diplomatic discussions had failed successively to achieve anything towards settling the myriad issues that came with the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, or the rights of the four million people confined to external refugee settlements. Hamas with the support of the Palestinian people argued that peace was only likely to be achieved with a more militant process since diplomacy had consistently failed them. The Israelis were not being forcefully obligated to comply with successive UN resolutions and statements condemning their actions and the demands by the international community for peaceful solutions. The Hamas platform as did Hezbollah took on an extremist position as more moderate positions had consistently failed to achieve anything of substance.

Even while Hamas took part in the heavily monitored political process of legislative elections in January 2006, it was not meant to win nor was it meant to win as decisively as it did. The Israelis had miscalculated the feelings of the Palestinians of Gaza. Since then Israel has persistently attempted to derail the Hamas parliament, by targeting its leaders for assassination and by arresting the elected parliamentarians en masse, in favour of negotiations with a more conciliatory representative in the West Bank based President Mahmoud Abbas.

The indiscriminate guerrilla tactics currently employed by Hamas are a definite sticking point in the negotiations but they are not the cause of the conflict. The intransigence by Israel to reach a clear conclusion, the twists and turns that they employ to set any peace negotiation back for another year or decade are legendary. It is when the only major power to whom they will contend with, from whom that they receive the most lucrative financial and military support, decide that enough is enough and that an equitable peace must prevail and apply to all the pressure within their capability to both side with equality, that peace will prevail and not a moment before.

The Israeli occupiers and their US supporters have labelled Hamas a terrorist organisation even though Hamas would call themselves a resistance movement; there is a parallel in the Warsaw Ghetto that the occupying Germans would have called the ZZW and the ZOB that resisted them terrorists by the same broad but fuzzy definition, opposition to occupation.

I am not necessarily in favour of Hamas or Hezbollah or the methods they employ yet I see them as a consequence of a failed peace process and international ambivalence towards the humanitarian and political needs of the Palestinian people. Their strength will only continue to garner support while the world stands by and allows the people it represent to be constantly downtrodden in pursuit of a neighbouring populations unrealistic desires to dominate them.

The way to counter Hamas is not through suppression of the Palestinian people but by the world pressing forward the agreements that have been set aside in doing so. The two sides after sixty hears of discussion have not shown the capacity to reach a mutual consensus and it is in the interest of the world to arbitrate conclusively and fairly on their behalf.

I saw a photo today of a father holding his 6 month old baby son. The father’s face was devoid of expression; the child in his arms was dead. The boy’s name was Mohammed al-Borai; he along with several others had been killed in a blast fired indiscriminately by an Israeli cannon into the densely populated areas of Gaza.

What followed that in the article were more photos, one of a group of young boys holding flowers standing around the battered and bloodstained body of the baby boy that struck me as the most poignant. I had been having a discussion about the cause of suicide bombers in the Palestinian conflict and it will be this image more than any other that will concern me more than most. In their minds the young dead boy and the nature of his death will have more impact on their future than anything any one might tell them.

It was then that I started to contemplate perhaps more fully the plight of the Palestinians today and the parallels in the history of the Jews that led to their mass exodus from their own countries to immigrate to the land that was at the time known as Palestine.

The Warsaw Ghetto during the Jewish Holocaust hold special significance to the European Jews. It was a place of oppression and the pathway to the ultimate death of thousands of their population that has become symbolic with their struggle for recognition. Yet what they are failing to acknowledge as their descendants press forward with their own brand of Jewish and Zionist idealism is the parallel set of conditions that they are now imposing on the Arab people of Palestine.

The Nazis rounded up the Jews of Poland and quartered them in a small area of Warsaw, building a barricade around the perimeter to prevent them leaving. So too have the Israelis through conflict and force pushed many of the Arab inhabitants out of Israel into an enclave that now has a population density of 4200 people per sq km which 14 times that of the surrounding area of Israel which is currently at 360 people per sq km.

The Nazis deprived the ghetto inhabitants of food and essential supplies. So too have the Israeli government deprived the flow of goods into serve the population of 1.4 million inhabitants of men women and children by limiting the convoys of supplies into Gaza to a mere trickle.

The Nazis reduced the average calorie intake of the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto to 241 calories per day. So too have the Israelis reduced the calorie intake of the Palestinians in Gaza that the UN report it is presently at 61% of the average daily requirements.

The Nazis restricted public utilities such as water and electricity. So too have the Israeli government restricted the flow of these essential utilities to the population at large.

The Nazis restricted the inhabitants from adequate health care. So too do the Israelis restrict the health care by limiting the medical supplies in or the treatment of cases that need to be done outside.

The Jewish inhabitants through the ZZB and the ZOB resisted the oppression by the Nazis albeit too late and their rebellion was brutally crushed without concern for who was in the way. So too have the Palestinians of Gaza through their own resistance organizations in particular Hamas, rebelled against their oppressors and so too do the Israelis use all means available to crush the rebellion without concern for who is in the way or who they maim or kill in doing so.

The Nazis destroyed the structure of the ghetto leveling it to the ground in a broad quest to rout the resistance to their oppression. So too do the Israelis indiscriminately level buildings and the infrastructure in Gaza in a quest to rout out the resistance to their oppression.

The Nazis assigned the Jewish people to a lesser status of all their inhabitants depriving them of their rights as citizens and even as humans. So too do the Israeli assign the refugees held in Gaza less status than they do to Jews worldwide and deprive them of their rights to return to their former lands.

The Nazis set themselves on a campaign to produce a nation that was all Aryans. So too have the Israelis set themselves on a path to have a nation that is all Jewish.

The Nazis applied whatever was at their means to break the will of the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto avoiding their control. So too do the Israelis use whatever is at their means to break the will of the Palestinians avoiding the Israelis control.

The Nazis killed the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto indiscriminately in forcing their control over the ghetto. So too do the Israelis indiscriminately kill the inhabitants in forcing their control over Gaza.

The Jews of Israel quite right protest at the inhumanity of the Nazis in their treatment of them and oblige the world to not allow the same situation to happen again. So to do the Palestinians protest at the inhumanity of the treatment by the Israelis yet in a bizarre twist of events, the world still allows the oppression to happen.

It was after the Jews in the ghetto had been largely killed or transported that the world stood up and found guilt in not acting sooner.

With the picture of Mohammad al-Borai in my mind I question when the world will stand up and say enough is enough, there is not going to be a repeat of the Warsaw Ghetto and particularly when its main protagonists are those who suffered the most by its conduct.

There is a basic conflict of inhumanity occurring to the Palestinian people of Gaza that the world is deliberately ignoring. An inhumanity that was inflicted by the Nazis over the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto is now more than ever closely paralleling that which they are inflicting on the people of Gaza. They learned a hard lesson but it was not a lesson learned well. They have been given the power to practice humanity but have decided instead that they will treat the concerns of the Palestinians in the same inhumane way the Nazis treated them.

A future monument will no doubt contain photos of Mohammad al-Borai in the arms of his father and the world will decry the injustice.

This article appeared in Arab News 2 March 2008