Much has been written about India’s abstention during the vote on a resolution at the United Nations asking for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. This, without doubt, is the most shameful episode in our post-Independence foreign policy. Many have underscored that it goes against India’s interests but quite apart from interests, currying favour with a Zionist Israel amounts to acquiescing in a system of colonial oppression and hence violates the moral foundations of our own nationhood. The rest of the third world that voted for the resolution understands this; our government, alas, does not.
The government’s excuse that the resolution made no mention of Hamas’ terrorism is utterly flimsy. No amount of terrorism on the part of Hamas can possibly justify the genocide being carried out by Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza. The 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as a set of “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” — what is happening in Gaza is exactly this, and must be stopped irrespective of what Hamas has done. Pressing for a ceasefire to prevent a genocide, therefore, is unrelated to any Hamas terrorism.
Besides, as the UN secretary-general suggested, what Hamas has done cannot be seen in isolation from its context. Israel has, for decades, been occupying Palestinian lands, humiliating them, running an apartheid regime, and inflicting ruthless violence upon them. Under international law, the Palestinians have a right to resist, including through armed struggle, the forcible takeover of their lands by the Israeli occupiers; this position was reiterated by a UN General Assembly resolution in 1983 which asserted “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for their independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.” It is not Hamas’ resort to violence per se therefore that can be objected to either on legal or moral grounds, even if one considers it unproductive or unwise. What Hamas can be accused of is the use of violence against innocent civilians, including the taking of hostages.
But Israel has been doing every one of these indubitable war crimes for decades and on a much vaster scale. Bombing the civilian population in Gaza has been a common occurrence. I was, until recently (when we submitted our final report), a juror on an International People’s Tribunal on Imperialist Sanctions and we heard evidence from witnesses belonging to fifteen countries. When witnesses from Gaza were giving evidence, quite apart from what they said, we could actually hear the sounds of bombs falling in the background. In addition to the violence against the Palestinian civilians by the Israeli defence forces, armed Israeli settlers also engage in violence against the local population.
There are reasons to believe that the reports of Hamas’ terrorist acts are greatly exaggerated, often concocted, especially the report about headless babies, by Jewish fanatics; the actions of the Israeli State are many times more criminal (with over 3,000 children killed in October alone). If Hamas is to be branded a terrorist organisation, as the Western powers have done, then Israel logically must also be called a terrorist State; and if the Indian government wants Hamas’ terrorism to be condemned in the UN resolution, then logical consistency demands that Israeli State terrorism should also be condemned in it. That, however, while being even-handed, would scarcely serve the purpose of mobilising pervasive support for achieving an urgently needed ceasefire.
By avoiding any reference to terrorism from either side, the UN resolution, therefore, was being pragmatic to achieve a consensus in favour of a ceasefire. And yet, India abstained, while even an imperialist country like France whose president, Emmanuel Macron, has been talking about an international coalition against Hamas, voted for it. World opinion will henceforth take the Indian government’s commitment to peace, and concern for the lives, not to mention the rights, of the Palestinians with a large dose of salt.
Hamas, paradoxically, had for long enjoyed the tacit support of the Israeli State against the progressive and secular sections of Palestinian resistance, rather like Islamic fundamentalists were supported by the United States of America in several West Asian states to keep out the communists. It has emerged in the process as the most powerful element within Palestinian resistance, enjoying significant popular support; to call it a mere terrorist organisation is to belittle Palestinian resistance. But if it engages in terrorist acts, then we must ask: why?
In my student days, a common saying was that the “revolution revolutionises the counter-revolution”. One can paraphrase it to say: “colonial brutality brutalises the anti-colonial struggle”, which is what we see in Palestine. Israel has been using a combination of brutal suppression of the Palestinians and attempts to ‘normalise’ relations with other Arab states, and even states like India, with the blessings of Western imperialism, to obliterate the Palestinian issue altogether. The excesses of Hamas are, alas, a retaliation against this.
In response to these excesses, the Israeli State is now hell-bent on eliminating Hamas itself, and carrying out a genocidal ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, that is, taking its obliteration strategy much further so that the Palestinian issue disappears completely from international public discourse. It is, however, chasing a dangerous will-o’-the-wisp. The response to this heightened obliteration strategy will be even more violent, whether through Hamas or some other organisation that will replace it. This spiral will end, and the issue be resolved, only through a negotiated settlement, for which an immediate ceasefire is essential.
Prabhat Patnaik is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
