Palestinians fear that a war on Iraq could provide Israel with the pretext to ethnically cleanse the Occupied Territories, writes Raymond Deane
As his final gamble before the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein unsuccessfully played the Palestinian card, seeking to link Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait with Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza.
During the worldwide peace marches on February 15th, innumerable placards and speakers linked opposition to war on Iraq with support for the Palestinians.
The question of double standards is at the heart of this linkage. The alacrity with which Iraq was forced out of Kuwait in 1991 is contrasted with the leniency displayed towards Israel, which has occupied the Palestinian territories since 1967 in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 242.
In response, Dr Dore Gold, an adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, points out that "the UN Security Council adopted all its resolutions against Iraq under Chapter VII of the UN Charter", which allows for military enforcement, whereas those against Israel were adopted under Chapter VI that deals with "pacific resolution of disputes".
This factually-correct assertion fails to dispose of the accusation of double standards since it raises the question: why have the latter resolutions not also been adopted under Chapter VII?
Dr Gold goes on to claim that "UN Security Council Resolution 242 . . . , when taken together with Resolution 338, leads to an Israeli withdrawal from territories . . . that Israel entered in the 1967 Six-Day War, by means of a negotiated settlement between Israel and its Arab neighbours".
This thesis is surely fallacious. Resolution 242 demands a withdrawal of Israeli occupying forces and "the termination of all claims or states of belligerency" prior to negotiation; 338 (October 1973) demanded a ceasefire in the Yom Kippur War followed by "the implementation of Security Council Resolution 242", which is not made conditional on the simultaneous start of negotiations "aimed at establishing a just and durable peace in the Middle East".
Even if one accepts Dr Gold's self-serving interpretation, further questions arise concerning tolerance of Israel's non-compliance with international law.
The most flagrant example of this is the ongoing colonial project of building settlements in the Occupied Territories and occupied East Jerusalem in contravention of the 4th Geneva Convention. The "facts on the ground" thus created physically preclude the establishment of a viable Palestinian state on the 22 per cent of Mandate Palestine supposedly earmarked for that purpose.
Further breaches of international law on Israel's part include torture, illegal detention, targeted assassinations, assaults against civilians with heavy weapons, denial of rights to free movement, education and medical aid, use of civilians as human shields, house demolitions, theft of water, attacks on hospitals, ambulances and medical workers, the murder of UN personnel, and, of course, the development of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear missiles, in contravention of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
These crimes have been carried out with the unconditional support of the US, which now proposes to inflict "a Hiroshima-style" bombardment on Iraq.
These are the words of Mr Harlan Ullman, a military strategist and former teacher of Mr Colin Powell, whose plan for Iraq entails "this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but minutes". Suddenly the term "double standard" seems pitifully inadequate.
There is anxiety among Palestinians that a war on Iraq will provide Ariel Sharon with the pretext he needs to complete the process of ethnically cleansing the Occupied Territories of their Arab population.
The inclusion in Mr Sharon's governing coalition of the Molodet party, which openly advocates so-called "transfer", lends substance to such fear. More plausible, however, is the inducement of "voluntary transfer" by means of intensified military brutality.
There is evidence that the near blackout occasioned by the recent media concentration on Iraq has provided cover for a rehearsal of such atrocities: the mounting toll of Palestinian civilian deaths in Gaza, Beit Hanoun, Nablus and elsewhere has received little international attention and no condemnation.
The sense that Arab lives are of little account in the west - nobody has forgotten former American UN ambassador Ms Madeleine Albright's assertion that "the deaths of half a million Iraqi children" were "a price worth paying" to restrain Saddam - understandably deepens the sense of injustice and humiliation felt by Arabs and, indeed, Muslims everywhere.
This in turn intensifies resentment and hatred of the West, an atmosphere in which such fundamentalist groups as Hamas and al-Qaeda can only thrive.
The US is selling its war on Iraq as the first stage in a process of democratically reconstructing the Middle East. Last June, US administration super-hawk Mr Richard Perle told the Washington Monthly that "[Egyptian President] Mubarak is no great shakes. Surely we can do better."
This rash statement speaks volumes about the kind of democratisation envisaged, since clearly the needs and wishes of the Egyptian people count as naught in the face of that imperially arrogant "we".
The intention seems to be to replace the current gang of US-backed dictators with a batch of still more compliant Quislings, who will renounce even the token gestures of verbal support for the Palestinian cause which constitute these rulers' only concession to the will of their subjects.
Then, it is hoped, the Palestinians can be tucked up within a South African-style regime of Bantustans fed by UN charity until they give up and go into exile, leaving an ethnically-cleansed Israel as unquestioned proxy of US power in the region.
Whether involving brute force or phony democratisation, these blueprints are premised on the racist assumption that the Arab people's aspiration to equal respect and consideration on the world stage is inherently negligible.
Raymond Deane is a composer member of Aosdána, and a founding member of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.