President Obama's Middle East policy speech of the 19 May was forward-looking in that it referred to the pre-1967 border as the point of reference. But when he talked of the swaps to be arrived at by Israeli-Palestinian talks, and when one sees the repeated standing ovation to the Israeli Prime Minister when he addressed the US Congress on 23 May and said that Israel would stick to the present border and the occupied territories, the future of that policy looks very dim indeed.
We will, however, shift our ground a little bit and take a look at what Mahatma Gandhi said about the Arab-Jewish question in the hope that it may bring in some freshness of thinking to the current crisis.
Gandhi was a man of unusual far-sightedness. Years before India's independence he was aware of its far-reaching consequences for the still dependent nations of Asia and Africa. On the Arab-Jewish question he published his views at least on four occasions.
The first was an interview to "The Jewish Chronicle" in the latter half of 1931 when he was at London to attend the 2nd Round Table Conference convened by the British government. He was saying that 'In South Africa I was surrounded by Jews'. On the current problem he said, 'I can understand the longing of a Jew to return to Palestine, and he can do so if he can without the help of bayonets, whether his own or those of Britain. In that event he would go to Palestine peacefully and in perfect friendliness with the Arabs.'
That set the tone for others. In November 1838, almost on the eve of the World War, he wrote a small article on "The Jews". He says 'My sympathies are all with the Jews...They have been the untouchables of Christianity.' It will be recalled that he was immersed in the untouchability question in India itself. But he continues that 'it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.' Then comes 'The Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract... if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun...They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs'.
His interest in the Arab-Jewish problem was sustained after the World War, as he could not trust the British intentions, and his country, India, was also in danger of being divided along the religious line as was Palestine. He wrote in his note "Jews and Palestine" in July 1946 that '...they(the Jews) have erred grievously in seeking to impose themselves on Palestine with the aid of America and Britain and now with the aid of naked terrorism. Their citizenship of the world should have and would have made them honoured guests of any country'. And finally in early May 1947, when the division of India was about to be decided, he said when the Reuter asked him the solution to the Palestine problem, 'If I were a Jew, I would tell them:"Don't be so silly as to resort to terrorism, because you simply damage your own case which otherwise would be a proper case"'. And continued, 'They should meet the Arabs, make friends with them, and not depend on British aid or American aid or any aid...'. Gandhi's concept of a modern state is a multi-religious one, and he has insisted on it since he wrote Hind Swaraj in 1909. On this basis he rejected the two-nation theory to deny the division of India along religions.
Gandhi's close Jewish friend Hermann Kallenback visited India in 1937 and 1939 to sound him if he would be willing to mediate between the Arabs and the Jews, but the attempt ended in failure(see Simone Panter-Brick,Gandhi and the Middle East Jews, Arabs and Imperial Interests).
It is sixty years after Gandhi's death, and aren't some of his ideas still worth looking at?
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