tells Dina Ezzat that time will resolve the Palestinian cause in favour of justice It has been 60 years since Arab representatives met at the headquarters of the League of Arab States on 17 December 1947 to officially reject the 7 December UN partition plan proposing to divide historic Palestine into two countries: one reserved as a homeland for the Jewish people and another as a Palestinian state. "The governments that are members of the League of Arab States stand as one rank on the side of its [Palestinian] brethren in their struggle to end the oppression and to empower them to defend themselves until the independence of Palestine [is secured]," stated the Arab League resolution at the time. The Arab League decided to establish political and military committees that were charged with supporting the Palestinian freedom fighters. Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq financed the struggle. Exactly 60 years later, the Arab League's coordinating committee for the Arab Peace Initiative -- with the membership of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries -- is meeting in Paris with participants from the international community and Israel to discuss ways of lending financial assistance to the Palestinian people and the PA in what is supposed to be a step towards the eventual declaration of an independent Palestinian state on less than 22 per cent of the land of historic Palestine -- less than half of what the Palestinians were proposed under the partition resolution. "Of course, today the situation is much worse than it was 60 years ago," said , former UN secretary-general and Egyptian minister of foreign affairs, in interview with Al-Ahram Weekly. Next May, Israel will celebrate its 60th anniversary while millions of Palestinians under occupation and in refugee camps dotted across the region will mark 60 years of the Nakba (catastrophe). With long years of academic expertise as a respected professor of international law, and with decades in top national and international political positions, including five years at the helm of the UN, Boutros-Ghali today finds it "too theoretical to attempt to examine Arab reactions to the partition plan". As far as Boutros-Ghali is concerned, what is done cannot be undone, for the most part. "You cannot sit here today and say that Arabs should have accepted the partition resolution, or that Arab countries made this or that mistake. You are theorising out of context," Boutros-Ghali said. "At the time it was impossible for Arab governments to accept the partition plan. It was simply impossible. The public mindset could not have agreed to that under any circumstances. It was a different world then." At the time, Boutros-Ghali was a prominent post- graduate student of international law in Paris. He was assigned by then Arab League secretary-general Abdel-Rahman Azzam to represent the stance of the Arab organisation in France. Boutros-Ghali was faithful to the assignment. It was, however, a mission impossible for any single Arab lawyer -- or group for that matter -- to reverse the momentum opened up by the 1947 partition plan. Even the United States, as was proven late last month, has trouble proposing UN action that is interpreted by Israel as unfavourable to its strategic interests. Boutros-Ghali does not dwell much on the past, or on what he qualifies as "small details of an otherwise a long cause for justice". The 85-year-old diplomat, who participated actively in the negotiation of Egypt's peace deal with Israel, believes that while Palestinians and Arabs have often been betrayed by the failures of international mechanisms and bodies, they have also been undone by their own mistakes. "There are too many divisions within the Palestinian rank. There are two governments [and no state] for the Palestinians in Gaza and Ramallah," Boutros- Ghali said, adding that too many divisions exist also within Arab ranks. "Inter-Arab divisions are not new. They have been there for years and they have only weakened the Arab position." This weak Arab front, Boutros-Ghali argues, was not what the Palestinians needed through the decades. Along with Arab political weakness there were successive Arab military defeats. But for this seasoned world politician it is Arab political weakness that harmed the Palestinians most. "You can lose a war but reverse the situation through good diplomacy. This did not happen." For Boutros-Ghali, the worst enemy of justice relative to the Palestinian cause is extremism. "Within Israel, too, there are divisions, between extremists and moderates. Unfortunately, it is extremists who have the upper hand in Israel, as in certain quarters in the Arab world," he lamented. This said, the now head of the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights is not willing to acknowledge the final defeat of Palestinian rights to independence and freedom. "The world is changing. Globalisation is applying new rules for all games. A better world will definitely come," he said. In the analysis of Boutros-Ghali, Arabs need to adopt a futuristic approach, rather than being preoccupied with events of the past. "It is pointless today to say that Arabs should go to the UN Security Council and ask for the terms of the partition resolution to be reinstated. It is absurd. It is meaningless. We have realities to deal with," he said. "In 60 years from now, Arab demographic pressure on Israel will be stronger than ever before," Boutros-Ghali said. He estimated that Israel would have about two to three million Arab-Israeli citizens and that it would be surrounded by no less than eight million Palestinians along with hundreds of millions of Arabs and over 1.5 billion Muslims. "This is no small demographic pressure. It is bound to have an influence on Israel and to create new realities on the ground." Such a demographic impact, Boutros-Ghali argued, could have greater influence than any legal or military confrontation that Arabs and Muslims combined could launch against Israel today. Along with such inexorable demographic changes, Boutros-Ghali argues that globalisation is changing basic concepts. "I think in 60 years from now there will come a moment whereby even the harshest Israeli extremist will believe it is almost useless to talk about Israel [as a strictly Jewish state], simply because there might be new concepts governing relations among peoples and nations. These new rules could turn things upside down for the Palestinian-Israeli story," Boutros-Ghali argues. As such, Boutros-Ghali finds it of little use to argue about the right of return of the Palestinian refugees, or -- for that matter -- discount the increasing trend of reverse migration by Israelis who prefer to find easier living in the US, Canada or Europe. "The situation is changing and it will be fast changing in the near future," Boutros-Ghali said. Is it increasing awareness of the inevitable that has prompted Israel to support the existence of a Palestinian state for all Palestinians? Should the Palestinian Authority be wary of premature deals on the basis of this awareness on the part of the Israeli government? Boutros-Ghali is unwilling to either interpret the intentions of Israel or to offer advice to the Palestinians. "There are facts on the ground, sad facts by which the Palestinians are suffering every day and every night, and there must be some arrangement by which this suffering comes to a prompt end," he said. According to Boutros-Ghali, the future -- and maybe even the solution -- of the Palestinian cause "will be decided by future generations, by the norms and rules of globalisation and by the third generation of international organisations, which will include non-state actors." This new future multilateralism will change the current balance, "as already happened with the apartheid regime" in South Africa. "It is an international injustice that will have to be rectified by the international community," the diplomat diplomatically concluded.
