BOTH the Palestine and the Kashmir disputes, by demographic dimensions being an unsettled asset of the Muslim world, are sufferers of the global politics; and if the current unbalanced global power chess board continues unaltered then the Muslim world may bleed further; actually the general world united in their coloured perception of the Ottoman empire does not brook rise of Muslims by individual country-setup or by collective strength; the general world sees Islam as a living force that has the potential of re-rise; this ‘apprehension’ of re-rise keeps the general world united against Islam or any model resembling Islam. And this planned thought of theirs forms their defence wall regionally, continentally, globally, geo-politically. The Muslim world with its current status is unable to foil any conspiracy of any length and breadth against them.
The living example of keeping the Muslim world defence-less are Palestine and Kashmir disputes which linger on unresolved for past over 76 continued years; even the dominant fact of UN Security Council’s approved road map for the resolution of these two outstanding disputes has not persuaded the masters of the global diplomatic fortune makers to exert their moral, political, diplomatic, relational influence and role for on-ground materialization of the UNSC given dispensation of settlement of Kashmir and Palestine disputes: UN supervised plebiscite in Kashmir and 2-state solution of the Palestine imbroglio.
Kashmir as a dispute was lodged with the UN Security Council (UNSC) by India getting it registered with the SC as an international dispute threatening world peace and security on January 1st 1948. The SC had adopted resolutions of August 13, 1948 and of January 5, 1949 for an international plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir meaning that it (SC) had rejected Indian claims to Jammu and Kashmir; however India wrongfully persists that the last ruler of Kashmir Maharaja Hari Singh had done Kashmir’s ‘accession’ to India on 26 October 1947.
This claim does not stand the test of history as the Maharaja had fled his capital seat Srinagar in the beginning of October that year as a result of popular uprising against his autocratic rule, and had taken refuge in Jammu; he was not in a position or entitled to sign accession deed; what is truth of history is that the Maharaja much earlier on 12 August 1947 had done a Standstill Agreement with Pakistan government, meaning Pakistan had become a geographic party to the suzerainty of Jammu and Kashmir state by agreeing/signing the Standstill Agreement; India on the other hand had rejected Maharaja’s offer of similar Standstill Agreement; record wise India has no claim to Kashmir, but is occupying a greater part of the state forcibly by its military, now near one million professional armed forces in Indian part of Kashmir. Pakistan’s case on Kashmir is stronger but government of Pakistan does not make a reference to the Standstill Agreement in its fight in Kashmir case either within UN or outside of it.
On Palestine UN’s two-state solution is quite practicable but the Israeli occupation arrogance like India stands in the way of implementation of the UN dispensation. This non-implementation of Palestine road map is causing recurring blood pools of humans in the entire Middle East; Palestinians have suffered serial massacres right from 5 May 1948 down to this blood streaming day, 21 Nov 2023. Inhumane addition to their uprooted sufferings is the freshly adopted UNSC resolution for a paused war in Palestine, a dispensation militating against all logic of law and humanism.
This queer UNSC resolution is bound to augment/legitimize aggressive designs of any powerful country against the weak one in future in any party of the globe; the resolution is a license to unstoppable wars. Why this strange phenomenon happened right in the premises of UNSC whose primary function is to safeguard peace; but this resolution of paused war in Palestine suits the general world in the same context I had mentioned in the beginning of this article. Ideologically the present day global texture of power does not favour the Muslim world; this global division is quite obvious, non-bridgeable. Dangling danger is there as a reality.
—The writer, a retired Secretary in AJK Govt, is a senior columnist, based in Rawalpindi.
Email: shaheenalvi52@gmail.com
views expressed are writer’s own.
