August 22, 2006
Kamloops Daily News


Blame Canada for the destruction of Lebanon and the bombing
of Israel. No one else will accept responsibility. Not
Lebanon's Hezbollah; they want to wipe Israel off the map.
Not Israel; they want to excise the cancer of Hezbollah from
their neighbouring country.

Certainly not the U.S. who was happy to bide their time as
the combatants pummeled each other, confident they had
backed a winner. Not the United Nations despite calls for
by the Secretary General Kofi Annan. "I repeat; hostilities
must stop," implored Annan one month ago. Israel's response
was to blow up a U.N. outpost that killed four observers,
one of them Canadian. Not the member nations of the U.N.
who fiddled while Israel bombed Lebanon into the dark ages
of two decades ago. Give war a chance, sang the nations.

So blame Canada and the Canadian Ivan Rand. The
well-intentioned Mr. Rand thought he was doing the right
thing. He played a key role in the formation of Israel in
1948 according to Doug Sanders who studied the history of
Israel.

Rand, a judge on the Supreme Court of Canada, persuaded the
others on the committee that partition was the answer. Rand
was our pick for the United Nations committee that was to
shape the new state of Israel.

Each of the committee members came from ten so-called middle
powers. The U.N. wanted to avoid the obvious bias of the
key players such as the U.S., Britain, and France.

The committee ultimately settled on two choices. Either
Israel would become an integrated federal state with Jewish
and Arab provinces or it would be split in two.

The plan for an integrated state was supported by India,
Yugoslavia and Iran. It called for Arabs and Jews to have
equal numbers of elected representatives in parliament.
Full rights for both groups would be guaranteed under a new
constitution.

Supporters of an integrated state were aware of the
historical tension between the two but argued that
integration would provide a legal means for settling
differences. Better that, than armed conflict that would
spill over the Middle East.

How could unity be achieved through division, these
supporters wondered? "Economic and social unity after
first creating political and geographic disunity through
partition is impractical, unworkable, and could not possibly
provide for two reasonably viable states," they worried.

How could a line through a map provide contiguous
territories to Palestinians and Jews? How could it respect
the fact that only one-third of the population was Jews and
the remainder was Muslims and Christians while presenting an
opportunity for future immigration of Jews?

Canada, along with six other countries, supported the
partition. And who stepped up to draw would draw the
contentious line between Jews and Arabs?

No problem, said the convincing Canadian. Mr. Rand
approached the map of the proposed state and boldly drew a
line through the country. His arguments eventually won over
other middle powers. In turn, the U.N. General Assembly
heeded the advice of the committee and voted for a divided
Israel.

With the luxury of hindsight, the Canadian choice may not
have been the best one. The constant conflict between Jews
and Palestinians in the decades that followed is testimony
to that. Neither side is satisfied with the arbitrary
lines. Partition was intended to keep combatants apart but
if anything, hostilities have increased and spread to
surrounding countries. The divide between Palestinians and
Jews proves to be an ugly wound that will not heal.

Palestinians will never be happy with a territory that is
broken into enclaves so small that families can't visit each
other without crossing though Israeli territory. Jews will
never be happy surrendering land that they believe was given
to them by God.

The apprehension of the three committee members who opposed
partition 60 years ago is eerily prophetic. The shooting
may have stopped but the implacable dance between Israel and
Hezbollah is not over.

In his book on Lebanon, Andre Deutch writes "In January of
1983 the Israeli chief of staff during the invasion was
warning that 'the war in Lebanon is formally over - - but in
effect it goes on.' Israel could expect 'another hundred
years of terror,' the chief of staff added."

Given that both sides will accept nothing less than the
destruction of the other, the words of the chief of staff
seem optimistic.

David Charbonneau is the owner of Trio Technical.
He can be reached at dcharbonneau13@shaw.ca

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