ANNAN OFFERS HOPE

The month of March saw some interesting developments on the peace front, with promise of some movement in an otherwise deadlocked process.

First, there was Robin Cook's provocative visit to Israel and Palestine. As the representative of the European Union, he surprised observers, and the Israeli government in particular, by his very warm embrace of the Palestinians and criticism of Israel. His most unexpected move was a visit to the controversial Israeli housing project in East Jerusalem's Jabal Abu Ghnaim area, where he spoke with a representative of the Palestine Authority about local Arab opposition to the project.

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu was infuriated, claiming that Cook had broken a promise by the British government not to include a meeting with any Palestinian representatives at the sensitive site. The premier was so miffed he canceled a planned state dinner for Cook.

For his part, Cook retorted, rather cheekily, that he was relieved not to have to eat yet another big meal on the trip, and said he had visited the construction project, to underline the European view that the Israeli settlement policy is undermining the peace process. The Palestinians and other Arabs were pleasantly surprised to see such a senior Western diplomat take so controversial a stand without being phased by the consequent Israeli outrage.

On the face of it, Cook did nothing unusual. After all, why shouldn't he visit the project and talk to representatives of the people in the area? Israel's rabid reaction only went to show how unreasonable the government there has become, in expecting visitors to conform to an Israeli formula for their visits.

Israel is beginning to feel the intense pressure exerted by a world increasingly frustrated with this government's hard-line policies. Clearly no progress will be made towards a lasting peace, if Netanyahu and co. continue their resistance to oft-repeated international pleas to make greater efforts for peace. Cook shook up a government that had settled into a pattern of talking peace but doing nothing to make it happen.

Cook managed this by drawing attention to the main reason for the hold-up in talks: Israel's aggressive policy of building settlements on occupied Arab land. Meanwhile, another relative newcomer to Middle East peacemaking, Kofi Annan, was busy starting a tour of the region to see what he might be able to do to get the peace process back on track again.

On the foundations of his successful trip to Baghdad earlier in the month, Annan returned to the region "to learn, understand and discuss," as he put it.

He started his tour with a visit to a Palestinian refugee camp in Amman, Jordan, where he sipped tea with a refugee family, in the company of Crown Prince Hassan bin Talal, and listened to the people's concerns.

Can the softly spoken secretary-general accomplish what no UN bureaucrat has achieved in the past: a real breakthrough for peace in the region? He enjoys huge popularity in the Arab world these days because of his success in defusing the Iraqi crisis peacefully, and for his general level-headed approach to international diplomacy.

Can he use this good will and his good relations with Israel and America to breathe some fresh life into the moribund peace process?

He will certainly try, and for this we must thank him. His presence is a reassuring sign that the rest of the world has not abandoned hope for a solution to the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict.

Western society has never really understood Islam. Ever since its emergence on the world stage, Islam has been portrayed by Orientalists as a religion of the sword. The West has not ceased to insult and slander it in its attempt to justify waging wars upon Muslim lands. Islam has been the object of the most grotesque distortions; the legacy of which remains alive until today in the Western psyche.

Although Islam has been the object of study by Western Orientalists, their published literature on the subject has done little or nothing towards a better understanding of Islam, particularly since their studies were often motivated by the sole purpose of distorting Islam rather than expounding it. There are some reasons why Islam remains so misjudged by the West until today, while Eastern faiths such as Buddhism and Hinduism have for over a century gained far more open sympathy and interest.

Islam, although closer to Judaism and Christianity, has suffered on account of the growing importance of the Arab-Islamic countries in the world's political and economic affairs.

Today's civilization has produced a system which both degrades and deceives humanity, which ultimately results in destruction. It degrades because it reduces him to the material and quantitative function of a mere producer and consumer. It deceives because it makes him think that progress, development, science, social organization and liberation from traditional restraints will bring Utopia. But it ends in his destruction by corrupting him and bringing him a life devoid of meaning, hope or purpose. As HRH The Prince of Wales said in Oxford in 1993, "The danger of ignoring this aspect [integrational, secular and sacred] of our existence is not just spiritual or intellectual, it also lies at the heart of the great divide between Islamic and Western worlds over the place of materialism in our lives."

The human condition cannot find its justification and true fulfillment in the mere material and physical, since man has a basic need to reach beyond himself, and this is what separates man from other creatures. Because of this essential and central aspiration towards transcendence, all relative things he strives for or gains leave him still hungering with a sensation of spiritual emptiness.

Modern civilization offers everything to man except the essential, the true peace of soul which only comes from fulfilling in this world the higher destiny for which he was created. Those who are endowed with some degree of reflectiveness are growing more and more aware that the senseless conditions of modern life are bringing humanity towards a precipice. Logically, they search for the essence of their creation, which often takes them towards various forms of oriental mysticism, such as yoga, or to other belief systems. But so often their quest bypasses Islam, which would help them to invest their lives with a sense of meaning.

Although Islam is not of the West and may be a stranger to the specifically modern world, it is nevertheless best adapted to the conditions of the world in its present phase of decline. It is at once both simple and obvious, yet holds treasures of mystical and metaphysical wisdom, which have sustained past generations of contemplatives. Through its horizontal and vertical dimensions, Islam is capable of reconciling man both with the universe which surrounds him, and with the Creator of all things. In its fullest sense of the term, it is universal.

The plight of Kosovo Muslims HANI ZAYED

What is taking place in Kosovo has its roots in the Middle Ages, when Kosovo was part of Albania.

The Serbian King Sardoshan annexed Kosovo to his empire, known as the empire of Serbia, Slovenia and Albania. In 1389, the Serbian Prince Lazar was defeated by the Ottomans.

Serbs lamented the loss of the Kosovo region, until the year 1878, when the sun set on the Ottoman Empire. Albanian land was given to the Greeks, to be followed by Serbia and Montenegro, in the light of the Berlin conference resolutions.

In 1913, Albania was redivided among the triumphant states in the Balkan War, and its area shrank from 70,000 square kilometers to only 29,000. Kosovo was part of the land that was snared from Albania to be presented on a gold platter to Serbia. This induced Albanian Muslims to rebel in 1945, when the inhabitants of the region claimed independence from Yugoslavia an uprising which was violently quelled with the killing of thousands.

In 1946, the Muslim Albanians of Kosovo were given self-rule, but it was on paper and never implemented. In 1974, Kosovo was acknowledged as an entity equal to the rest of the Yugoslav republics. But Serbian fanaticism escalated following the death of Tito in 1980, as the Serbian Yugoslav army began the rescinding of self-rule in the region that was under Tito's rule.

These endeavors reached their lowest point, when the "Serbian assassin" Slobodan Milosovich on 24 April 1987, emulating Lazarus, announced the nullification of Muslim self-rule in Kosovo. That day, the Serbian assassin said, "No one will beat you from now on, Kosovo is not for Albanian Muslims. but part and parcel of the greater Serbia dream."

In the same spirit Milosovich announced in 1989 the formal appropriation of the region to the Greater Serbia Empire, which drove Kosovo's Muslims to conduct secret elections in 1992, in which they voted for the Democratic Solidarity of Kosovo, and chose Ibrahim Rogova as their president.

The Serbian assassin issued his orders to incarcerate thousands of the inhabitants of the region. Ninety percent of Albanian employees were fired from their jobs, being replaced by Serbians. The Muslims of Kosovo were forced to live in economic isolation and trrible poverty, in which the monthly income of the family would not surpass 20 marks, and the people of Kosovo became the poorest on earth.

That was commented on by Tariush Mazovsky, the chairman of the UN delegation in charge of fact-finding about the status of Albanian Muslims in Kosovo in 1992, who said: "The current situation in Kosovo is extremely dangerous. Laws and Serbian procedures have reached the extent of eliminating... the cultural aspects of Albanian Muslims, breaching human rights in a frightening manner."

The conflicts between Albanian Muslims in Kosovo and Serbian forces have escalated since the rise of the extreme right in the elections held last year.

The international community finds itself required to find a quick solution, especially as the problem is very similar to other problems in the Balkans.Will the international community act before it is too late? Or will we wait for another Bosnia while the gentlemen sitting in their offices at the United Nations headquarters reiterate that what is taking place is an internal matter they have nothing to do with?

This article appeared in Al Osbou on 16 March.

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