Dutch ex-PM on his shame at supporting Israeli terrorism

 
'Dutch Jimmy Carter' accuses Israel of terrorism in new book
27/06/2008

Van Agt says he is still "ashamed" that he made effort to sooth matters for Israel after the 1982 massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees by Lebanese Christian militiamen in an IDF-controlled area of Lebanon. "That was my inclination, that was how I was mentally structured vis-à-vis Israel at the time," he says.

Andreas Van Agt...is an astute statesman who presided as the Dutch prime minister for five years, until 1982.

Van Agt is writing a book about the Israeli-Arab conflict...he accuses Israel of brutal treatment of the Palestinians, violating international law and implementing racist policies.

He has also been outspoken in accusing the Israel Defense Forces of acting like a terrorist organization.

Van Agt hails from the ranks of the ruling party, the Christian Democratic Appeal. Such statements about Israel can therefore be seen as embarrassing for the current leadership, which is considered one of Israel's staunchest supporters in the European Union.

"I'm driven partly by my shame for not speaking up for the Palestinians when I was in power, and partly by some striking experiences I had when visiting the Occupied Territories in the recent past," he says. "People often ask me how come I'm so outspoken now, but did not speak up when I was in a position of power. And it's true, I never spoke up for the Palestinians, except for when Sabra and Shatila happened. And even that was in soft terms."

"In one of my visits to Bethlehem I heard a story, which now I know is just one of many," Van Agt recalls. "It was a story horrendous humiliation of a Palestinian student trying to get to university for a collective exam. His story, which the university president told me, struck me like lightening.."

At the last IDF checkpoint on the way, according to the story which Van Agt says he heard from the university president, the student was pulled over and ordered to climb out of the window. "Then the humiliation began. He fell down and was then ordered to walk on hands and feet and bark. Then the soldiers laughed about the Palestinians all being dogs."

"I began studying, figuring out what's going on there. I found one story after the other. Then I started thinking about the 39 United Nations resolutions begging, demanding and imploring Israel to vacate the Occupied Territories. All were dismissed by Israel. Saddam Hussein was attacked after four resolutions, but Israel got 39 and nobody talks about applying even the slightest pressure on Israel to comply with them," he complains.

Van Agt says:..."without the worst crime in the history of humanity, the Holocaust, the Shoa, Israel would not have come into existence in that time and in that formula."

Most Western nations, he says, are in some form complicit in the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis, be it by denying shelter for Jewish refugees, or collaborating with the Germans. This resulted in guilt which prompted Europeans "to sacrifice the Palestinians for Israel," he proposes. "The Palestinians paid the price for something they were not responsible for...

European nations...should recognize Hamas as a legitimate representative of the Palestinians. "It is not Hamas' government which is illegitimate," he says, alluding to Hamas' victory in the 2006 elections over Fatah.

The three conditions for recognizing Hamas as stipulated by Israel and the Quartet strike Van Agt as stupid. "The first requirement, that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is biased because Israel does not recognize Hamas' right to rule. Where's the reciprocity there?" he complains. Besides, he says, "Israel has never defined its own borders, so demanding Hamas to recognize an entity without clear borders is totally unreasonable."

"The Oslo Accords and the talks that followed were the most self-defeating thing Arafat had ever done," the former premier observes. "The Accords didn't provide any guarantees to the Palestinians and were not based on international law. And Abbas is continuing with this endeavor which runs contrary to the rights and interests of the Palestinians."

As for the third demand, which is to renounce violence, Van Agt says: "First of all, Israel is still employing violence, so again there's no reciprocity. But besides that, since when does international law renounce the right of occupied people to resist the occupying power?"

"Hamas' behavior is reason for great concern, that's right. But it's ignorant to judge how Hamas is ruling without taking into account the impossible conditions in Gaza, the biggest prison in the world."

Hamas' suicide bombings are "illegal and detestable" to Van Agt, he says, but he would only agree to call Hamas a terrorist organization if the definition is applied to the Israeli army as well. "If one party is called a terrorist entity because it carries out deliberate attacks against civilians to pursue political goals, then the Israeli army is guilty of state terrorism. That needs to be said, too. Human rights organizations report that the Israeli army has killed more than 3000 Palestinian civilians since the beginning of the second Intifada."

Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, he recalls, "introduced the bombing of civilians as a military tactic in the run up to the establishment of Israel, and were therefore called terrorists."

In Van Agt's eyes, Israel "is not behaving like a country that deserves to be called a member of the family of civilized nations." This observation applies to the U.S. too, he says, "which is co-responsible for the injustice we have been facing for decades."

Full report in Haaretz Sunday, June 29, 2008