Former Nigeria’s Minister of External Affairs, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, in this interview with GBENGA SALAU, has urged those inputting religious sentiments to the Israel-Hamas crisis to desist from doing so, maintaining that the UN must not just take a passing interest in resolving the crisis since it was created by the body or else it could snowball to a major global crisis that could consume everybody.
Some individuals have been inputting religious sentiments into Israel-Hamas crisis, looking at the composition of religious dynamics within the two states. Is there anything religious attached to the crisis?
The fact that there are Biblical underpinnings does not mean that all the issues that are involved are biblical. If you start from the beginning, the Book of Exodus said God gave the land to the Jews, and then, what happened during the crusade? The Ottoman Empire took over the Middle East and those are Muslims. And then after the First World War, the British took over the Middle East and when they got there, there were all kinds of settlements:Christian, Muslims and the Jewish settlements.
But there came the Second World War, this war inflated such horrendous holocaust on the Jews that the world felt they must compensate Jews by giving them a land and the land then was in the Middle East. People even forgot that the British who were in control at one time offered Uganda to the Jews and the Jews rejected it saying they have no connection with them. Or else this problem we are talking about would have concerned us more than any other thing. So, after the Second World War, the world compensated the Jews for what had happened to them by now allowing the Jews to form the state of Israel. So, you see, where do you start the narrative? If you jump into a river in the middle and you can’t swim, you drown, and it is the same thing with analysts, scholars, diplomats, they must go to the very beginning and you will now recognise how tendentious the issues are. There is nothing about religion in this matter.
This issue is of international law, the United Nations, in 1948, created two states in the Middle East, what they called the Jewish state and the Palestinian state and that was where the war started between the Jews and Palestinians. And since then, the rest of the world has not been able to sleep.
There have been so many wars between Israel and the Palestinians, which the Palestinians havekept on losing simply because they are not fighting Israel alone, they are fighting Israel and the western world. Don’t forget what I told you about the sense of guilt of the western world that then went to create a state for Israel after the Second World War.
The Supreme Islamic Council of Nigeria has called for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to take side with the Palestine, what is your take on that?
The Arab-Israeli conflict is not a religious conflict. There are Christians on both sides. In fact, there are more Christians among the Palestinians than there are Christians in Israel. Also, as far as I am concerned, both the Arabs and the Jews discriminate against black people. So, even on racial ground, we should maintain our neutrality and allow our policies to be governed strictly by the desire for peace. Our country is divided along religious lines already; we should not adopt any policy that would create more domestic problems for us. It is not a religious problem at all and I think that religious organisations and religious leaders should keep out of international issues that they do not understand.
Let us talk about contradiction in global politics that is perpetuating this conflict, in your own views, what are these contradictions?
At the end of the Second World War, Western Europe that inflicted thispogrom on the Jews felt that they must create a state for the Israel and so they created a state for them. And they felt they must always support Israel. That is really where hypocrisy comes in. If the West saysit must support Israel, because of the then Cold War; the East, Russia, China feel they must also support the Arabs too.
And so the conflict has always beenbetween the West and the East, and till this moment, theWest supports Israel and the East supportsthe Palestinians.However, while the West is prepared to support Israel with everything it has got, the support from Russia and China has always been more of rhetoric than actually in terms of weapon supply.
An hospital where some persons were receiving treatment was bombed with counter accusation about who was responsible, what is your position on this development in the crisis?
I think that the bombing of the hospital and the carnage that followed should give more impetus to the United Nations to provide the moral ground for moving forward. Already, we have seen that the Secretary General of the United Nations, for the first time, has now called for a ceasefire. It moved away from the Israeli-United States dictated position of unwavering support for Israel. It has moved now to a more nuance position of calling for a ceasefire. And the United States, the only body that can really put pressure on Israeli, has missed that opportunity all because of the election coming up next year. And I think that it is a shame, because of an election coming, more lives are going to be lost on both sides. Anyway, it is going to take an American president with a stronger moral standing to take a strong position, probably, somebody like Jimmy Carter. Carter was a moral president, who, in a way, was not driven by immoral values. It is going to take an American president like that to move Israel into a position that the use of power creates more problem than it solves it.
Beyond calling for ceasefire, what concrete steps should the UN be taking in the days ahead?
We have to deal with a two-state agreement, one state for the Israeli and another for Palestinians. Israeli illegal settlers, illegal under international law, would have to be forced to give up Palestinians land that they have occupied so that the Palestinian state would have one contiguous territory. There are not going to be parts of territory with Israeli settlement in between terrorising Palestinians. All Palestinians would have to subscribe to a charter accepting the existence of an Israeli state. I think that using its moral authority, whether they are going to be accepted or not, the United Nations Secretary General should stake his reputation on these parameters.
What is your take on President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel?
I think that President Joe Biden trip to Israel is a failure, because it had intended to put himself forward as an honest interlocutor. As it is, the Israelis were prepared to receive him while all the other Arab countries were not prepared to receive. And I do not blame the Arab countries. If you are going to be an honest interlocutor, you are not going to go in and be supporting one side simply because you have an election coming. You cannot. So, to me, it was a wasted journey and wasted effort.
If you are to advise the United Nations about putting an end into this crisis, what would that be?
It is very easy, let us go back to the 1948 resolution of the United Nations. One, the world must push for a two states solution in the Middle East, Israeli and Palestinian states. Two, where would the boundary be, the boundary would have to be the 68 boundaries inherited after the 1968 war. Three, war never solves anything, sooner or later; the world must push for a peace conference that would embody these things that I have said; two party states, 1968 boundaries and a final peace treaty between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Lastly, what would you tell those inputting religious sentiments into this conflict?
Don’t put religion into it, if you do, then, you are just being elementary in your thinking. This is more than religious considerations. So, don’t. I must send another warning to the whole world. The whole world created this situation through the United Nations creating the two party states there. Therefore, the world must know that they created this problem, and therefore, the world must sign on a peaceful resolution of this conflict. Each time you support one side or you support both side, it is blood you are shedding and if we are not careful, if these things are not well managed, it will end up consuming all of us. The crisis may then unwittingly grow beyond the Middle East and become a global crisis and we would all pay for it.
