Archive 1986 – 2017

On the occasion of the Summer University in Tamera, Portugal, I had the good fortune to gain many insights, away from the well known government rhetoric, into the issues that underlie the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As part of the Summer University, Sami Awad, Reuven Moskovitz and others gave open, constructive and inspiring talks on the historico-political foundations of the conflict and also on possible ways forward to a sustainable peace. The 10 day Summer University offered me the opportunity also to conduct one formal interview and three informal conversations with participating Palestinians and Israelis. Through the views and initiatives of these grassroots activists, a clear and plausible way forward to peace and reconciliation can be envisioned. Interview # 1 of 4 Reuven MoskovitzPeace activist, co-founder of Neve Shalom,winner of the Aachen Peace Award 2003. Dr. Reuven Moskovitz was born in 1928 in Schtetl Frumsiaca in the northern part of Romania. Expulsed from his...

Vicky Rossi: Inam, you are doing a lot of work with the young people in the Shufat refugee camp, what is life like for these children and adolescents? Inam Wahidi: In the entire camp there are only two schools – one for boys and one for girls – there are no places for the children to play and there is a growing drug problem amongst young people. Vicky Rossi: So only 2 schools for the children of 22,000 inhabitants? Inam Wahidi: Yes. There are around 2,000 children that go to school so there are 2 shifts – one in the morning and one in the afternoon. It is just primary and secondary education because for high school they must go to Jerusalem. My organisation arranges activities for the children in the camp because they don’t have anywhere to play. Many children die because of car accidents in the street. Vicky Rossi: They...

There has been much commentary on the significance of the Lebanon War. There is an unresolved debate about whether there was a victorious side in the war, and even what the idea of victory means. There are various suggestions about how to prevent a new war between Israel and Hezbollah, whether by relying mainly on the UN stabilization force or by reviving diplomacy between Israel and its various adversaries. Is it time to talk with Hezbollah and Hamas? What does the inconclusiveness of the war tell us about the benefits and limitations of military superiority in such a conflict? Could Israel have used its military capabilities more effectively, or were deeper structural restraints operative? These are all important issues, deserving of reflection and dialogue, and hopefully encourage a turn away from violence by all sides in their search for peace and security. Beyond these immediate concerns lies the question of...

LONDON – Despite the rhetoric emanating from Washington, London and Tel Aviv the fact is the situation in the Lebanon is being allowed to return to the status quo ante – as it was before the recent war. All that is being changed is that the UN force is being enlarged dramatically. But there is going to be no mandate for it to disarm Hezbollah. No big change for the Lebanon or for Israel, but a big one for the UN. The UN is now back in favor as everyone’s favourite peacekeeper, having recovered from the setbacks of the early 1990s when for different reasons it fell on its face in Rwanda, Bosnia and Somalia. Now Washington happily pays much of its bills. The Chinese contribute more military and civilian policemen than any of the other Security Council member. The big powers airlift its troops to the field and send...

August 31, 2006 Richard Falk There has been much commentary on the significance of the Lebanon War. There is an unresolved debate about whether there was a victorious side in the war, and even what the idea of victory means. There are various suggestions about how to prevent a new war between Israel and Hezbollah, whether by relying mainly on the UN stabilization force or by reviving diplomacy between Israel and its various adversaries. Is it time to talk with Hezbollah and Hamas? What does the inconclusiveness of the war tell us about the benefits and limitations of military superiority in such a conflict? Could Israel have used its military capabilities more effectively, or were deeper structural restraints operative? These are all important issues, deserving of reflection and dialogue, and hopefully encourage a turn away from violence by all sides in their search for peace and security. Beyond these immediate...

LONDON – Many of the great and the good have dismissed the utility of nuclear weapons as well as finding the idea of their use morally indefensible but still they exist in enormous numbers in the arsenals of the great powers. Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk both came to be convinced during their tenure in the Kennedy administration that their use was “unthinkable”. President George H.W. Bush has written that in private he ruled out a nuclear response during the 1991 Gulf War although in public his Administration did not. General Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in his autobiography recalls chiding his boss, Dick Cheney, for even considering it. Paul Nitze, one of the principal architects of containing the Soviet Union by nuclear deterrence, went even further. He argued in a Washington Post article in 1994 that it...

LONDON – The confused situation in Honduras where an elected president, Manuel Belaya, has been shown the door by the army and the supreme court is not so easy to solve – as the Western and the Latin American countries seem to think – with their shout: “Obey the rules of democracy!” To many, not of the West’s persuasion, it seems that the West once again is being holier than thou. Anyway, is democracy such an intrinsic wonder or sacred belief? “Democracy”, wrote historian Norman Davies, in his monumental study “Europe”, “has few values of its own: it is as good or bad as the principles of the people who operate it. In the hands of liberal and tolerant people, it will produce a liberal and tolerant government; in the hands of cannibals, a government of cannibals. In Germany in 1933-4 it produced a Nazi government because the prevailing culture...

October 24 marks United Nations Day. But which UN? I would say there are two, or perhaps there are three. The First UN is what happens in the UN building on Manhattan, New York: the diplomats of member governments around the table in the Security Council and in the General Assembly making statements they have prepared on behalf of their countries and going about a business that can be characterised by and large by concepts such as power – including the power to save or destroy human lives around the world – Realpolitik and rhetoric. They play power games with each other; they play with the future of the world. Everything there is not power or powerful. Many – particularly first-timers – in that building are also motivated by idealism, visions of a better world including a globalised democracy that is a founding idea of the UN itself but still...

After delays, the Russian promise to withdraw its military forces from Georgia seems to be taking shape. By the terms of the French-brokered ceasefire Russian troops will remain in South Ossetia, plus occupy a security belt of undisclosed width in South Ossetia. The situation remains fluid and far from resolved. The South Ossetian leadership has indicated its unwillingness to have international monitors on its territory as was agreed in the ceasefire arrangement. There are also new indications of breakaway intentions on the part of Abkhasia, the other ethnic enclave hostile to Georgian claims of sovereignty, including the seizure of the Kodori Ridge, a strategic strip of land by Abkhas soldiers in the Caucasus Ridge. There is no doubt that at this point the territorial unity of the Georgian state has been shattered on a de facto basis as a result of the crisis, and that Russia power will act as...

Lecture given at the New Zealand Parliament  15/11 2010 Ladies and gentlemen. As a former college it gives me a special pleasure to visit your parliament again. It was long ago in the 1980s and much has happened in between. Last time I was not only a parliamentarian but also as ambassador responsible for Swedish peace and disarmament policy. In order to answer the question if a small country can have impact on peace and disarmament  I have to go back to 1930s  before the Second World War. The Europe women´s movement was deeply involved against war.  In 1935 a conference on “Women´s unarmed rebellion against war” was organized. Alva Myrdal was elected to take part and demanded stop for all weapon´s trade and proposed peace education at schools. Inga Thorson, the second women as chair of the Swedish disarmament delegation after Alva, brought then up conversion to civil production. ...

In a remarkable speech for any American leader, President Obama, speaking in Prague on April 5, 2009, provided new hope for a world free of nuclear weapons.  “I state clearly and with conviction,” he said, “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  He told his audience that America, as the only country to have used nuclear weapons, “has a moral responsibility to act.”  For many years the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has been calling for US leadership for a nuclear weapons-free world, based on the understanding that if the US does not lead, significant progress will not be possible.  For the past two presidencies this leadership has been largely lacking.  During the George W. Bush presidency, the US was the leading obstacle to nuclear disarmament.  Now, with President Obama, there is a dramatic shift and the goal of US leadership for a nuclear...

LONDON – The wheels seem to spin in the sand as we hurtle down the bush track mile after mile from Mtwara, the small town on the Tanzania/Mozambique border. The land is parched, waiting desperately for the rains. In the villages we pass, little thatched houses give way to fields stripped bare of their meagre produce. This is truly one of the poorest backwaters of this very poor country. Then suddenly there is a clearing in it and in the middle, well what is? – The set for a James Bond film? Or a secret Tanzanian missile site, perhaps rented out to the encroaching Chinese African empire? The new president of Tanzania, Jakaya Kikwete, jumps out of the lead car of our convoy and briskly walks up to a white man in a white helmet and grabs his hand. Soon all of us are ensconced in helmets and goggles and...