by Jawed Naqvi in Dawn: PALESTINE and Kashmir have too readily been likened to each other, and to this end, they were mentioned in the same breath last week at the UN — not for the first time — by Pakistan’s prime minister.
There are a few similarities, yes, but they are mostly notional. Israel was created in 1948, the year India and Pakistan clashed over Kashmir. They are legacies of colonial cynicism, and their people have been bludgeoned for seeking rights promised by UN resolutions.
Military conflicts between India and Pakistan over Kashmir have ended in stalemates, and this doesn’t include the 1971 war, which had an entirely different set of reasons and outcomes. Unlike the unending Palestinian struggle, the Kashmir dispute went into a freeze in 1972.
It stayed thus until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which signalled the demise of the USSR and announced the West’s triumph in the Cold War. That’s when an armed revolt flared up in Kashmir and it continues to stalk the heavily militarised region unabated. Palestinians and Kashmiris have also hijacked planes to press their rights, but this is where the similarities begin to wane. Palestine was supported by the USSR and Kashmiris had the backing of the West, not least because Pakistan was a handy ally.
Palestine straddles a different history altogether. All countries in the Middle East that were close to Moscow stand wrecked today by US-led military campaigns. Needless to say, this could not have happened without the vengeful support of the West’s allies, led by Saudi Arabia and Jordan. (The Pakistani military was used to crush a Palestinian uprising in Jordan in 1968.) Among the US-led targets are Libya, Syria, Iraq, and the erstwhile Marxist-ruled South Yemen. Iran got into the crosshairs by overthrowing the Shah. The ongoing targeting of Palestinians thus has different roots from Kashmir. India was spared the ordeal inflicted on former Soviet allies as it changed corners in the footsteps of Egypt. The former non-aligned friends ardently support Israel as America’s “unsinkable ship” in the region.
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