THOSE TO WHOM EVIL IS DONE

Anton La Guardia says that only

security will allow the Israelis to trust the Palestinians

AT the check-in for an El Al flight at BenGurion airport, there is a young woman who sends passengers into separate queues for the security grilling: Jews one way and non-Jews the other, clean and unclean like a modern Noah's Ark. The Hebrew-speakers slip through effortlessly after some cursory questioning. The rest wait in line to face an interrogation ranging from the routine to the insolent. Are you carrying a package for anyone? Do you know any people in Israel? Do you have any Arab friends? What are their names? Annoying as all this may be for a Western tourist, it is utterly demeaning for Palestinians, who are routinely led off to a separate room for intense questioning and an intimate body search. Is this racism? Or is it a necessary precaution against Arab terrorists who would like nothing better than to blow up an Israeli airliner, Lockerbie-style?

At Ben-Gurion airport the visitor gets a glimpse of the paradoxes of Israel — a Jewish state that claims to give equal rights to its Arab minority, a democracy that has been at war for more than half a century, a refuge for the Jews whose creation has left millions of Palestinians in exile. In Durban this week, most of the delegates and activists assembled for the United Nations racism conference have no doubts: Israel is a racist state. Arabsponsored texts in the draft declaration denounce Israel as 'a new kind of apartheid'. Paragraph 68 decries 'the emergence of racial and violent movements based on racism and discriminatory ideas, in particular the Zionist movement, which is based on racial superiority'. Elsewhere there is an attempt to play down the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews as one of several 'holocausts' with a small 'h', part of a spectrum of horrors that include 'the ethnic cleansing of the Arab population in historic Palestine'.

Israel finds itself in a unique position. Only the Jewish state is singled out for ostracism in Durban. It is not merely accused of racist practices, an offence that all countries might be guilty of. The Arabs want the very idea of Zionism, the establishment of a state for the Jews in their Biblical homeland, to be declared intrinsically racist. The arguments in Durban matter. If Israel is inherently illegitimate because it is founded on racism, then no action it takes to preserve itself can ever be justified. If, however, Israel is the rightful refuge for Jews after centuries of antiSemitism, including the unique abomination known as the Holocaust, then Israel has the right to defend itself, at times even by harsh methods.

The idea that Zionism is racism is an old bugbear of the post-colonial, Third World movements that dominate the UN. In 1975, a year after Yasser Arafat addressed the UN as the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the general assembly passed a non-binding resolution affirming that 'Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination'. The resolution was repealed in 1991 as soon as the balance of power within the UN changed, following the fall of the Soviet Union and the defeat of Iraq in the Gulf War. That this idea has returned is an indication of how fast the Middle East has reverted to its old hatreds since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising a year ago.

The Arabs' commitment to a non-racial, multi-ethnic world is doubtful. Last week a group of Arab lawyers in Durban distributed pamphlets depicting Israelis as hooknosed monsters with blood dripping from their fangs. For those accustomed to viewing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians only as a struggle between the Palestinian David and the Jewish Goliath, between military occupation and just resistance, the ugly reality of the propaganda on the Arab streets can be shocking. The hatred-filled outbursts in much of the Arab media in the past year could give the UN ample evidence to support a resolution declaring that Arab nationalism is a form of anti-Semitism.

Arabs have dubious attitudes to the Holocaust. Some claim the figure of six million Jews murdered by the Nazis is an invention to justify Zionism. Others recognise the mass murder during the Holocaust, but accuse Israel of behaving like the Nazis in their treatment of Palestinians. A favourite theme of Arab cartoons is to superimpose or replace the Star of David with the swastika. Some Arabs argue that the Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves. Earlier this year the Washington-based Middle East Media & Research Institute, a pro-Israeli monitoring organisation, translated the following commentary by an Egyptian columnist in the government daily, Al-A khbar: 'Thanks to Hitler, of blessed memory, who on behalf of the Palestinians took revenge in advance against the most vile criminals on the face of the earth. Although we do have a complaint against him, for his revenge on them was not enough.'

A minority of Arabs, among them the Palestinian academic Edward Said and the Palestinian diplomatic representative in London, Afif Safieh, stand out for taking an honourable view — Arabs must condemn the Holocaust for the depravity that it was, in order to be able to denounce Israeli oppression from a position of moral authority. Such figures are swimming against the tide of Arab emotion, however. Just as the Arabs preserved Greek learning during Europe's Dark Ages, parts of the Arab world are now the repository of discredited Jew-hatred.

The crude language and imagery of European anti-Semitism appears regularly in the Egyptian press — not least the Blood Libel, the ancient claim that Jews mix the blood of Gentiles to make their Passover bread. Years ago, I found a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a notorious Tsarist forgery purporting to reveal a Jewish plot to take over the world) openly on sale in the bookshop of the resplendent marble-floored Intercontinental Hotel in Amman in Jordan. This canard is regularly cited as proof that the Jews are bent on world domination, and that the Arabs are victims of countless Jewish conspiracies.

Islam takes a mixed view of Jews. The Koran criticises them for opposing the Prophet Mohammed. But in the Islamic world they have traditionally enjoyed formal protection as the People of the Book'. In today's febrile atmosphere, however, the intifada is portrayed as the latest chapter in the long conflict between Islam and the treacherous Jews. In particular, one hadith, or saying of the Prophet, has gained promi nence. 'The Last Hour will not come until the Muslims fight against the Jews and the Muslims kill them, and until the Jews hide themselves behind a stone or a tree, and a stone or a tree says: "Muslim or Servant of Allah there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."' The bloodshed of a year-long uprising — and of more than half a century of conflict — has coarsened human spirits. Israelis, too, resort to vituperative, offensive language. Even before the latest intifada. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Israel's Shas party and the country's most important political kingmaker, described Palestinians as 'snakes' whom God regretted putting on the face of the earth, The Israeli tourism minister, the right-wing former general Rehavam Zeevi, advocates the 'voluntary transfer' of Palestinians out of the occupied territories, and has called on the Israeli army to raid Palestinian areas to 'clean out the vermin and uncover the scorpions'.

Is Israel a Jewish form of apartheid? It is not difficult to find legalised discrimination in Israel. In the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Palestinians are subjected to military regulations, including the raft of emergency powers adopted from British laws permitting administrative detention, deportation and collective punishment, such as the demolition of houses and the uprooting of that symbol of peace, the olive tree. Jewish settlers in the occupied territories enjoy the liberties of Israeli civil law, the subsidies of the state purse, and the protection of the army.

Even in Israel itself, the minority of Palestinians who carry Israeli passports suffer from wholesale discrimination in public expenditure, education and employment. Many of the Israeli Arabs have not been allowed to return to their destroyed villages, while builders throughout the country are busy erecting homes for new Jewish immigrants. In Jerusalem, the 'united' capital of Israel, Palestinians born in the city are regarded by Israeli law as 'alien' residents who forfeit the right to live in the city if they are absent for more than a few years.

The central law of modern Israel is the 'Law of Return', which permits any person descended from one or more Jewish grandparents to become Israeli citizens, Against this, the Palestinians claim the 'Right of Return', the right of all refugees and their descendants to return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel. Israel has resisted the demand on the grounds that Jews would be swamped by hostile Arabs and the Jewish state would be destroyed.

In many ways discrimination is what has preserved the Jewishness of Israel. This is the fundamental contradiction between Israel as a democracy, and Israel as a Jewish state. Yet Israel is a reality, underwritten by the UN's decision in 1947 to carve a state for the Jews out of British

ruled Palestine and the Palestinians' recognition of Israel in the 1993 Oslo accords, To destroy it would only compound the tragedies that have already befallen the region. The real problem is not racism, but the contest between Zionism and Palestinian nationalism for the same plot of land. Conflict has bred racism, not the other way around. Israel's policies have been made more blatantly unfair by decades of hostility from the Arab world, allowing Israel to justify intolerance and repression in the name of 'security'.

A more secure Israel would, J believe, be less racist. In the years when the Oslo accords seemed to be making slow progress towards peace an Arab was sent abroad as Israeli ambassador, and another served on the Supreme Court. 'Revisionist' historians who argue that Israel bears at least some responsibility for the Palestinian exodus in 1948 were gaining the upper hand over traditionalists.

Lawyers chipped away at repressive legislation, such as the ability of the securityservices to use 'moderate physical pressure' while interrogating terrorism suspects. In March 2000, the Supreme Court ruled it illegal for the state to allocate land exclusively to Jews. It was a blow to the traditional Zionist notion that land acquired for Jews should remain in Jewish hands for ever. Even the emotive question

of the Palestinian 'Right of Return' was under discussion in peace talks, With time and peace, Israel might have become more democratic and less nationalistically Jewish. The intifada has destroyed all such prospects. Israel's peace and civil rights groups, which argued for peace and equality with Arabs, have been discredited as naive.

Those in Durban who decry Israel as the 'new apartheid' should look around themselves at the new South Africa. The armed struggle did not end white rule; multi-racial democracy was achieved by negotiation. Palestinian intellectuals sometimes speak of the need for an Israeli F.W. de Klerk to emerge, a person who will end the agony of the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But where is the Palestinian Nelson Mandela? There is no credible Palestinian who can instil pride and patience in his own people while finding the words and gestures to assuage the fears of the more powerful 'oppressor'. Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. Yasser Arafat is discredited, and has missed his opportunity to make history. All that is left are pointless UN debates about 'racism'.

Anton La Guardia is diplomatic editor of the Daily Telegraph. His book. Holy Land, Unholy War: Israelis and Palestinians is published by John Mun-ay.