MUSLIM countries should not have taken unilateral action to normalise any kinds of relations with Israel until a final peace agreement has been carried out between Israel and Palestine.
The recent action taken by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to normalise relations with Israel should not be welcomed not only by Muslim countries, but by all civilised countries all over the world.
There are 57 Muslim countries that exist today and out of the total only Jordan and Egypt have normalised their relations with Israel.
Normalising relations with Israel will certainly send a wrong signal, especially to the Palestinian people, who have been enduring barbaric actions and atrocities from Israel.
For more than 70 years ever since Israel was created way back in 1948, Israel has been committing many war crimes in the form of collective punishment, disproportionate force, targeting of civilians, illegal seizure of lands and properties and other crimes against the Palestinian people.
On record, Israel has also repeatedly violated the Geneva Convention and many existing international laws by targeting, killing, and collectively punishing non-combatant men, women and children, moving its own population into an occupied zone in the Palestinian territory, imposing unnecessary curfews and closures as well as exercising disproportionate use of force.
At the same time, Israel has also defied many international laws and hundreds of United Nations resolutions produced against them by refusing to end their military occupation on Palestinian land, expanding and adding Israeli settlements within the occupied Palestinian territory, building a wall to take over Palestinian land and water resources, and denying the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees.
To make things worse for the Palestinians, in December 2017, US President Donald Trump took unilateral action by declaring Jerusalem as the capital of Israel thus, jeopardising efforts to make East Jerusalem the future capital for Palestine.
Such unilateral actions taken by Trump have clearly gone against the wishes of the international community and all the agreed international agreements that want to see the return of all the land seized during the Six-Day War in 1967 to Palestine, which includes East Jerusalem. Early this year, Trump has also announced his own version of a peace plan between Palestine and Israel.
The so-called peace plan served the interest of one party only, namely the Israelis, and denied the rights of the Palestinians entirely.
Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People, commonly known as the Trump peace plan was a proposal produced by the Trump administration bearing the stated intention of resolving the Palestinian and Israeli conflict.
Trump formally unveiled the plan in a White House press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Jan 28.
Palestinian representatives were not even invited to discuss about the plan and for the press conference. One of the most striking aspects of Trump’s so-called peace plan is the convoluted map of the future state of Palestine.
It envisions a barely-contiguous state, more of a series of cantons. It is full of holes and has inevitably been compared with “Swiss-Cheese”.
The proposed map produced by Trump alone makes the plan look ridiculous, funny and unworkable.
How can you make an independent country out of patches of lands connected by so many bridges and tunnels?
Palestine is not an archipelago of islands separated by sea, but rather a Palestinian state surrounded mostly by Israeli territory and has been under Israeli occupation.
If the proposed plan proceeds, it would be very difficult for Palestinian authority to govern their state thus making Palestine a weak state and in time a failed state.
All the unilateral and bias action taken under the current leadership of United States of America and Israel can only be stopped if everybody is united against them.
Thus, it is very important for all Muslim countries to stand united and continue sending a strong signal to Israel and their closes allies namely US, that there can never be any peace between all Muslim countries and Israel until the Israelis are able to make peace which can be accepted by the Palestinian people.
Muslim countries must never take any unilateral actions when they want to deal with the Israelis if they really cherish the spirit of solidarity between fellow Muslims.
Muslim countries must work together and come out with one voice and one action when they want to deal with the Palestinian and Israeli conflict. There cannot be any room for division among Muslim countries on such issue.
Muzaffar Syah Mallow is a senior lecturer of the Faculty of Syariah & Law at Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
