The Middle East conflict: can the OIC step up?

47 years after its founding, OIC has achieved little by way of furthering Muslim interests on the international stage

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) calls itself “the collective voice of the Muslim world”. Consisting of 57 member states, it is also the second-largest inter-governmental organisation in the world after the UN. Established on September 25, 1969, and then known as the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, it was, for many in the Muslim world, the fulfilment of a lifelong dream that would result in a united Ummah, capable of standing up for its rights on the world stage.

However, 47 years after its founding, the OIC has achieved little by way of furthering Muslim interests on the international stage. In fact, it has been reduced to little more than a ceremonial entity capable only of holding conferences. The OIC charter is an ambitious one and includes a comprehensive list of objectives such as Objectives 2 and 17, which require that the organisation coordinate, promote and defend Muslim countries’ unified positions in international forums and Objective 12, which calls on the organisation to protect and defend the true image of Islam and to combat defamation of the religion. However, the inability of the OIC to take concrete action on causes important to the Muslim Ummah has led to widespread disillusionment with the organisation among the world’s Muslims and forced many of us to question its very existence. However, all is not lost — at least not yet. Regardless of the past inability of the OIC to adequately represent Muslim interests in the international arena, the organisation can still step up and play a major role for Muslims in world affairs. With Islamophobia on the rise in the West in the wake of a spate of terrorist attacks over the last two years, never before has there been such a dire need for the OIC to effectively counter the anti-Islamic sentiment prevalent in the West.

An important way of doing that is for the OIC to not only strongly encourage, but actually coordinate efforts by Muslim organisations in the West to reach out to the general population in Western countries and build bridges with them in the aftermath of terrorist attacks.

But in order to deal a major blow to terrorism, I believe the OIC has no choice but to make a concerted effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. This unresolved conflict is at the root of and is fuelling much of the terrorism that we see in the West today. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process, for all practical purposes, is over with no hope of its revival any time soon. The major reason for the repeated failures of peace talks between the two sides has been Israel’s construction and continuing expansion of Jewish settlements on occupied Arab territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Jewish settlements also exist on occupied Arab territory in the Golan Heights. The international community considers settlements in occupied territory to be illegal and the UN has repeatedly stated that Israel’s settlement activity on occupied Arab lands is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The International Court of Justice has also declared these settlements illegal and they have been criticised internationally as an obstacle to Middle East peace. Currently, nearly 400,000 Israelis live in over 121 settlements in the Occupied West Bank, with a similar number residing in East Jerusalem and another 20,000 in the Golan Heights. One can realise the seriousness of the problem by considering that the four largest Israeli settlements in the occupied Arab territories have now become populous enough to achieve the status of cities. If the construction and expansion of settlements continues at the current rate, a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would soon become impossible as it will become extremely difficult for Israelis to dismantle them and thus displace hundreds of thousands of settlers in case a deal for a two-state solution is ever signed with the Palestinians. The perilous situation we are facing, therefore, in the West Bank and Gaza is clear: with the prospect of an independent Palestinian state fading due to the settlement activity and with nowhere to turn for help, Palestinians will be forced to resort to desperate measures to attract attention to their cause, which would almost inevitably result in increased terrorism. In order to prevent such a scenario, the OIC must act to defuse tensions in the Middle East and play its part in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.



The OIC already has a concrete peace plan in place to achieve this goal — the peace initiative presented in 2002 by the late Saudi King Abdullah (then Saudi crown prince) and subsequently endorsed twice by summit conferences of the Arab League — which called for a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and all Arab states in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab territories to the June 4, 1967 lines. It has the support of the majority of the Palestinian people and a substantial number of Israelis. It has been met with universal acclaim among international leaders and organisations and all 57 member states of the OIC have repeatedly expressed their support for it at the Organisation’s conferences. The initiative undoubtedly offers the best hope ever for peace between the two sides. Although the Arab League did make initial efforts to garner support for the initiative after its approval, a truly coordinated international campaign was never launched, and the OIC largely stayed on the sidelines, with the result that little progress has been made on the plan over the last nine years. Under the current circumstances, it is imperative that the OIC develop a strategy whereby Muslim leaders actively seek to convince the international community, especially the UN, the US, the European Union, Russia and China to take all necessary measures to implement the Arab peace initiative and thus bring about the two-state solution. The OIC must no longer remain silent in international forums or it will inevitably lose the narrative to the Islamophobes who would then continue to dictate, unopposed, what the world thinks about Islam and Muslims.

Regardless of its past record of inaction, indeed irrelevance, the OIC can still redeem itself by launching an aggressive, coordinated effort with Muslim leaders to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and end terrorism by promoting the Arab peace initiative. The OIC must realise that as the sole representative of the world’s Muslims and in keeping with the objectives in its own charter, it has an obligation to do more than just pass resolutions and commemorate observances. If it cannot play its role, there is neither a purpose nor a reason for its existence and it must be disbanded.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 8^th, 2016.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.