(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
On Monday, Haakon Lie released his book As I See It Now, on his own 103 anniversary. It is hard to believe, but the formerly powerful party secretary in the Labor Party (from 1945 to 1969) takes a youthful and self-critical look at what he himself has helped to build and support through his long work.
This is especially true of the view of Israel. The country that this year celebrates its 60th anniversary, at the same time as the Palestinians mark their Al-Nakba. The term describes the "catastrophe" that occurred when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had to flee as a result of the establishment of the state of Israel in practice in Western Asia as a result of the Jewish exterminations in Northern Europe. How could such a problematic state creation – a rather unique event in world history, and with very limited support in both the UN and the world population – occur? Some of the answer is given by Haakon Lie in his book, which was already presented in Aftenposten on Saturday:
"I know what you want to answer: What about the Palestinians? I will admit that they were never in our minds for many years. Our sympathy lay with those who were to build a new and better world for the people who had suffered the most. »
The powerful party secretary admits for the first time that the victors after the Second World War have in practice corrected injustice by doing other wrongs. And Norway, which during the war was the scene of a frighteningly high Jewish extermination perpetrated by Norwegian civil servants, became the "best friend of Israel" from the first moment after the war, as researcher Hilde Henriksen Waage has shown.
"For a long time, I and other friends of Israel forgot that the Palestinians were human. I often think about that when I sit here and see the pictures of death and unhappiness, ”the 103-year-old says in the book.
This concession may explain how state establishment in 1948 and long-standing active support for Israel, including heavy water cooperation, were possible. The 800.000 Palestinian refugees were not seen as human beings. Oddly enough, one had seen the Jews a decade earlier, when they were denied access to the kingdom from the Nazi persecution.
There are bold statements Lie makes. Or as SV's Ågot Valle commented: "Glad for that admission."
The problem, of course, is that the insight comes 60 years too late, as Ny Tid's journalist reports from the Gaza Strip this week (p. 29). But at the same time, the Palestinian journalist Fatih Sabbah has some suggestions for reflection: "It is good that his conscience has finally reached him." Politicians must now speak openly about what is being said in closed forums. I hope Lie's words will reach the 63rd session of the UN General Assembly this month. "
This is probably the problem. There has been so much prestige in the state of Israel over the last 60 years that it is an old habit to turn around here as well. Sabbah's hopes for a radical new, frank and lie-like Middle East rhetoric from Norway or the world community during this week's UN General Assembly, New York, will probably not be realized. To that end, the power relations in the UN are still too undemocratically distributed, based as the Security Council is on the victors of World War II, from the time when few or African or Asian countries were free from the yoke of colonialism and occupation.
Nevertheless, we must never give up hope and the demand for a just solution for both Jews and Palestinians, as long as it is precisely the Israeli conflict that is the fundamental conflict that characterizes the Middle East and thus large parts of the world. When a 103-year-old party fighter can be so radical-minded, it is time for a larger debate to be raised about Norwegian Israeli policy since 1948. And this also applies to the famous and previously so glorified Oslo agreement from 1993, which can hardly be said to have made the situation better. The reason may lie in the fact that one has not just seen the fundamental problem, the problematic with the establishment of the state and the in recent years' unwavering belief in a two-state solution. It is time for the idea of a common one-state solution to be discussed again, as Gandhi and Einstein once argued.