Hegemony
There has been a fundamental transition in the Arab/Muslim side of the Israel-Arab conflict. Of the four countries that border Israel, two, Egypt and Jordan, have signed peace treaties with Israel, and a third Lebanon is impotent, controlled by the Shi'ite terrorist organization Hizbollah. Syria is the only contiguous Arab country with Israel that is still at war with Israel, and it is clearly in the Iranian/Shi'ite camp. Iraq of course is no longer an active anti-Israel belligerant.
So the conflict has segued from an Arab/Sunni one to a Muslim/Shi'ite one, in which a non-Arab country, Iran, is the leading threat to Israel. This was made clear at the current Organization of the Islamic Conference meeting in Dakar, Senegal, where Iran was the country leading the charge against Israel and the West. For example, Pres. Ahmedinejad stated in his speech that Hamas should be represented at the Conference, while this is of course anathema to the official Palestinian representative, Pres. Abbas of the PA and to other Sunni countries.
This transition has important consequences, not least of which is that the Palestine side of the conflict has not only split into two separate entitities, Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. The initial motivation for the PLO and then Fatah was the nationalist aspirations of the Palestinian people. By "Islamizing" the Palestinian side of the conflict, Hamas, with Syrian and Iranian support, has altered the conflict completely. Instead of fighting Israel to gain national independence ("two states living side by side in peace") they are fighting to erase Israel and kill all the Jews, because this is their Islamic religious mandate.
Hamas are ruthless and in the ascendance, while Pres Abbas of the PA is weak and is losing support. For example, his own military wing, the al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, are pressuring him to drop his support for PM Salam Fayyed and replace him with a Hamas coalition. Fayyad is a pragmatic pro-Western economist, trusted by the US, and is not an ideological Fatah leader. Consequently neither he nor Abbas have strong support from the extremists in Fatah who prefer the ruthlessness of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
So while the Israeli Govt., under the auspices of the US-brokered Annapolis process, negotiates with Abbas, they know that this is a shell game. Neither side are strong enough to make any concessions, Abbas because of Hamas and also Olmert because he lacks public support for any major concessions. So the negotiations are a sham (someone should tell this to Bush and Condy), while everyone waits to see whether or not Iran will follow through with the development of nuclear weapons and its threats to use them against Israel.
Meanwhile, Iran uses its surrogates, Hamas and Hizbollah, to "soften up" Israel, by firing rockets and the occasional terrorist incident. They also want to see how Israel responds to military provocation. So far Israel has stood the test. Although the Second Lebanon War was not a victory for Israel, they saw that the IAF can inflict great damage on them. Also, in Operation Warm Winter in Gaza recently, Hamas took a drubbing, that their armed militias, trained by the Iranians, did not expect. They are currently rebuilding their military infrastructure in Gaza, and in Lebanon, and waiting for the next opportunity.
There are some minor indications of the change in the conflict. In one of the Doha Debates held on BBC TV those present, overwhelmingly Gulf Arabs, voted by 70% that fundamentalism should not represent the future of the Arabs. A newspaper in Kuwait, Al-Watan, printed an op-ed criticizing the massacre of the eight students in the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem. As reported in the Jerusalem Post, it said "The attack at the yeshiva was a barbaric murder of eight children who were engaged in religious study. This odious and inhuman terror attack exemplifies the extremist and inhuman path of the terror organizations Hamas and Hizbullah." A newspaper in Qatar also published an editorial saying that it would be best if Israel took care of Iran for the Arabs (who themselves have no effective military capability). Although these are straws in the wind, they could not have been printed without the approval of the rulers of these Gulf States that feel much more threatened by Iran than by Israel.
I don't expect the Sunni Arab States to suddenly become friends of Israel, they will still vote against us at the UN, etc. But, they know the real score. They need Israel's counterweight to balance against Iran's threatening hegemony over the Arab world.
So the conflict has segued from an Arab/Sunni one to a Muslim/Shi'ite one, in which a non-Arab country, Iran, is the leading threat to Israel. This was made clear at the current Organization of the Islamic Conference meeting in Dakar, Senegal, where Iran was the country leading the charge against Israel and the West. For example, Pres. Ahmedinejad stated in his speech that Hamas should be represented at the Conference, while this is of course anathema to the official Palestinian representative, Pres. Abbas of the PA and to other Sunni countries.
This transition has important consequences, not least of which is that the Palestine side of the conflict has not only split into two separate entitities, Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. The initial motivation for the PLO and then Fatah was the nationalist aspirations of the Palestinian people. By "Islamizing" the Palestinian side of the conflict, Hamas, with Syrian and Iranian support, has altered the conflict completely. Instead of fighting Israel to gain national independence ("two states living side by side in peace") they are fighting to erase Israel and kill all the Jews, because this is their Islamic religious mandate.
Hamas are ruthless and in the ascendance, while Pres Abbas of the PA is weak and is losing support. For example, his own military wing, the al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, are pressuring him to drop his support for PM Salam Fayyed and replace him with a Hamas coalition. Fayyad is a pragmatic pro-Western economist, trusted by the US, and is not an ideological Fatah leader. Consequently neither he nor Abbas have strong support from the extremists in Fatah who prefer the ruthlessness of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
So while the Israeli Govt., under the auspices of the US-brokered Annapolis process, negotiates with Abbas, they know that this is a shell game. Neither side are strong enough to make any concessions, Abbas because of Hamas and also Olmert because he lacks public support for any major concessions. So the negotiations are a sham (someone should tell this to Bush and Condy), while everyone waits to see whether or not Iran will follow through with the development of nuclear weapons and its threats to use them against Israel.
Meanwhile, Iran uses its surrogates, Hamas and Hizbollah, to "soften up" Israel, by firing rockets and the occasional terrorist incident. They also want to see how Israel responds to military provocation. So far Israel has stood the test. Although the Second Lebanon War was not a victory for Israel, they saw that the IAF can inflict great damage on them. Also, in Operation Warm Winter in Gaza recently, Hamas took a drubbing, that their armed militias, trained by the Iranians, did not expect. They are currently rebuilding their military infrastructure in Gaza, and in Lebanon, and waiting for the next opportunity.
There are some minor indications of the change in the conflict. In one of the Doha Debates held on BBC TV those present, overwhelmingly Gulf Arabs, voted by 70% that fundamentalism should not represent the future of the Arabs. A newspaper in Kuwait, Al-Watan, printed an op-ed criticizing the massacre of the eight students in the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem. As reported in the Jerusalem Post, it said "The attack at the yeshiva was a barbaric murder of eight children who were engaged in religious study. This odious and inhuman terror attack exemplifies the extremist and inhuman path of the terror organizations Hamas and Hizbullah." A newspaper in Qatar also published an editorial saying that it would be best if Israel took care of Iran for the Arabs (who themselves have no effective military capability). Although these are straws in the wind, they could not have been printed without the approval of the rulers of these Gulf States that feel much more threatened by Iran than by Israel.
I don't expect the Sunni Arab States to suddenly become friends of Israel, they will still vote against us at the UN, etc. But, they know the real score. They need Israel's counterweight to balance against Iran's threatening hegemony over the Arab world.
posted by Jack Cohen at 2:09 PM
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