PALESTINE FALLING: The Qatar Ultimatum and Fatah’s Rift with Hamas

Mahmoud Abbas, the perpetual leader of the Palestinian Authority is set to meet with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi on Sunday. The meeting comes at a time of increased uncertainty for both Abbas and the future of his Fatah movement as it attempts to show a more moderate face by putting the screws on Hamas.

For Hamas’ part, it hopes that continued negotiations with the Sisi government will result in a permanent reopening of the Rafiah crossing between Gaza and Egyptian controlled Sinai.

Since the the crisis between Saudi Arabia and Qatar began and the 48 hour extension given by Saudi Arabia to Qatar winds down, Hamas has been busy attempting to find another avenue to bring in goods.  Qatar has been their biggest backer, but the feud between the Saudis and Qatar is making Hamas’ future far more tenuous.

Why Does Egypt Want to Help Hamas?

Sisi’s meeting with Hamas leadership was not about saving the movement, but rather preventing an armed conflict between Hamas and Israel.  A cornered Hamas  is a dangerous Hamas and Sisi would rather have the leaders owe him than play by their own rules.

This may seem like a dangerous strategy as well as in opposition to the Saudi line against Qatar as it throws a bone to a movement which is sinking fast. Yet, part of the strategy by Sisi and most assuredly Israel is to keep both Fatah, which is corrupt and Hamas, which is Jihadist weak and divided. Neither Egypt nor Israel can trust either movement to take over the reigns of the Palestinian cause. By leaving Gaza in the hands of a somewhat weakened Hamas while allowing the PA to rule over a small number of cities within Judea and Samaria the national movement for “Palestine” will continue to disintegrate.

The Saudis, Egyptians, and even the many of the Gulf States have concluded that the made up movement for the liberation of historic Palestine, which they had concocted over 50 years ago is doing far more damage to their own fortunes. Israel has only gotten stronger and the Palestinians far more obstinate and radical. By letting the Palestinians movement die slowly a new paradigm can arise that will be far more sustainable and prosperous for itself and the region.

CRAFTED BY TRUMP? Saudi King Names his 31 Year Old Son as Successor, Upending Political Order

As the battle lines between the Sunni Alliance being crafted by the Trump White House and the Iranian-Russian coalition harden, the Saudi King Salman has done the unbelievable named his 31 year old son as his successor.  In doing so he stripped 56 year old Crown Prince Nayaf his nephew of the potential to become monarch.

Al Arabiya television reported that the promotion of the prince was approved by the kingdom’s Allegiance Council with 31 of 34 members approving, and that the king had called for a public pledging of loyalty to Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday evening in Mecca. The surprise announcement follows 2-1/2 years of already major changes in Saudi Arabia, which stunned allies in 2015 by launching a war in Yemen, cutting old energy subsidies and in 2016 proposing partly privatizing state oil company Aramco.

Mohammed bin Salman the King’s son is largely credited with the successful outreach to the Trump administration as well as the strategy behind the Qatar blockade. He is extremely ani-Iran and although young commands a vast portfolio in the government.

The current King is the last of the three sons of the original King Saud.  It has been clear for a while that the next generation would not follow the same royal ascension process.

What Does this Mean for Israel?

As Trump’s masterplan for the region begins to take shape, the major pillar of it is not peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but rather peace between Saudi Arabia and Israel. This is something big and can in time reshape the entire Middle East. To do this, Trump needs someone young, innovative, and easy to work with. The King’s son seems to be that guy.

As the Kingdom shifts from an overt backer of Islamist ideology (what it does covertly is something else) its relationship to Israel as the region’s leading technology hub and economic anchor is crucial.

Are Post ISIS Alliances Already Taking Shape?

As the Raqqa operation gets underway, with the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) ploughing forward into the “capital” of ISIS, the terror group’s leaders and fighters are said to have already travelled to safe havens along the middle Euphrates.  With the American backed SDF bogged down in strett to street fighting, Iranian paramilitary units are pouring in from where they helped fight to free Mosul to Eastern Syria to destroy the heads of ISIS.

This struggle for land as ISIS collapses is forming the beginnings of regional boundaries that in essence brand new lines between ethnic units as well as defined frontiers of regional alliances.

Rising up from the rubble of ISIS are two clearly definied groupings.

The first consists of Russia, Iran, Syria (Assad), Turkey, and Qatar.  None of these countries trust eachother, but work together under a common interest in battling back America as well as seeking a piece of what they see as a rising Middle Eastern hegemony.

The second group is made up of the United States, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Kurds and Israel.  This grouping sees the first group as an existential threat and has been conjoled to work together by the Trump administration.

With the fall of ISIS a matter of weeks, the real battle will come after. Iran has used the chaos to reach to the Israeli border.  They have shown the ability to capitalize on the weaknesses of their enemies. Besides Iran, Hezbollah can now turn its sites on Israel.

The Middle Eastern alliances now taking shape even before the last of the caliphate are buried not only put Iran im the drivers seat, but increase the likelihood of war sooner rather than later.  The Syckes-Picot agreement, the document based colonialist and neo-colonialist pinciples set in motion by France and Germany is becoming irrelevant as a new set of states and mini states take shape.

As the chaos spreads throughout the region and beyond, the Saudis backed by Israeli tehnology will attempt to push back on the Shiite gains in order to create a buffer between the Kingdom and its enemies. The Kurds backed covertly by Israel and overtly by America will be encouraged to push forward in order to stabilize Northern Syria and Iraq and break the link between a power hungry Turkey and their allies in Qatar.

Be prepared the Great Game of the Middle East is about to begin. It could very well be far more destructive than the havoc ISIS has caused.

Will the Saudi Showdown with Qatar Trigger a Broader Conflict?

As the Saudi 24 hour ultimatum to Qatar reaches the final stretch, the broader alliances throughout the Middle East and beyond have begun to harden. Turkey’s parliament passed a law ratifying military cooperation, arms, and training with Qatar.  Cooperation with Turkey and Iran has also broadened into other areas.

“We are in talks with Turkey and Iran and other countries,” said an official, who spoke to Reuters news agency on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject, adding that the supplies would be brought in through Qatar Airways cargo flights.

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov when he visits Moscow on June 10, Russian news agencies cited a Russian diplomatic source as saying on Thursday.

With all of this maneuvering, observers are increasingly of the assumption that a war to push the Thani family out of Qatar is close at hand.  Given Qatar’s growing list of allies, any small war has the potential to turn into something far larger.

Once again Qatar’s allies are not surprising.  After all the Syrian conflict has roots in pushing back at Iranian hegemony as well as thwarting the Turkish-Qatari gas pipeline which was supposed to run through Syria.

There is no question that battle lines are being drawn for a wider conflict.  The only question is whether the Saudi standoff with Qatar will trigger a conflict that no one will be able to contain.

ICONOCLAST IN THE PROMISED LAND

How the Israeli people are gauging Trump.

Israelis are greeting US President Donald Trump with cautious optimism. Their optimism stems from President Trump’s iconoclasm. Trump won the US presidential election based on a campaign of rejecting the prevailing narratives on US domestic and foreign policy that have long held sway among the elites. These narratives dictate and limit the boundaries of acceptable discourse in the US. Unfortunately, their relationship with facts and truth was never more than incidental. Indeed, in recent years that incidental link has vanished altogether along a wide swath of policy areas. On the domestic front, the most obvious examples of this disconnect between the prevailing narratives that dictate policies and the facts that guarantee the failure of those policies relate to US immigration policy and US healthcare policy.

American voters elected Trump because whether or not they supported his specific immigration and healthcare policies, they appreciated his willingness to state openly that the policies now in effect are having devastating impacts on American society.

Finally, Trump’s enthusiastic, unqualified support for Israel, his refusal to endorse the establishment of a Palestinian state and his pledge to move the US Embassy to Israel’s capital city Jerusalem were second importance only to his pledge to appoint Supreme Court justices that oppose abortion to his success in winning near wall-to-wall support from evangelical Christian voters.

It was because of his foreign policy iconoclasm that Israelis were, by and large, euphoric when Trump was finally inaugurated in January.

Since then, however, in significant ways, Trump has bowed to the narratives of the establishment. As a result, Israel’s euphoria at his election has been replaced by cautious optimism.

During his speech in Riyadh, in relation to both Iran and Islamic terrorism, Trump kept his promise to base his strategies for dealing with the threats on facts rather than narrative.

As far as Iran was concerned, Trump broke with convention by ignoring the meaningless presidential “elections” in Iran last Friday. Rather than embrace the common delusion that ballots mean something in Iran, when Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei decides who can run for election and decides who wins, Trump concentrated on facts. Iran is the primary engine of terrorism in the region and the world, he explained. Moreover, the world would be a better place, and the Iranian people would be better off, if the regime were overthrown.

On Islamic terrorism, Trump again ignored the advice of his national security adviser H.R. McMaster and refused to embrace the false narrative that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism. Rather, standing before the leaders of the Islamic world, Trump exhorted them to confront “Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires.”

Trump’s decision to make the case outright to the Muslim leaders was all the more astounding because on the eve of his speech, McMaster demeaned his refusal to embrace the narrative that Islam is peace in an interview with ABC News. In McMaster’s insubordinate words, “The president will call [Islamic terrorism] whatever he wants to call it. But I think it’s important that whatever we call it, we recognize that these are not religious people and, in fact, these enemies of all civilizations, what they want to do is to cloak their criminal behavior under this false idea of some kind of religious war.”

McMaster then insisted that despite the fact that his boss continues to talk about “radical Islamic terrorism,” Trump is coming around to embracing the official narrative that Islam is unrelated to Islamic terrorism. “This is learning,” he said.

But while Trump has maintained his fact-based rhetoric on Iran, for instance, his actual policy is very similar to Obama’s. Rather than keep his campaign pledge and cancel the nuclear deal which guarantees Iran a nuclear arsenal in ten years, Trump chose to punt. He certified – wrongly – that Iran is abiding by the terms of the deal even as the Iranians are stockpiling uranium in excess of the amounts permitted under the deal and are barring weapons inspectors from entering their nuclear sites. So too, Trump has kept up Obama’s practice of keeping the public in the dark regarding what was actually agreed to with Iran by refusing to reveal the nuclear agreement’s secret protocols.

In other words, his policies have yet to match his rhetoric on Iran.

But then again, there is reason to give Trump the benefit of the doubt on Iran. It is more than possible that Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia and Israel is entirely about Iran. After all, Trump has enthusiastically joined the anti- Iran coalition that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu built with the Sunni regimes to try to mitigate the destructive consequences of Obama’s embrace of the ayatollahs. And he seems to be interested in using this coalition to rebuild US power in the Middle East while ending Iran’s unimpeded rise as a nuclear power and regional hegemon, just as Israel and the Sunnis had hoped.

The same inconsistency and lack of clarity about Trump’s intentions and his level of willingness to reject the establishment narrative on foreign policy is even more blatant in everything related to Israel and the Palestinian war against it.

During his speech in Riyadh, Trump repeated the obnoxious practice of his predecessors and left Israel off the long list of countries that are afflicted by terrorism. The notion at the heart of that deliberate snub is that terrorism against Israel is somehow different and frankly more acceptable, than terrorism against everyone else.

During his brief visit to Israel, Trump will also go to Bethlehem to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. This will be the two men’s second meeting in less than a month. By insisting on meeting with Abbas during his lightning visit to Israel, Trump signals that he agrees with the narrative view that the US cannot support Israel without also legitimizing and supporting the PLO and its terror funding kleptocracy, the Palestinian Authority.

Finally, even when Trump has adopted a position that repudiates the establishment’s line, the fact is that the establishment’s members dominate his foreign policy team. And as a consequence, they do everything they can to dilute the significance of his moves.

This was clearly in evidence in relation to Trump’s decision to visit the Western Wall on Monday. In the week that preceded his visit, embassy officers angrily rejected Israel’s request that Netanyahu join Trump during his visit to the Jewish holy site, insisting that the Western Wall isn’t in Israel.

In so acting, these Obama holdovers were backed by McMaster, who refuses to admit that the Western Wall is in Jerusalem, and by his Israel-Palestinians director at the National Security Council, Kris Bauman, who served on Obama’s anti-Israel foreign policy team and supports US recognition of Hamas.

In other words, even when Trump tries to embrace fact over narrative, his failure to populate his foreign policy team with iconoclasts like himself has made it all but impossible for him to abandon the anti-Israel narrative guiding US policy. None of this means that Israelis have lost hope in Trump. To the contrary. They have enormous hope in him. But they recognize that so long as the same hostile false narrative about Israel, and the establishment that clings to it dominate Trump’s thinking and policies, the promise of his presidency will not be met.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post

The Five Things That May Make Trump’s Push For Peace Not So Crazy

Although most observers think Trump’s drive for peace between Israel and the “Palestinians” is far fetched, there are indications that he may not be so crazy after all.

 

Iran looms over both Israel and the Gulf Sunni Arabs

With the Iranian army now on the door step of Northern Israel as well as taking over Southern Iraq and menacing the Gulf Arabs, the Sunni Arabs understand that Israel needs to eb openly included in dealing with this menace.

Sunni Oil Leverage is Over

With increased shale oil production and alternative energy sources overtaking foreign oil imports in the USA, American dependency on foreign oil is waning.  This means that Arab oil holds less sway on geo-political issues.  Given this the Arab countries are willing to cut a deal now before all of their influence if finished.

Israel Has Become a Tech Super Power

While the Arab states relied on oil to shape their economies, Israel invested in hi-tech and has now become a global center for technology and innovation exporter.  This has allowed it to develop relationships with countries like China and India giving it more clout on the international arena.

Palestinians Have Become Annoying to Everyone

As the Arab leaders in the region realize that extremism has become a threat to their very existence, the Palestinians are increasingly seen as obstinate in their demands which are becoming stuck in the past.  For the Saudis and the Gulf States, economy and security far outweigh the need to placate the Palestinian street.

Abbas Needs a Deal Before He Becomes Irrelevant

With each passing year Abbas and the Palestinian Authority become increasingly irrelevant. Their people are fed up and many are leaving.  The PA is ripe with large scale graft and everyone knows it. Without a deal Abbas will be remembered as an  old failure by everyone, most of all the residents of the Palestinian Authority.

With Trump flying Air Force 1 from Riyadh to Israel thus breaking down a major barrier between the two countries as well the President becoming the first sitting President to visit the Western Wall, there appears to be real movement. It can be assumed that Trump is ready to push for a regional framework instead of one that focuses only on the Israeli-Palestinian “conflict.” By placing the regional issues into a broader context, creative solutions to longstanding issues are expecting to be floated.

Trump may not succeed, but his attempt is not built on mere slogans, but rather a confluence of real world issues that are rapidly changing who is friend and who is foe.

 

The Horrors at Hand

“The action of discouraging an action or event through instilling doubt or fear of the consequences.”

–The Oxford English Dictionary entry on the word “Deterrence.”

“…the Arab states can permit themselves a series of military defeats while Israel cannot afford to lose a single war…a military defeat of Israel would mean the physical extinction of a large part of its population and the political elimination of the Jewish state…To lose a single war is to lose everything…”

–Yigal Allon, “Israel: The Case For Defensible Borders,” Foreign Affairs, October 1976.

“…the lack of minimal territorial expanse places a country in a position of an absolute lack of deterrence. This in itself constitutes almost compulsive temptation to attack Israel from all directions. Without a border which affords security, a country is doomed to destruction in war.”

–Shimon Peres, Tomorrow is Now, 1977.

For anyone who needed it, this week’s horrific chemical airstrike on civilians in Northern Syria provided a jarring reminder of the merciless realities that prevail throughout the Arab world — and of the fate Israel and her citizens would be subject to, were it not for the military might of the IDF.

Brutal bestiality of Hobbesian anarchy 

Of course, apart from the means used to perpetrate the latest atrocity, there was nothing really exceptional about it. According to the latest estimates, only a few dozen people (100-150) were killed, a mere fraction of one percent of the fatalities incurred in the ongoing Syrian civil war, in which hundreds of thousands have been slaughtered with unspeakable brutality (beheadings, immolations, disembowelments, dismemberments…).

But, of course, such barbarism is not confined to the Syrian theater. Across virtually all the Arab world, bloodcurdling waves of indiscriminate killings have repeatedly ravaged entire countries. As the perversely named “Arab Spring” dramatically underscored, nowhere else is the brutal bestiality of Hobbesian anarchy — as the natural state of the human condition — more vividly demonstrated than in the Arab world.

In stark contrast to Eastern Europe (with the exception of the former Yugoslavia), where the downfall  of despotism led fairly rapidly to a relatively orderly transition to democracy, wherever the restraining “cork” of Leviathan tyranny was removed in the Arab world, violence and bloodshed have swept away any semblance of civil order.

Invariably, whenever vent was given to vox populi, the result was mob rule.  In Egypt, the election of the Muslim Brotherhood brought a noxious mixture of domestic repression, the breakdown of law and order and economic meltdown, only halted — albeit tenuously — by the re-instatement of strict authoritarianism.

Tightening the iron grip of tyranny

In other places, such as the allegedly “moderate” medieval monarchy of Saudi Arabia — author of the much-vaunted “Arab Peace Initiative” — the rule of law is only maintained by the tightening of the iron grip of tyranny. As written in a New York Times editorial, titled “Saudi Arabia’s Barbaric Executions“: “The regime has become only more repressive in the years since the Arab Spring.”

This recrimination followed an earlier editorial, “Saudi Arabia’s Execution Spree,” in which — with slightly greater hyperbole — the “paper of record” reported with alarm: “Saudi Arabia’s justice system has gone into murderous overdrive…” The Times warned that many of those “scheduled for imminent execution on terrorist charges…are citizens whose only crime was protesting against the government,” adding ominously that “[t]his wave of killing has prompted some to compare Saudi Arabia to the Islamic State.”

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Reminding its readers of the real nature of the desert kingdom, the Times charged: “the executions were not out of character for Saudi Arabia. The country has a dismal human rights record with its application of stern Islamic law and its repression of women and practitioners of religious traditions other than Sunni Islam…the mass execution this weekend followed a year in which 158 people were executed, the most in recent history, largely based on vague laws and dubious trials.”

This, then, is the briefest tour d’horizon of the pervasive savagery that permeates large swathes of the Arab world, whether perpetrated by incumbent regimes against its populace or perpetrated against incumbent regimes by its populace.

But for the grace of God…

It is a savagery that is amply reflected in the Palestinian-administered areas, both in Gaza under Hamas and in the “West Bank” under Fatah.

Curiously, this is somehow never realistically factored into the chronically short-sighted policy proposals Israel is pressured to accept in the typically ill-conceived efforts to end the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The horrendous potential inherent in this endemic myopia is perhaps most starkly illustrated by the Syrian example.

Up until the outbreak of the 2011 civil war, many — including then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — were still referring to the internet-savvy,  British-educated eye doctor, Bashar Assad as a moderate “reformer” who could be a credible peace partner for Israel. A veritable chorus of enlightened, erudite voices urged an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights in a land-for-peace deal with Damascus.

Today, in view of the gruesome events that have transpired since then — with Assad morphing from reformer to war criminal — it is chillingly clear what a huge error that would have been.

If, on the one hand, the anti-Assad forces prevail, Israel would almost certainly face the unpalatable prospect of Jihadi forces — associates of ISIS or Al Qaeda (or both) — deployed on  the Golan Heights, overlooking the city of Tiberias and commanding the Galilee. If, on the other hand, the pro-Assad forces prevail, Israel would, with similar certainty, face the no more palatable prospect of pro-Iranian Hezbollah forces — or even detachments of Tehran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) itself — deployed there.

This is the grim reality that, but for the grace of God, Israel would be forced to confront today had the proponents of land-for-peace carried the day…

Failure to internalize lessons of past  

Yet despite the inescapable lesson that the Syrian episode provides regarding the enormous perils entailed in relinquishing territory, it seems that inexplicably, nothing — literally nothing — of what should be learned from it has percolated into the consciousness of the decision makers-dealing with the “peace process.”

Had the land-for-peace advocates prevailed on the Palestinian front, it is more than likely that Israel would be facing a prospect similarly perilous to the one it would be facing had it withdrawn from the Golan in pursuit of a forlorn hope of peace.

As past experience has repeatedly shown, every time territory has been relinquished or abandoned to Arab control, that territory has – usually sooner rather than later – become a platform from which to launch lethal attacks against Israel. It occurred almost immediately in Gaza, within months in Judea and Samaria, within years in south Lebanon and after several decades in Sinai, a region now descending into the depths of depravity and unspeakable brutality, with no good options on the horizon.

Moreover, every time territory was relinquished or abandoned by Israel, the security situation that developed was far more menacing than that which preceded it. Significantly the only areas from which Israel is not gravely threatened are those which Israel has not yet relinquished in its quest to attain peace, namely the Golan, Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley.

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Baffling conundrum for future historians…

Despite the accumulating mountain of evidence refuting its feasibility, despite the repeated failures of attempts at its implementation, despite the glaring flaws in its conceptual rationale, the land-for-peace doctrine (or dogma), and its equally unfounded corollary of  two-states-for-two-people, still dominates the discourse on the Middle East conflict.

Clearly, this is a situation that will baffle historians of the future. They will struggle to understand why such a fatally flawed and failed formula could endure for so long as the dominant paradigm for the resolution of the conflict. They will grapple with the conundrum of why, despite its minuscule chance for success and huge cost of failure, it was a formula that was widely designated “realistic” and “rational”; why despite the daunting perils it entailed, it was considered “prudent” and “pragmatic.”  They will fail to comprehend why so many who professed to be “pro-Israel” obdurately insisted that Israel demonstrate its good faith by exposing itself, time and time again, to absurd risks, and subjecting its citizens to appalling dangers by adopting a policy that has been repeatedly disproven, but somehow never discredited and certainly never discarded.

But perhaps what future historians will find the most baffling of all, is why successive Israeli governments — clearly aware of the grave hazards this formula entailed for their country and their people — never managed to remove it from the discourse and replace it with an alternative Zionist-compliant prescription for a more secure and stable future.

Indeed, there is little doubt that hisorians will deem the fact that such an alternative paradigm did not emerge to replace the two-state proposal to be a catastrophic failure of the Israeli leadership and a tragic testimony to its intellectual impotence and incompetence.

Again, but for the grace of God…

Just as Israel might have been facing a formidable array of hostile Islamist forces deployed on the terrain commanding the north of the country had it withdrawn from the Golan, and transferred control to a purportedly credible Syrian “peace partner,” so Israel may equally face a formidable array of hostile Islamist forces deployed on the terrain commanding the coastal megalopolis if it withdrew from the highlands of Judea and Samaria, and transferred control to a purportedly credible Palestinian “peace partner.”

Once control is relinquished, there is little to ensure that its allegedly peaceable Palestinian partner will not be replaced by some less amicable successor – or even if he remains in power, that he continues to honor his commitments in exchange for which Israel relinquished the territory. After all, such violation of commitments may not be the result of bad faith on the part of Israel’s “peace partner,” but due to pressures of influential domestic rivals.

For just as Hezbollah and/or ISIS/Al Qaeda affiliates may well have taken up positions in the Golan, so too, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and/or Salafist elements may take up positions on the highlands of Judea and Samaria — whether in compliance with, or in defiance of, Israel’s “peace partner.”

There will, however, be important differences!

The horrors at hand

Whereas, in the north, the post-withdrawal border would have been about 70 km long, abutting a largely rural and relatively sparsely populated region, in the east the post-withdrawal frontier could be anything upward of 500 km, abutting a largely urban and relatively densely populated area.

Even with primitive weapons, presently available in abundance to the terror organizations in “demilitarized” Gaza, all of the following would be within striking range: virtually all Israel’s air fields – military and civilian – including its only international airport, Ben Gurion; its major sea ports of Haifa and Ashdod, and naval bases; its centers of civilian government and military command; vital infrastructure installations/systems, including power generation and transmission; desalination plants and water conveyance, communication hubs, major transportation axes (rail and road); and 80% of the nation’s civilian population and its commercial activity.

Given the combination of tempting vulnerability and the blatant disregard of Israel’s adversaries for human life so graphically demonstrated in recent years, the horrors, for both Jew and Arab, that are likely to result from any further Israeli withdrawals are not difficult to foresee.

With its hospitals, schools and kindergartens hopelessly exposed to the callous whims of heartless terrorists, Israel would be forced to take massive military action to defend its vulnerable civilian population, whether by preemptive strikes to forestall aggression, or retaliatory operations to deter future attacks. Given the length of the frontier, the nature of the topography and presence of numerous civilian centers together with the robustness of the response required, widespread collateral damage would be inevitable…

Arab attacks, Israeli response, international recriminations, Arab reprisals, Israeli retaliation…

This would be the unavoidable chain of events that would certainly emerge from continued pursuit of the land-for-peace dogma.

These are the horrors at hand it would undoubtedly precipitate…

IRAN RISING: Will Israel and the Arab World Finally Make Peace to Stave Off Persian Aggression?

 

A few months ago, a Saudi delegation led by Maj.Gen. (ret.) Anwar Eshki, chairman of Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies in Jeddah, visited Israel. He was photographed with Israeli politicians. These pictures sparked a debate within the Saudi kingdom and Eshki was harshly criticised for his visit by the Saudi Foreign Ministry who declared, “people like Anwar Eshki do not represent us, have no ties to any governmental elements, and do not reflect the positions of the Saudi government.” (Al-Hayat (London), July 27, 2016.)

Despite the harsh public backlash at such an attempt to normalise relations with Israel, many Saudi newspapers ran articles criticising the anti-Semitic views held by many in the Muslim world.

Saudi columnist Siham Al-Qahtani wrote in Al-Jazirah in July of 2016 that the Koranic depiction of the Jews applied only to certain Jews at certain times and cannot be applied to all Jews; “The [collective] memory of Arab culture continues to preserve the stereotypical image of Jews to this day. Some see this stereotype as the product of Koranic texts, [which depict the Jews] as killers of prophets, infidels, warmongers, and usurers. [However,] it is improper to blame the Koran for the creation of Jewish stereotypes. When the Koran depicts a certain people, it does so in accordance with [this people’s] behavior and thought during a specific time period. This description is valid in the context of [those particular] circumstances and [that particular] behavior, and does not refer to a unique and permanent trait.” 

Yasser Hijazi wrote in Al-Jazirah (Saudi Arabia), July 30, 2016, that hatred of the Jews must be abandoned; “We must eradicate the remnants of racism and religious ethnic struggles embedded in our cultural, religious, and institutional discourse. This will be a step on the path towards coexistence with the world, and will close a massive loophole that is exploited by Western extremism [against us]. Our only response to this [extremism] should be to distance ourselves from [this discourse] and instead export an official pluralistic civilized discourse; one that accepts the world, both in its interpretation of texts and its actions on the ground.”  

Hijazi wrote in a different  article “…in order to eventually create a different discourse based on the principles of international relations and human rights… which will lead to a creative and professional discourse that speaks of the other/the Jew in a way that is devoid of racism; a way that respects his humanity and right to live without becoming a symbol of betrayal, evil, and deception. This is a step on the way to the coexistence we desire; a step [on the way] to drying out the sources of terrorism, if we so desire…” 

In a similar vein, in an April 9, 2016 article in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa, Kuwaiti media personality Yousuf ‘Abd Al-Karim Al-Zinkawi called on all Arab and Muslim states to recognize Israel, openly and without delay, and to stop calling it “the Zionist Entity” or “the Israeli occupation.” He argued that by sitting alongside Israel in UN institutions these states already effectively recognize it, and they should take a lesson from countries like Qatar and Oman that take a pragmatic approach to Israel and maintain ties with it openly. He wondered why certain Arab and Muslim countries take a more hardline approach to Israel than the Palestinian Authority itself, which does maintain ties with it. 

Particularly in Kuwait there are calls for normalisation of  relations with Israel. Saleh Al-Shayeji, journalist for Al-Anba, The Kuwaiti Government Daily, writes; “Whose enemy is Israel? Is it the enemy of all Arab countries? The Palestinians have a right to be hostile to Israel, for they believe it has occupied some of their lands. By their lights, they are justified in their hostility, and we support, help and assist them as much as we can, [but] that is all the Arab countries are required to do – nothing more…

“Who is our real enemy? Do all the Arab states have the same enemy? Or does each country or group of countries have a [different] enemy, who is actually an ally or even a close friend of some other [Arab] country?

“The first step towards Arab reform is discarding the idea of pan-Arabism or of [a single Arab] nation, which reality has proven false and invalid, and the indications of its invalidity are [much] more numerous than the illusionary [proof] of its validity… Let’s take our own country, Kuwait, as an example. Is Israel an enemy [of Kuwait]? Has it [ever] invaded it, fought it, or killed its citizens? The answer to all these questions is no!! So why does Kuwait regard Israel as an enemy, while it regards Iraq – which did invade and occupy it – as a friend, an ally, a [good] neighbour and a sister!? I don’t mean [to say] that Kuwait [should have] remained an enemy of Iraq. On the contrary, it made the right decision [in reconciling with it], because enmity is not a permanent [reality] but a dynamic one, especially in the world of politics, [where] yesterday’s enemy is today’s friend, and today’s friend may be tomorrow’s enemy. That is a fact and no illusion of mine.

“In sum, Israel is not the Arab’s enemy, and the Arabs must all free themselves of the pan-Arab complex and take their own independent steps and decisions, far from the delusion of the single [pan-Arab] nation!!”

In another Kuwaiti government daily Abdallah Al-Hadlaq writes; “To all those who think the Persian state (Iran), and the regime of the Rule of the Imprudent [namely] the dictatorial fascist Persian regime which controls it, is a friendly country, whereas Israel is an enemy country, I say that a prudent enemy is better than an imprudent one. The state of Israel and its various governments have waged more than five wars with the Arabs, yet never in the course of these wars did Israel think to use its nuclear weapons against its Arab enemies. Conversely, if the Persian state, with its stupid, rash and fascist regime that hides behind a religious guise, ever develops nuclear weapons, it will not hesitate to use nuclear bombs against the Arab Gulf states in the first conflict that arises.

“Israel is a friendly state that does not endanger us in the Arab Gulf region and we have nothing to fear from it. The one who threatens us, carries out acts of terror and destruction against us, and aspires to occupy us is the arrogant Persian enemy, represented by the regime of the Persian state (Iran), which is the incubator and supportive environment for global terror.”

Furthermore, on the website www.Huffpostarabi.com Tareq Baddar, a Kuwaiti writer and film producer wrote an article on May 24, 2016 calling for an end to the incitement against Jews in mosques. (www.huffpostarabi.com)

Often, a running theme in these articles is a call for an acknowledgment of the real enemy, Iran, as opposed to Israel.

In the words of Muhammad Aal Al-Sheikh: “The Persian enemy is Enemy No. 1, and the Zionist enemy is [only] Enemy No. 2. We must present this truth directly, flattering no one, to all those [who try] to extort us with the tale that Israel is the Arabs’ Enemy No. 1 and that Iran supports us on the Palestinian issue. This tale could still be true vis-à-vis the Arabs to the north [of the Arabian Peninsula], and in Egypt, because Israel threatens [Egypt] and its security and stability. But as for the [Saudi] kingdom and the Gulf states, it is Iran, not Israel, that tops the list of the enemies and the dangers that lie in wait for us, face us and threaten us. Iran is exploiting the issue of the Palestinians and the liberation [of Palestine] as a pretext for infiltrating deep into the Arab [world], shredding its Arab fabric, and dragging Arab [society] into supporting its expansionary plan…”

“Moreover, let me say this bluntly: Any citizen of any of the five Gulf states who prioritizes the Israeli danger over that of the Persian enemy, whether from a pan-Arab or an Islamist perspective, is sacrificing his homeland, its security, its stability and perhaps its very existence for his neighbor’s cause. By any national standard, this is absolute treason.

“This issue has to do with our very existence, and there is no bargaining over it or dismissing or neglecting it. It is a matter on which the Gulf residents, whether Sunni or Shi’ite, agree equally…”

These words sum up a major reason, if not the most predominant reason, for Gulf States relations thawing towards Israel; Iran is a major threat to the Arab-Sunni world as they seek to export globally, but to the Sunni world first, Shiite Islam. Sunni Islam’s bastion is in the Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia, and they are neighbours with Iran, acting as a buffer to the rest of the world, a challenge and competition to Iran’s Shiite Islam. In order to spread Shiite’ism, these countries must be neutralised and preferably converted to Shiite countries. This means Iran must be militarily superior, strengthening and spreading Shiite Islam within these countries. The Gulf States know this and are acutely aware and alarmed that Iran developing a nuclear bomb spells the end of their countries. Israel is the strongest power in the region and has the capability of challenging Iran’s growing might and is even able to deal with Iran’s nuclear program. Therefore, naturally Israel would be the ones to turn to and to start warming up to, in order to counter this threat.  This is particularly evident when we take into account that Israel was the one to daringly face Iraq, totally detroying their nuclear program in 1981 without any casualties.  The dictum of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ is no truer here than ever before, as it has made deadly sworn enemies into collaborative friends. The Gulf States may not have wanted to make peace with Israel but perhaps now they will out of necessity.

Adding to this is the relative side-lining of the Palestinian issue. The Palestinian Authority (PA) is collapsing and does not even have full control of its own city headquarters. Gun battles on the streets of Nablus occur often between the PA security forces and other militant factions, such as Fatah. There are parts of the city where PA security forces cannot enter or risk being fired upon by those who control those areas. This is happening in many parts of the West Bank, where many areas are now independent of the PA and are run day to day by the tribal leaders, such as the Hebron region. Some areas have descended into absolute anarchy and are ruled by armed gangs and factions. The Palestinian elections have been postponed by Mahmud Abbas as he fears losing to his rivals.

The “Arab Quartet”, made up of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, have held up their monthly donation to the Palestinian Authority of $20 million for seven months. This amounts to a third of the P.A. budget. Although there are claims that this is merely a logistical matter, many are reading between the lines that it is an attempt to force Abbas to make peace as they dictate. They have reached out to Fatah as they are also concerned with Abbas recent visit to Iran and want to ensure that Abbas does not get too close. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) support for the Palestinians is now more tactical than anything else and the GCC business leaders have been tacitly expressing their frustration for a while regarding the corruption within the Palestinian Authority.

Others are also beginning to get frustrated and this was made evident when a Saudi editorial took the Palestinian Authority to task for not accepting Netanyahu’s offer to Abbas to speak at the Kenneset.

All of the above has made the Palestinian issue relatively secondary to Iran as they are increasingly viewed by many as a burden, and are unable to behave in a befitting manner.

Another reason that has caused a shift in opinion towards Israel is the Arab Spring.

Hopes of democracy and liberalism were crushed by the Islamists taking over most of the revolutions, steering those countries in to oblivion, specifically in Syria. Numerous atrocities were commited and there are those in the Arab world who have now rethought the whole view point of prevalent within the Arab world, including how they view Israel.

In an interview on the 19 March 2014 with Syrian Orient News TV channel, Dr. Kamal Al-Labwani stated, “Today, it is our huge Syrian Arab army that is attacking us. Hizbullah is attacking us, while Israel treats the wounded. The equation has changed today. Who is our friend, and who is our foe? The things that have happened have completely changed the notions. Who is our enemy? Is our enemy the Lebanese who is fighting us, or the Israeli who live in Jerusalem? I’m just asking. Our Iraqi “brother” who has come to slaughter us in Yabroud – is he our friend or foe? Is he really a brother to us? There are many new questions. Dogmatic thinking is pointless.” 

Dr Kamal’s plan for peace in Syria included making peace with Israel and even relinquishing Syrian rights to the Golan Heights in exchange for Israel’s help in toppling the Assad regime.  He further stated, “I do not want to condemn anyone. I myself worked hard to rid myself of the prevailing dogma that is passed down from generation to generation, and is elevated to the level of sanctity and taboo – a dogma that calls to perpetuate conflicts, as opposed to burying them…”

Although Al-Labwani’s plan drew harsh criticism from many fellow rebel leaders, nevertheless, his thinking is a break from the norm and could be a sign that others also think like him.

This disenchantment with the Arab narrative and willingness to blame Israel for inter-Arab wars was lambasted by Dr. ‘Ali Sa’d Al-Moussa who wrote on the 22 August 2016 in the Saudi daily Al-Watan: 

“[The world outside] the blood-soaked region between Mosul, [Syria] and Sirt, [Libya], and between Idlib, [Syria] and ‘Aden, [Yemen], does not see even a tenth of the strife [that goes on in that region]… not even between the two Koreas or between the Hutu and the Tutsi in Africa. This proves that the world could have been a safer and quieter place had the Middle East not been in its midst. And I ask that none of you place the blame for this on Israel, for that is [just] a shallow excuse. Israel has nothing to do with the struggle between ISIS and [Jabhat] Al-Nusra, or with what is happening between ‘Afash [a nickname for former Yemeni president ‘Ali Abdullah Saleh], [‘Abd Al-Malik] Al-Houthi [head of the Houthi Ansar Allah group in Yemen] and the Yemeni government, and has nothing to do with the ideological war that is raging in the distant deserts of Libya.

“We in this blood-red region on the world map are born [carrying] the gene of an unknown virus in our body, which soon awakens and multiplies, [triggering] destruction and war, hatred, exclusion and the despicable categorizing [of people]. In the last five years of internecine [fighting], we have killed tens of times more people from our own ranks than were killed in 50 years of historical wars with Israel….”

As the saying goes “war makes strange bed fellows”, and there is no stranger bed fellow when Syrian rebels post on twitter saying; “Well done Israeli heroes.”   https://twitter.com/freedaraa11/status/678464695599239168 – (account has currently been shut down.)

Syrian opposition figure Omar Alzoubi-Daraa, wrote on Twitter. “Thank you Israel” and “Terrorist Samir Kuntar and other terrorist Hezbollah leaders have been killed by Israeli raids. What a beautiful job”.

This was posted after the death of Samir Kuntar, who was a Hezbollah terrorist who had committed terror attacks against Israel whilst being member of the Palestine Liberation Front. He had been treated by Hezbollah as a hero upon his releases by Israel in a prisoner exchange in 2008. He was deployed by Hezbollah in Syria to rally the Druze community to their cause. He was killed in Damascus in December 2015 supposedly by an Israeli air strike, although the Free Syrian Army took credit for his death. The fact that Syrian rebels have reached a point of hatred for Hezbollah and  call Israel “heroes” shows how the Arab Spring has changed the opinions of many.

This enthusiastic praise for Israel may be partly generated by Syrian’s knowledge that they can find medical treatment in Israel, their supposedly sworn enemy. With hundreds of Syrians having been treated in Israeli hospitals, opinions are bound to start changing when Israel kills such a member of Hezbollah.

Globalisation is playing a big part in this shift. As the world gets smaller because of the internet, specifically due to social media, regular people are able to communicate to the world what is really happening, as opposed to an official media outlet controlled by a tyrannical regime. This also means that extremely graphic and violent material is posted and shared online. A lot of material like this from the Syrian civil war has been shared and these images and videos have sent shock waves throughout the Muslim world and have provoked many to call for liberalism and true adoption for Western democratic values. This call has gotten louder and is seen as the only cure for the Arab world’s downward spiral into a violent abyss. These views call for the changing of Arab mentalities including how Israel and Jews are viewed.

This includes many old doctrines that have been part of the Arab world for almost 100 years, such as pan-Arabism. As was  concluded by Saleh Al-Shayeji,  in the Kuwaiti government daily Al-Anba, November 23, 2015:  

“In sum, Israel is not the Arab’s enemy, and the Arabs must all free themselves of the pan-Arab complex and take their own independent steps and decisions, far from the delusion of the single [pan-Arab] nation!!”

There are differing views on globalization within the Arab World. Generally, it is viewed negatively; as a Western attack on their religious and cultural identity, atempting to control the Arabs and their resources. However, there are those who have embraced the Western ideals and these have seeped in to the Arab discourse and call for more of these values to be part of Arab society. Khaled Montaser, an Egyptian doctor, wrote on September 12 2016 in the daily Al-Watan;  “There is no escape from joining the world while preserving [our] cultural uniqueness. There is no escape from merging and interacting [with the world] without losing [our] identity… We must discard the obsession, the delusion, and the lie of the two camps [perception] and not live as prisoners [of the view] that we are the best, greatest, and most moral… [This view] blinds our eyes from seeing ourselves in the mirror, keeps us from coping [with reality] in times of true danger, and paralyzes us when we are called to participate in the circle of culture and play a constructive role in it [instead of] withdrawing and isolating ourselves, wallowing in our problems and sorrow and reminiscing [about the past], and manufacturing explosive belts in the caves of Tora Bora and the forests of Somalia…” he ended by  saying “…those who refuse to participate, or think they are the only ones with the right to hold a stake, belong outside the camp where there is thunder, lightning, scorpions, snakes, thirst, and hunger – in the desert of isolation without mercy, salvation, or protection.” (https://www.memri.org/reports/egyptian-writer-world-one-large-camp-and-muslims-must-find-their-place-it)
In conclusion, the combined factors of the Iran danger, the sidelining of the Palestinians as well as the Arab Spring  together with globalization, are creating the possibility of a new Middle East where Arabs and Jews will get along and co-operate together to build a stable Middle East. If Israel and others tread carefully this may become the reality.

[watch] BREAKING: Yemen Fires Ballisitic Missile on Riyadh, Saudi Arabia…Has WW3 Begun?

The prophecies about the end of days tell us of a final war between Persia and Rome.  This war is sparked by an attack from Persia on [Saudi] Arabia forcing Arabia to ask for help from Rome.  The events of last night, now slowly trickling out of the Middile East is that Iranian backed Yemenis did indeed fire a ballistic missile on Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia last night. Could this be the beginning of the above mentioned war?

With Trump clearly putting the focus on the Iranian regime over the last week, this attack is a test of how committed he is to intervening and going head to head with the Ayatollahs.  If the answer is yes, then the security situation on the Arabian penninsula and beyond will start to unravel as more countries get involved.

The enusing conflict has the ability to quickly spiral out of control and turn into a global war.

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TRUMP’S BAN ON REFUGEES: The Real Reason Why Saudi Arabia and Egypt Were Not Included

Just like everything else surrounding Donald Trump’s first 10 days as President, the subterfuge by the main stream media in giving false pretext to Trump picking 7 Arab countries to ban refugees, travelers, and visa holders from entering the United States has reached ridiculous levels.  On one hand the elite media has claimed Trump’s executive order is inherently racist because it singles out majority Muslim countries and on the other hand the same media asks why the President didn’t include Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the ban. Their answer?

It must be business interests.

Let’s put aside the obvious conflicting outrages that have been vomited out by the elite media and deal with the idea that Trump did not include Egypt and Saudi Arabia on the list because of business interests.   The same people arguing that he is taking it lightly on Egypt and Saudi Arabia fail to mention that he is far more business interests in China.  No one has accused Trump of “letting China off the hook.”  In fact it is the opposite. Critics have rushed to claim President Trump has been to tough on China.  If Trump really was implementing policy based on business interests then he should be treating China with kids gloves.  He is not.

So what is the real reason why Egypt and Saudi Arabia were not included in the immigration ban?

It is no secret the current administration is looking to build a coalition to take on both radical Islam and the growing threat from Iran. To do this Donald Trump is looking to build a non-traditional alliance between Russia, the moderate Sunni states, and Israel.  Sources have already pointed to a possibility that Russia will push Iran out of Syria in order to make it easier for the Trump administration to work with them against ISIS. Furthermore, the countries Trump picked are all worn torn areas split between the competing interests of Sunni and Shiite armies. Although Egypt is known to have a large Muslim Brotherhood network, Sisi, the President of Egypt is sincere in his campaign to destroy them.  Sisi also has a close working relationship with Israel. While Saudi Arabia produced most of the hijackers for the the September 11th attacks, the new King and his administration are known reformers and have pushed to loosen of the network Wahhabi institutions. Is it perfect?  No, not at all, but both countries’ willingness to reform and crack down should not be minimized at this point.

Essentially, the new order arising in the Middle East weighed heavily on which countries President Trump included in the ban.  If the elite media decided to look at events with open eyes they would see that the President and his advisers are building a robust coalition to once and for all destroy radical Islam and stabilize the region that has been most volatile in modern times.

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