- AP photo by Hussein Malla
They scurried about pusillanimously like fattened experimental mice in the laboratory of US foreign policy. They feigned a modicum of concern and commiseration for the Palestinian plight and outrage and condemnation against Israel’s deliberate killing of Palestinian civilians. They projected a semblance of effort and seemed incapable of result-driven action. They are avatars of what’s considered to be the worst in world diplomacy. But their propagandist national news outlets saturated the airwaves with reports the Arab leaders were fully engaged in securing a sustainable cease-fire with Israel and a lasting reprieve for the Palestinian children; they showed footage of them in their flowing robes and expensive tailored suits making phone calls to Condoleezza Rice and Bush; they aired press-conferences with them at the United Nations where, for once, they succeeded in convincing the Security Council to pass a resolution that provided Israel with enhanced security assurances and yet, subsequently, proved to be as politically impotent as they are; when, at long last, they convened emergency summits in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait, they pounded the podium while delivering bombastically disparaging and accusatory rhetoric against each other. Entrenched in their crippling tribalistic politics and personal rifts with each other, they refused to attend meetings and shunned consensus. After yet another inconsequential Arab summit in Kuwait, Amr Moussa, the secretary-General of the League of Arab States, gloomily confided to a group of journalists: “the boat is sinking.”
When, at 0200 on the 18th of January, no thanks to the Arab governments, Israel, finally and in time for the inauguration of Barak Obama as the 44th United States president, declared a unilateral cease-fire, thousands of Hamas supporters, waving green banners, thronged the streets of Gaza cities to celebrate what they perceived as a “victory.” Much of Gaza’s infrastructure was destroyed; reconstruction is estimated to cost 2 billion dollars. Over 1,300 Palestinians died while Israel lost 9 soldiers and four civilians. Hamas rocket attacks against southern Israeli cities subsided and most smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt caved in from Israeli bunker-buster missiles. Militarily, the Israeli offensive was a deafening defeat of Hamas.
Politically, and in the long term, Hamas stands to gain. Fatah’s grassroots support in Gaza and the West Bank was tremendously eroded; disillusioned by the “moderate” Arab regimes, Hamas will turn exclusively to Syria and Iran. Such scenario is far from promoting peace in the region. I am convinced that achieving an enduring peace never was, nor will it ever be, an aspiration to Hamas or Israel.
The existence of Hamas as a legitimate government serves a paramount Israeli strategic goal in that it intensifies the Arab leaders’ fear of growing subversive movements with Islamist tendencies reckoned a clear and present danger to their undemocratic regimes. Such fear widens the political chasm between Arab governments and prevents consensus on the Palestinian issue.
Intelligence and military support to protect themselves from Islamist movements and other perceived threats to their governance is one of the major reasons prodding Arab governments to grovel before the United States and serve its bid for a powerful Israel in the region. In an interview with Associated Press journalist Matthew Lee, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that despite Bush’s unpopularity in the Middle East, “Arab leaders showered his diplomat with jewelry last year.” King Abdullah of Jordan offered her a $47,000 emerald and diamond necklace; his wife, a Palestinian, gave Rice a $5,000 jewelry box. Not to be outdone, King Abdulla of Saudi Arabia gave her gem-encrusted baubles worth $316,000, a diamond necklace with matching earrings, a bracelet and a ring worth $165,000, and a flower petal necklace worth $170,000. Others underhandedly made their ports, airfields, and bases at the disposal of US military forces and allowed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) use of their prisons and interrogators. Such sinister cooperation is not new; there are reports and eyewitness accounts that, to protect the late King Hassan II of Morocco, the CIA was instrumental in the disappearance of the Moroccan resistance leader Mehdi Ben Barka in 1965 and the dubious death of Ahmed Dlimi in 1983. Its ongoing involvement in the protection of despotic Arab regimes is well-documented by journalists and researchers.
In his inaugural address, President Obama warned that “those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent … are on the wrong side of history.” How many Arab governments today cling to power through means other than corruption, deceit, and the silencing of dissent?
None.
Such statement should be taken with a grain of salt. It is doubtful it signals a major shift in the foreign policy doctrine of the United States. In fact, the absence of viable political alternatives make a continued US support to Arab repressive regimes imperative to its interests and Israeli national security.
The recent massacre of Gazans was a needling reminder Arab Leaders serve interests other than those beneficial to their own people. It left the non-resuscitatable 2002 Arab peace initiative stretched on a cold steel gurney in a morgue in Gaza. The cause of death: the Arab leaders’ sycophancy to the United States, their inveterate subjugation of their people, and their political witlessness.
The Palestinian people, who carry, not a weapon, but the burden of decades of failed negotiations and policies, whose ramshackle homes are constantly commandeered by Hamas and bombed by the Israelis, who refuse to leave or are forced to stay, who bury their decapitated babies, their dreams, and their hopes, whom do they turn to?
Not Hamas, Fatah, the Arab governments, the League of Arab States, or the United States. Certainly not Israel.
I recommend that all Palestinian families in Gaza and the West Bank adopt puppies and kittens – a dozen per family. They have a better chance to mobilize the international community (especially the Europeans and Americans) and secure a prompt cease-fire from Israel if represented by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) International whose latest operation, dubbed Operation Baghdad Pups, rescuing abandoned pets in Iraq is a tremendous success.
A. T. B. Copyright © 2009
