Mark Steyn: Failure to solve Palestinian question empowers Iran

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | July 23, 2006 | Mark Steyn

[KarinG1]

A few years back, when folks talked airily about "the Middle East peace process" and "a two-state solution," I used to say that the trouble was the Palestinians saw a two-state solution as an interim stage en route to a one-state solution. I underestimated Islamist depravity. As we now see in Gaza and southern Lebanon, any two-state solution would be an interim stage en route to a no-state solution.

In one of the most admirably straightforward of Islamist declarations, Hussein Massawi, the Hezbollah leader behind the slaughter of U.S. and French forces 20 years ago, put it this way:

"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."

Swell. But, suppose he got his way, what then? Suppose every last Jew in Israel were dead or fled, what would rise in place of the Zionist Entity? It would be something like the Hamas-Hezbollah terror squats in Gaza and Lebanon writ large. Hamas won a landslide in the Palestinian elections, and Hezbollah similarly won formal control of key Lebanese Cabinet ministries. But they're not Mussolini: They have no interest in making the trains run on time. And to be honest, who can blame them? If you're a big-time terrorist mastermind, it's frankly a bit of a bore to find yourself Deputy Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Pensions, particularly when you're no good at it and no matter how lavishly the European Union throws money at you there never seems to be any in the kitty when it comes to making payroll. So, like a business that's over-diversified, both Hamas and Hezbollah retreated to their core activity: Jew-killing.

In Causeries du Lundi, Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve recalls a Parisian dramatist watching the revolutionary mob rampaging through the street below and beaming: "See my pageant passing!" That's how opportunist Arabs and indulgent Europeans looked on the intifada and the terrorists and the schoolgirl suicide bombers: as a kind of uber-authentic piece of performance art with which to torment the Jews and the Americans. They never paused to ask themselves: Hey, what if it doesn't stop there?

Well, about 30 years too late, they're asking it now. For the first quarter-century of Israel's existence, the Arab states fought more or less conventional wars against the Zionists, and kept losing. So then they figured it was easier to anoint a terrorist movement and in 1974 declared Yasser Arafat's PLO to be the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people," which is quite a claim for an organization then barely half-a-decade old. Amazingly, the Arab League persuaded the U.N. and the EU and Bill Clinton and everyone else to go along with it and to treat the old monster as a head of state who lacked only a state to head. It's true that many nationalist movements have found it convenient to adopt the guise of terrorists. But, as the Palestinian "nationalist" movement descended from airline hijackings to the intifada to self-detonating in pizza parlors, it never occurred to their glamorous patrons to wonder if maybe this was, in fact, a terrorist movement conveniently adopting the guise of nationalism.

In 1971, in the lobby of the Cairo Sheraton, Palestinian terrorists shot Wasfi al-Tal, the prime minister of Jordan at point-blank range. As he fell to the floor dying, one of his killers began drinking the blood gushing from his wounds. Doesn't that strike you as a little, um, overwrought? Three decades later, when bombs went off in Bali killing hundreds of tourists plus local waiters and barmen, Bruce Haigh, a former Aussie diplomat in Indonesia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, had no doubt where to put the blame. As he told Australia's Nine Network: "The root cause of this issue has been America's backing of Israel on Palestine."

Suppose this were true -- that terrorists blew up Oz honeymooners and Scandinavian stoners in Balinese nightclubs because of "the Palestinian question." Doesn't this suggest that these people are, at a certain level, nuts? After all, there are plenty of IRA sympathizers around the world (try making the Ulster Unionist case in a Boston bar) and yet they never thought to protest British rule in Northern Ireland by blowing up, say, German tourists in Thailand. Yet the more the thin skein of Palestinian grievance was stretched to justify atrocities halfway around the world, the more the Arab League big-shot emirs and European Union foreign ministers looked down from their windows and cooed, "See my parade passing!"

They've now belatedly realized they're at that stage in the creature feature where the monster has mutated into something bigger and crazier. Until the remarkably kinda-robust statement by the G-8 and the unprecedented denunciation of Hezbollah by the Arab League, the rule in any conflict in which Israel is involved -- Israel vs. PLO, Israel vs. Lebanon, Israel vs. [Your Team Here] is that the Jews are to blame.

But Saudi-Egyptian-Jordanian opportunism on Palestine has caught up with them: It's finally dawned on them that a strategy of consciously avoiding resolution of the "Palestinian question" has helped deliver Gaza, and Lebanon and Syria, into the hands of a regime that's a far bigger threat to the Arab world than the Zionist Entity. Cairo and Co. grew so accustomed to whining about the Palestinian pseudo-crisis decade in decade out that it never occurred to them that they might face a real crisis one day: a Middle East dominated by an apocalyptic Iran and its local enforcers, in which Arab self-rule turns out to have been a mere interlude between the Ottoman sultans and the eternal eclipse of a Persian nuclear umbrella. The Zionists got out of Gaza and it's now Talibanistan redux. The Zionists got out of Lebanon and the most powerful force in the country (with an ever-growing demographic advantage) are Iran's Shia enforcers. There haven't been any Zionists anywhere near Damascus in 60 years and Syria is in effect Iran's first Sunni Arab prison bitch. For the other regimes in the region, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria are dead states that have risen as vampires.

Meanwhile, Kofi Annan in a remarkable display of urgency (at least when compared with Sudan, Rwanda, Congo et al.) is proposing apropos Israel and Hezbollah that U.N. peacekeepers go in, not to keep the "peace" between two sovereign states but rather between a sovereign state and a usurper terrorist gang. Contemptible as he is, the secretary-general shows a shrewd understanding of the way the world is heading: Already "non-state actors" have more sophisticated rocketry than many EU nations; if Iran has its way, its proxies will be implied nuclear powers. Maybe we should put them on the U.N. Security Council.

So what is in reality Israel's first non-Arab war is a glimpse of the world the day after tomorrow: The EU and Arab League won't quite spell it out, but, to modify that Le Monde headline, they are all Jews now.

[ArGee]

Link doesn't work on Calvin and Hobbes, you scoundrel.

Rats. I was hoping it was my firewall that was blocking it.

Suffice it to say that the entire series is pretty funny, unless and until you look at it as an allegory for the current geopolitical situation where the Snow Goons are the terrorists and C&H are the EU.

Shalom.

[Lurker]

Thank you for the correction. I'll not repeat my error.

L

[Irish_Thatcherite]

After all, there are plenty of IRA sympathizers around the world

Unfortunately that includes Freerepublic... Fenian trolls!

[gcruse]

Egyptians and Syriuans are Muslims, but they are not arabs.

Then why would they be members of the Arab league? You'll notice Iran, which denotes itself as non-Arab is not a member, yet Egypt and Syria are.

The current members of the Arab League (and the date of their admission):

•  Egypt - March 22, 1945 (Founder) (suspended, 1979-1989)
•  Iraq - March 22, 1945 (Founder)
•  Jordan - March 22, 1945 (Founder) (entered when still using the name "Transjordan")
•  Lebanon - March 22, 1945 (Founder)
•  Saudi Arabia - March 22, 1945 (Founder)
•  Syria - March 22, 1945 (Founder)
•  Yemen - May 5, 1945 (Founder)
•  Libya - March 28, 1953¹
•  Sudan - January 19, 1956
•  Morocco - October 1, 1958
•  Tunisia - October 1, 1958
•  Kuwait - July 20, 1961
•  Algeria - August 16, 1962
•  United Arab Emirates - June 12, 1971
•  Bahrain - September 11, 1971
•  Qatar - September 11, 1971
•  Oman - September 29, 1971
•  Mauritania - November 26, 1973
•  Somalia - February 14, 1974
• Palestinian Territories - succeeding to the position held by the Palestine Liberation Organization since September 9, 1976
•  Djibouti - April 9, 1977
•  Comoros - November 20, 1993

[ClaireSolt]

According to an Iraqi historian I read, it was Napoleon who imposed the idea that they are all Arabs. Part of getting the Middle East healthy is splitting up this false identity and letting them regain their own separate histories and identities that go back thousands of years. Maybe you saw the article yesterday dating Egyptian civilization to 10,000 BC.

[alwaysconservative]

Thanks for the ping, Pokey, and bump for later reading!

[gcruse]

"Part of getting the Middle East healthy is splitting up this false identity "

So it's done by simply declaring Syrians and Egyptians aren't Arabs?

I've googled for the last half hour and found tons of references to Egyptian Arabs but none that Egyptians are not Arabs. Either there is an ethnic arabic community imbedded among 'regular' egyptians, or your statement is in the service of someone's agenda. I'd welcome an authoritative cite in opposition.

[Rummyfan]

In one of the most admirably straightforward of Islamist declarations, Hussein Massawi, the Hezbollah leader behind the slaughter of U.S. and French forces 20 years ago, put it this way:

"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."

So it should be our policy to eliminate them - no Gitmo, no trials under the UCMJ or in criminal courts. Elimination!

Thanks for the ping!

[Rummyfan]

Suppose this were true -- that terrorists blew up Oz honeymooners and Scandinavian stoners in Balinese nightclubs because of "the Palestinian question." Doesn't this suggest that these people are, at a certain level, nuts?

Oh they are nuts, on many levels!

[Rummyfan]

Meanwhile, Kofi Annan in a remarkable display of urgency (at least when compared with Sudan, Rwanda, Congo et al.) is proposing apropos Israel and Hezbollah that U.N. peacekeepers go in, not to keep the "peace" between two sovereign states but rather between a sovereign state and a usurper terrorist gang. Contemptible as he is, the secretary-general shows a shrewd understanding of the way the world is heading: Already "non-state actors" have more sophisticated rocketry than many EU nations; if Iran has its way, its proxies will be implied nuclear powers. Maybe we should put them on the U.N. Security Council.

There are no words to describe my utter contempt for Kofi Annan and the UN! Can we start a taxpayer protest - no taxes paid as long as we support the UN?

[SquirrelKing]

...Syria is in effect Iran's first Sunni Arab prison bitch. For the other regimes in the region, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria are dead states that have risen as vampires.

Holy crap!

[Billthedrill]

it never occurred to them that they might face a real crisis one day: a Middle East dominated by an apocalyptic Iran and its local enforcers, in which Arab self-rule turns out to have been a mere interlude between the Ottoman sultans and the eternal eclipse of a Persian nuclear umbrella.

Arab self-rule was an interregnum from the beginning. Al Qaeda's bleary adherents long for a slice of time between the Arab conquest of the Middle East and the Seljuk Turks' taking it away from them five centuries later. Somehow the invincible power of Allah fell then, as it is falling now, to the ones with the bigger divisions.

The principal difference between then and now is that technology has given more destructive power into fewer hands, so much so that a core of fanatics wields a power proportionate to their threats, not their actual ability. This is a scenario custom-made for a despot. Of course in a straight fight the U.S. would wipe Iran from the map, and so would Russia and China. There will be no straight fight. There will be blackmail and intimidation, terror and propaganda, and one by one the weak will surrender because fighting under the conditions presented to them is futile. And many, especially but not exclusively on the left, will applaud the grand pageant until they are no longer spectators and no longer capable of becoming fighters.

That's what this is all about. Anyone dismissing the War On Terror as flailing against an abstraction is comforting him- or herself. Terror states and proxy armies aren't abstractions at all.

[decal]

"Failure to Solve the Palestinian Question - And what question is that?"

Try this one: "Why are the Palis suffered to live?"

[irv]

Thanks for the ping.

One thing that stands out - Steyn is right as far as he goes (as usual). The Europeans and even some of the Arabs recognize that there's a problem other than Israel that needs dealt with. The really big question is whether they'll still remember that six months from now, when the problem is no longer front page news.

I'm betting they won't.

[Brian Allen]

<< .... when bombs went off in Bali killing hundreds of tourists plus local waiters and barmen, Bruce Haigh, an Aussie former "diplomat" in Indonesia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, had no doubt where to put the blame. As he told Australia's Nine Network: "The root cause of this issue has been America's backing of Israel on Palestine."

Suppose this were true -- that terrorists blew up Oz honeymooners and Scandinavian stoners in Balinese nightclubs because of "the Palestinian question." Doesn't this suggest that these people are, at a certain level, nuts? After all, there are plenty of IRA sympathizers around the world (try making the Ulster Unionist case in a Boston bar) and yet they never thought to protest British rule in Northern Ireland by blowing up, say, German tourists in Thailand. >>

Even in Aussie the only folks taking the gummint dole are those too damned stupid to be skule teechahs and jernolists. But, no doubt about it, islamanazis are that damned (and even slightly more so than the bloody "ira" and its potato-brained supporters) brutishly mentally deranged.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel.

also Keywords 2006israelwar or WOT [War on Terror]

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[Lurker]

I took the posters word for it.

I suppose an argument could be made that Egyptians are Africans but I'm not so sure about Syrians.

From now on I shall drop the word 'arab' entirely when discussing the issue.

One thing is for sure, though. There is still no such thing as a 'palestinian.'

L

[gcruse]

"Anyone dismissing the War On Terror as flailing against an abstraction is comforting him- or herself. Terror states and proxy armies aren't abstractions at all."

James Carville in support panties, Eleanor Clift, played that card on the week's McLaughlin Group. She said Hezbollah is like terrorism in that it is an idea and thus cannot be defeated.

Under those lights, Israel should just give up, which is what the Clift/Buchanans seem to be saying.

[ClaireSolt]

How about you just use your head? In the seventh century, Mohammed led a small group of nomads out of Arabia to conquer the Middle East, North Africa and Spain. The conquerors were Arabs. The people who were conquered were Egyptians, Syrians, Spanish, and Persians etc. You keep being stubborn, but I'll bet you wouldn't be insisting that Spanards are Arabs. During the Inquisition, Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Moors and Jews from Spain. Obviously, they could tell the difference. So could you. If not, you would see no difference between Jews and Arabs in Palestine. Mohammed conquered Jerusalem, too.

[gcruse]

One would think balkanizing what Arabs themselves consider to be Arabs is less likely to produce stability in the region. Using my head doesn't leave me enamored of a bridge to the 12th century.