Hassan Al-Battal
Al-Ayyam (Opinion)
January 9, 2010 - 12:00am
http://www.al-ayyam.ps/znews/site/template/article.aspx?did=130848&Date=1/9/2010
One can excuse the Palestinians for viewing the problems of Middle East and terrorism through their own narrow prism. This is precisely the same prism they are using to view the recent events of Rafah and Al-Arish.
But how could the Islamists who run Gaza and proclaim that their fight is with Israel as well as with the Authority in Ramallah follow such a wrongheaded policy towards Egypt? They are hurling clubs and bullets across the border, using short-term logic that undermines long-term strategic objectives, and are exploiting the dual siege for political purposes. In doing so they are undermining Egypt’s fragile security in the Sinai.
No one can overstate the steadfastness of Gaza. But the Islamist movement that controls and rules Gaza is taking full credit for the steadfastness of its people. Gazans, out of necessity, have resorted to using sesame oil as a substitute for gasoline and heating oil, items that they used to import from Israel. UNRWA was forced to build homes with mud for lack of iron and cement. There is no way to attribute the steadfastness of the people to the industry of Hamas, since it arises instead from the resourcefulness of people in dire circumstances.
In contrast, the Israelis are not unexcused when they claim that the Palestinian issue is not paramount.
What is the relationship of the conflict in Swat Valley in Pakistan, where the Islamists blew up a sports stadium and killed over a hundred spectators, with the issue of the Palestinian state? What is the relationship of Darfur and Sudan with the Palestinian problem? What is the relationship to the Zaidi Huthists? What does Al Qaeda’s attempt to blow up a plane over Detroit have to do with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? What knowledge did the Nigerian Abdul Muttalab have about the intricacies of that conflict, his voyage to Yemen on the pretext of studying Arabic notwithstanding?
These are the arguments that the Israelis use when the Americans posit a correlation between the crisis in their relations with the Islamic world and the resolution of the Palestinian problem.
The proclamations of Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman are properly dismissed in European political circles, but are popular in Israel. Otherwise, Netanyahu would have already replaced him as foreign minister.
I don’t see a nuclear Iran as a threat to Palestine. But I do see the anti-Semitic rhetoric and denial of Israel’s right to exist expressed by the present leadership in Iran as a flagrant manifestation of Iran’s political ambition to become a regional super power. The Iranians should not be allowed to use the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to feed this ambition. Turkey, on the other hand, is succeeding in its regional plan by balancing its relations with Israel, the Arab states and Iran, as well as with the West and the Islamic world.
Our beloved Egypt, the cornerstone of what remains of the Arab nation, tries quietly to improve conditions in the Sudan, to ameliorate the pains of Yemen, and maybe to coexist with the ambitions of a nuclear Iran. But Egypt is neck-deep in its involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli issue due to its border with Gaza and the persisting nationalist sentiments that pull it towards the Palestinian problem. Also, the constrained competitiveness and cold peace with Israel compel Egypt to differentiate between Gaza tunnels that are in fact lifelines, and other Gaza tunnels that are used to smuggle militants and arms. Nobody believes that Egypt does not ignore the tunnels that indeed serve a reasonable function.
There is a profound significance in the question that the Saudi foreign minister posed to the Hamas leadership: Are you an Arab movement or not? There is an effort to connect Islam to political Islam, political Islam to religious action, religious action to jihad, jihad to terrorism, and terrorism to the killing of innocent civilians.
Last month witnessed a very important landmark in Iraq: not a single American soldier died, while 369 Iraqis died in suicide bombings, a tactic that the Palestinians have said goodbye to and not a minute too soon, just as they once said goodbye to hijacking airplanes.
The Palestinian problem is above all an Arab problem, in spite of the prevailing deplorable state of the Arab world that has allowed the Jihadist movements to falsely use the Palestinian problem in its effort to create and reinforce a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West.
The Palestinian problem is also a Jewish, Israeli and Zionist issue. This should be the priority for the Israelis, even though they currently view nuclear Iran as the paramount threat. In the past, Iran was not seen as an existential threat, but Israel feels the need to have a monopoly on being the strongest power in the region.
In a nutshell: the Islamists are inflicting serious damage to the issue they falsely proclaim to be fighting a jihad for. Their reckless and barbaric attacks against innocent civilians give credence to the Israeli argument that the root of the unrest in the region is not the Palestinian issue, but rather Islam and its search for its character and identity, an identity that is trying to find a place in an evolving and civilized world.
The Islamist and Jihadist movements are greatly diminishing the centrality of the Palestinian problem at the very time when the issue has finally been placed at the forefront of the attention of Europe and the United States of America.
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