The Return of the Bad Old Middle East By: Steven Plaut

THE RETURN OF THE BAD OLD MIDDLE EAST
The Return of the Bad Old Middle East
By: Steven Plaut

Date: Wednesday, December 31 2008



For most of the past 16 years or so, a seemingly benign specter has been 
haunting the world - namely, the notion that there exists a New Middle 
East, one that plays by rules very different from those in the Bad Old 
Middle East.

Beginning with the first of the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, Israel 
was launched by its own political leadership into a "peace process" whose 
main axiom was that the Old Middle East was dead and gone.

Oslo was based on the assumption that what was needed to resolve the 
conflict was a sincere willingness on Israel's part to reach an 
accommodation with the Arab world through unilateral concessions and 
especially through Israel's acknowledging the legitimacy of Palestinian 
demands for statehood.

But as we enter the year 2009, the conclusion is unavoidable that there is 
no such thing as a New Middle East. The Bad Old Middle East keeps 
reasserting itself - with a vengeance.

It is crucial at this point in history for all to abandon the campaign of 
peace through make-believe that has governed efforts at resolving the 
conflict since late 1992. No progress can be made until the world renews 
its acquaintance with Middle East reality and stares it straight in its 
unpleasant face. Unhappy truths and principles must again be understood 
and internalized. The most important ones follow.

I. Arab terrorism and military aggression are not caused by Israeli 
occupation but rather by the removal of Israeli occupation.


Since Oslo, the working hypothesis of the Israeli government, endorsed by 
nearly everyone on the planet, has been that the most urgent task at hand 
was to end the Israeli "occupation" and remove Israel from its position of 
control over the lives of Palestinian Arabs.

The Israeli Left and its amen chorus in the international media have been 
repeating for so many years that the ultimate cause of Palestinian 
terrorism and Arab grievances is the "occupation" of "Palestinian lands" 
by Israel that few are capable any longer of thinking about that assertion 
critically. It is wrong. The main cause of anti-Israel terrorism today is 
the removal of Israeli occupation from Palestinian Arabs.

This is so obvious that it is a major intellectual challenge to explain 
why so few people understand it. Israel ended its occupation of the Gaza 
Strip in its entirety in 2004 and evicted all Jews who had been living 
there. The result was the massive ongoing rocket assaults launched from 
the Gaza Strip against Sderot, Ashkelon, and other towns in the south of 
Israel.

The Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon was unilaterally ended in the 
year 2000 by then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. The direct result of 
that move was the launching of 4,000 Katyusha rockets from Lebanon against 
northern Israel in the summer of 2006 and several times that number now 
poised to strike Israel.

The worst waves of Palestinian suicide attacks were directly triggered by 
the early Oslo withdrawals - before which there were no suicide bombings.

The only possible exception to the rule that removal of Israeli occupation 
causes terrorism has been the Sinai Peninsula, which is largely empty. Yet 
given the role of the Sinai and its Egyptian-sponsored smuggling networks 
in providing a pipeline for rockets and explosives to Hamas in Gaza, it is 
not even clear that Israel's withdrawal from Sinai is an exception to this 
rule.

There can be no doubt that a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West 
Bank and a return to pre-1967 borders would trigger a massive rocket and 
terror assault against the remaining rump areas of Israel, launched from 
the "liberated" lands in the West Bank. The same thing would result from 
relinquishing the Golan Heights to Syria.

There are worse things in the world than occupation, and the experiences 
of the past few years have demonstrated how much worse are the 
consequences that follow the removal of Israeli occupation. The inevitable 
consequence of a complete withdrawal by Israel to its 1967 borders would 
be a replay of 1967, when the Arab world hoped to achieve the military 
annihilation of Israel inside its Green Line borders. This time, though, 
the Arabs would be using 21st century military technology.

Academics can debate about whether animosity to Israel was itself 
initially stoked by the years of Palestinians living under occupation. But 
in fact there was more than sufficient Palestinian animosity and terrorism 
long before Israel occupied anything at all in the 1967 Six-Day War. Be 
that as it may, progress today can occur only if the starting point is the 
understanding that removal of Israeli occupation causes terror and 
violence.

II. Israeli goodwill concessions do not trigger goodwill among Arabs, they 
trigger Arab aggression and violence.


The Arabs interpret such goodwill measures as admission of weakness on 
Israel's part and as demonstrations of Israeli vulnerability and 
destructibility. More generally, the axiom that Israeli niceness toward 
Arabs can generate Arab moderation, reasonableness, and friendliness is 
also false. It cannot.

Attempts at buying Arab moderation through demonstrations of Jewish 
self-restraint and niceness go back decades and predate Israel's 
independence (back then it was termed havlaga). They have never worked. 
Present-day attempts to win over Arabs with niceness and restraint range 
from affirmative action programs that benefit Arabs, to turning a blind 
eye toward massive lawbreaking by Arabs, particularly regarding 
construction and squatting on public lands.

Niceness means never prosecuting Arab political leaders for treason and 
espionage or for endorsing terror, no matter how openly they do so. It 
means exempting Israeli Arabs from military conscription and even from 
civilian national service. It has even meant that families of Arabs killed 
while perpetrating terror atrocities against Jews were allowed to draw 
"survivor benefits" from Israel's social security system (the National 
Insurance Institute).

Outside the Green Line, niceness often consists of endless offers of 
cease-fires with the terrorists - cease-fires that consist of Palestinians 
shooting and Israelis not shooting back. It means delivering funds and 
sometimes weapons to the very groups engaged in terrorism, in an attempt 
to maintain the fa.ade of an ongoing peace process.

None of these measures can assuage Arab bellicosity toward Israel and 
Jews; actually, each contributes toward its escalation. Should Israel ever 
nicely withdraw to its pre-1967 borders, the Arab world led by "Palestine" 
will launch a war against the remaining territory of the Jewish state. It 
is likely to do so in the name of the "oppressed" Arabs in the Negev and 
the Galilee supposedly suffering from "discrimination" in the Israeli 
"apartheid regime."

III. The Arab-Israeli war is not about land, and it cannot be resolved by 
Israel's relinquishing land.



The Arab world already controls territory nearly twice that of the United 
States (including Alaska), whereas all of Israel cannot be seen on most 
world maps. When Israel was occupying nothing outside of its pre-1967 
borders, the Arab world refused to come to terms with its existence and is 
no more willing to do so today, even if Israel were to return to those 
same borders.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is not about Israel refusing to share land and 
resources with Palestinians but about the absolute refusal of the Arab 
world to acquiesce in the existence of any Jewish-majority political 
entity within any set of borders in the Middle East.

This misrepresentation of the conflict serves to prolong it, precisely 
because it misleads. The Arab world insists that Israel trade land for 
peace not because it is prepared to in turn offer Israel peace for the 
land it vacates, but because a smaller Israel will be that much easier to 
destroy. And even if Israel consisted of nothing more than downtown Tel 
Aviv, the Arab world would consider it to be an imperialist affront 
sitting on stolen Arab land - an illegal "settlement."

IV. Education and economic progress do not produce political moderation or 
a desire for peace in the Arab world.


To the contrary, there is reason to believe that wealth and education are 
negatively correlated with moderation, meaning that wealthier and 
better-educated Arabs are more likely to support terrorism and extremist 
political ideas. Arab students in European and American universities have 
been regular recruits for terrorist groups, and most of the al Qaeda 
terrorists who carried out the 9/11 atrocities had been students.

Suicide bombers in Israel often are university students or graduates of 
Palestinian universities. Some have been highly educated professionals, 
such as the lawyer who blew herself up in the Maxim restaurant in Haifa, 
killing 21 people on the spot. Public opinion polls among Arabs often show 
greater support for violence among the better educated.

More generally, in the Middle East poverty and political oppression do not 
produce terrorism. Anti-Israel terrorism was sparked by the imposition of 
an enlightened regime on Palestinians by Israel - a regime in which basic 
freedoms, including freedom of speech and the right to vote in local 
elections, were enjoyed.

Terrorism escalated with each concession by Israel, especially after it 
agreed to allow Palestinians political autonomy and then statehood. It 
escalated after Israel removed its administrative control of the Arab 
population in most of the "Palestinian territories."

V. "Talks" cannot produce peace in the Middle East and in fact have 
harmful effects.


There is a Western obsession with the idea that all world problems can be 
resolved through talking. But how many international conflicts can be said 
to have been resolved strictly through talking? Especially in the Middle 
East, there can be no doubt that talking does not resolve hostilities. It 
makes them worse.

The Arab-Israeli war is not a marital spat where bringing together the 
parties to sit around a table and socialize reduces anger, 
misunderstanding and tension. The conflict is not about hurt feelings but 
about the refusal of the Arab world to come to terms with Israel's 
existence, period, in any set of borders and regardless of whether 
Jerusalem remains under Israeli control.

VI. There is no "two-state solution" or "one-state solution" to the Arab 
Israeli conflict.


The latter solution is particularly popular on the left. Under that 
scenario, Israel is enfolded into a larger "secular democratic Arab state" 
with an Arab Muslim majority. It is in fact little more than a 
prescription for a Rwanda-style genocide of Jews. This is little doubt 
that a significant number of those proposing such a solution would really 
like to see this happen.

More important, there is no "two-state solution" to the Middle East 
conflict. Those speaking about a two-state solution really mean a 24-state 
solution, meaning the Arabs retain the 22 states they already have, adding 
a 23rd state of "Palestine" in parts of the West Bank and Gaza and 
pre-1967 Israeli territories, with Israel remaining the Jewish state - the 
24th state in the plan - for the moment.

That such a solution will not end the conflict but only signal the 
commencement of its next stage has long been the quasi-official position 
of virtually all Palestinian groups, which have long insisted that any 
two-state solution is but a stage in a plan of stages, after which will 
come additional steps ultimately ending Israel's existence as a Jewish 
state.

The original partition plan of the United Nations had proposed that an 
Arab Palestinian state arise alongside Israel in 1948. The Arab world 
rejected this plan altogether. It had no interest in adding one more Arab 
Islamic state to its portfolio. It went to war to prevent the creation of 
any Jewish state.

The two-state solution is no more realistic an option today than it was in 
1948. It is ultimately as much of an existential threat to Jewish survival 
in the Middle East as the one-state solution. Creation of a Palestinian 
state alongside Israel would be a major step in the escalation of the Arab 
war against Israel's existence, even if that war is delayed for a time 
while the world celebrates the outbreak of peace in the Middle East thanks 
to the end of Israeli "occupation."

VII. Israeli Arabs form a potential fifth column, displaying massive 
animosity and disloyalty to the state in which they have lived for 60 
years and openly identifying with the enemies of that state.


Sixty years of living under the only democratic government in the Middle 
East has had surprisingly little impact on the feelings and loyalties of 
Israeli Arabs, who are by and large hostile to the very existence of the 
state. They are no more resigned to living as a minority within a 
majority-Jewish state today than they were in 1948.

Their animosity toward Israel is apparent in their voting behavior: the 
bulk of Israeli Arabs vote for pro-terror Arab nationalist parties with 
strong fascist tendencies or for the Stalinist HADASH party.

When the opportunity presents itself - for example, during the riots in 
the fall of 2000 or earlier this year on Yom Kippur in Acre - Israeli Arab 
enmity toward Jews is candidly manifested, and not just in words.

Education and prosperity offer little hope of changing this reality. One 
proof is the behavior of Arab college students in Israel. Despite being 
beneficiaries of affirmative action preferences in college admissions and 
access to scarce dormitory space, Arab students are almost uniformly 
anti-Israel and pro-jihad.

Israeli Arabs have long played a Sudeten-like role in the conflict. In any 
new outbreak of hostilities with neighboring Arab countries, there is a 
clear and present danger that they will take to the streets in attempts to 
cripple the country from within. The Arab lynch mobs of the Galilee that 
operated in October 2000 may have been a small foretaste.

For too long the world, led by Israel's own deluded leaders, has been 
attempting to create peace via the pretense that war is over, 
misrepresenting the fa.ade of negotiations as actual resolution of 
conflict.

It has been a sham, of course, and any short-lived lulls in the fighting 
have served only to weaken the resolve of Israelis, whose leaders have 
repeatedly presented them with a Potemkin peace based on the substitution 

of wish-making for statecraft.


SOLVING THE "PALESTINIAN PROBLEM"
Solving the "Palestinian Problem"
by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
January 7, 2009
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/6110

Israel's war against Hamas brings up the old quandary: What to do about the Palestinians? Western states, including Israel, need to set goals to figure out their policy toward the West Bank and Gaza.

Let's first review what we know does not and cannot work:

Israeli control. Neither side wishes to continue the situation that began in 1967, when the Israel Defense Forces took control of a population that is religiously, culturally, economically, and politically different and hostile.
A Palestinian state. The 1993 Oslo Accords began this process but a toxic brew of anarchy, ideological extremism, antisemitism, jihadism, and warlordism led to complete Palestinian failure.
A binational state: Given the two populations' mutual antipathy, the prospect of a combined Israel-Palestine (what Muammar al-Qaddafi calls "Israstine") is as absurd as it seems.
Excluding these three prospects leaves only one practical approach, that which worked tolerably well in the period 1948-67:

Shared Jordanian-Egyptian rule: Amman rules the West Bank and Cairo runs Gaza.
To be sure, this back-to-the-future approach inspires little enthusiasm. Not only was Jordanian-Egyptian rule undistinguished but resurrecting this arrangement will frustrate Palestinian impulses, be they nationalist or Islamist. Further, Cairo never wanted Gaza and has vehemently rejected its return. Accordingly, one academic analyst dismisses this idea "an elusive fantasy that can only obscure real and difficult choices."

It is not. The failures of Yasir Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, of the Palestinian Authority and the "peace process," have prompted rethinking in Amman and Jerusalem. Indeed, the Christian Science Monitor's Ilene R. Prusher found already in 2007 that the idea of a West Bank-Jordan confederation "seems to be gaining traction on both sides of the Jordan River."

The Jordanian government, which enthusiastically annexed the West Bank in 1950 and abandoned its claims only under duress in 1988, shows signs of wanting to return. Dan Diker and Pinchas Inbari documented for the Middle East Quarterly in 2006 how the PA's "failure to assert control and become a politically viable entity has caused Amman to reconsider whether a hands-off strategy toward the West Bank is in its best interests." Israeli officialdom has also showed itself open to this idea, occasionally calling for Jordanian troops to enter the West Bank.

Despairing of self-rule, some Palestinians welcome the Jordanian option. An unnamed senior PA official told Diker and Inbari that that a form of federation or confederation with Jordan offers "the only reasonable, stable, long-term solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict." Hanna Seniora opined that "The current weakened prospects for a two-state solution forces us to revisit the possibility of a confederation with Jordan." The New York Times' Hassan M. Fattah quotes a Palestinian in Jordan: "Everything has been ruined for us -­ we've been fighting for 60 years and nothing is left. It would be better if Jordan ran things in Palestine, if King Abdullah could take control of the West Bank."

Nor is this just talk: Diker and Inbari report that back-channel PA-Jordan negotiations in 2003-04 "resulted in an agreement in principle to send 30,000 Badr Force members," to the West Bank.

And while Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak announced a year ago that "Gaza is not part of Egypt, nor will it ever be," his is hardly the last word. First, Mubarak notwithstanding, Egyptians overwhelmingly want a strong tie to Gaza; Hamas concurs; and Israeli leaders sometimes agree. So the basis for an overhaul in policy exists.

Secondly, Gaza is arguably more a part of Egypt than of "Palestine." During most of the Islamic period, it was either controlled by Cairo or part of Egypt administratively. Gazan colloquial Arabic is identical to what Egyptians living in Sinai speak. Economically, Gaza has most connections to Egypt. Hamas itself derives from the Muslim Brethren, an Egyptian organization. Is it time to think of Gazans as Egyptians?

Thirdly, Jerusalem could out-maneuver Mubarak. Were it to announce a date when it ends the provisioning of all water, electricity, food, medicine, and other trade, plus accept enhanced Egyptian security in Gaza, Cairo would have to take responsibility for Gaza. Among other advantages, this would make it accountable for Gazan security, finally putting an end to the thousands of Hamas rocket and mortar assaults.


The Jordan-Egypt option quickens no pulse, but that may be its value. It offers a uniquely sober way to solve the "Palestinian problem."