THE TWISTED ROAD MAP TO DISASTER: LOUIS RENE BERES
STILL TAKING DETOURS TO SURVIVAL
OBAMA, NETANYAHU AND THE TWISTING “ROAD MAP†TO GENOCIDE AND WAR
As published in The Jewish Press/March-April, 2010
Louis René Beres
Professor of International Law
Department of Political Science
Purdue University
Oddly, Israel and the United States remain intent upon committing gigantic and possibly lethal errors in world affairs. Unimpressed by history, and determinedly indifferent to glaring facts on the ground, Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama now proceed more or less smugly on the twisting road to “Palestine.” Along the way, the United States continues to equip and train Palestinian Authority (PA) “security forces,” a disjointed band of armed criminals that represents little more than the grotesque vanguard of future anti-Israel and anti-American terrorism.
Credo quia absurdum. “I believe because it is absurd.” Arming Fatah against Hamas is a foolish and self-defeating foreign policy based on the utterly false presumption of a consequential difference between criminal organizations. In the conceptually related matter of arming or otherwise supporting certain Sunni Arab states against Shiite Iran, our leaders in Washington and Jerusalem also exhibit the latest example of a time-dishonored geopolitics.
The Obama administration, like its immediate predecessor, understandably seeks some sort of tangible balance among states in the Middle East. But in today’s complex world politics, where sub-state actors often assume very critical roles, antiquated policies of contrived “equilibrium” are destined to fail. This is especially the case when one considers the inherently destabilizing impact of Iranian nuclear weapons, a future impact made possible by the persistent American and Israeli unwillingness to acknowledge the obvious futility of “sanctions.”
Still bowing to the president of the United States, this one as incapable of nuanced strategic thinking as the one who came before him, Mr. Netanyahu will certainly choose to stay “prudently†close to the prescribed “Road Map.” Supporters of this latest expression of a “Middle East Peace Process” (before highway metaphors became fashionable, there was “Osloâ€) will continue to base their principal argument on a series of manifestly unwarranted assumptions. Assessing all ascertainable evidence, and all explicit Palestinian threats, it should already be plain that no process of unilateral dismemberment (former Prime Minister Sharon called it “disengagement;” successor Prime Minister Olmert called it “realignmentâ€) can ever bring purposeful resolution to what is fundamentally a religious dispute between Israel and the recalcitrant Arabs.
The essential Israeli struggle against Arab/Islamic genociders (what else should one call adversaries who seek Israel’s destruction “in whole or in part”?) has little or nothing to do with territory. Rather, it has to do with an altogether irreconcilable configuration of enemies that seeks not land, but religious hegemony. Ultimately, Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu should finally recognize that these particular Islamic enemies seek something far more personal than any kind of political settlement. In the final analysis, what they seek is nothing less than immortality.
In all world politics, there is no greater form of power than the power over death. The core dispute between Israel and the Palestinians is thus not about any sort of secular or territorial compromise; it is about G-d. From 1948 to the present, the Arab/Islamic world’s authentically existential opposition to Israel has stemmed preeminently from a deeply doctrinal hatred of a Jewish state in its midst – indeed, of any Jewish state that dares to defile the Dar al Islam.
Now, truly basic questions need to be asked. If Arab/Islamic opposition to Israel were only about West Bank (Judea/Samaria) and Gaza, why then were there so many Arab terrorist attacks against Jews between 1948 and 1967? Then, these disputed territories were in Arab hands? What, exactly, were these terrorists seeking to “liberate” before there were even any “Israel-occupied territories?” What, in fact, were Arab terrorists trying to accomplish before Israel even became a state?
For that significantly sizeable portion of the Arab/Islamic world that remains dedicated to Israel’s annihilation, an inventive cartography is part of a far wider strategy of genocide. To understand this, we must recall that in the generally accepted Arab/Islamic view, Israel is always the individual Jew writ large. The Jewish State – any Jewish state – must always be loathed. This easily documented and nefarious deduction is a far cry from the persistently wishful view of Oslo/Road Map/Disengagement/Realignment supporters – that is, that Israel is despised only because it is Zionist, only because it is an “occupier.”
The Israeli is hated in the Arab/Islamic world because he is a Jew. Period! That is the whole story. All else is commentary. All else is land for nothing.
An authoritative expression of this Islamic view is stated unambiguously in a widely-cited article from Al-Ahram. Here, the religiously prominent Dr. Lufti Abd al-Azim wrote straightforwardly and portentously:
The first thing we have to make clear is that no distinction must be made between the Jew and the Israeli…. The Jew is a Jew, through the millennia…. in spurning all moral values, devouring the living and drinking his blood for the sake of a few coins. The Jew, the merchant of Venice, does not differ from the killer of Deir Yasin or the killer of the camps. They are equal examples of human degradation. Let us therefore put aside such distinctions and talk about Jews.
The regionally and Islamically revered Dr. Abd al-Azim is not alone in this revealing position. A current Egyptian textbook on Arab Islamic History – one widely used in teacher training colleges – expresses the following parallel sentiments:
The Jews are always the same, every time and everywhere. They will not live save in darkness. They contrive their evils clandestinely. They fight only when they are hidden, because they are cowards….The Prophet enlightened us about the right way to treat them, and succeeded finally in crushing the plots that they had planned. We today must follow this way and purify Palestine from their filth.
We may also consider some very recent postings from the Muslim Brotherhood Children’s Website (based in Egypt, a country allegedly “at peace” with Israel):
Did you know that the Jews murdered 25 of the Prophets of Allah, and that their black history is full of crimes of murder and corruption?
Did you know that the criminal Jews frequently revile and curse our Lord?
Did you know that the Jews made several attempts to murder our beloved Prophet, but that Allah the Omnipotent saved him from their plot?
Did you know that the corruption and deviance widespread in the world today are the result of activity and planning by the Jews, who are interested in leading people astray, away from the path of Allah?
Did you know that the Jews who occupy our land and our holy places in beloved Palestine are planning to occupy the rest of the Muslim countries and to establish a Greater Israel, from the Euphrates to the Nile, and that they are interested in excavating in the tomb of our beloved Prophet?
Did you know that today the Jews are inciting the entire world against Islam and the Muslims, on the pretext of the war against terror?
And so it goes.
How, then, shall we understand President Obama’s unswerving position on Palestinian statehood? How, too, shall we understand other current advocates of the so-called “peace process?”
Some supporters of the Road Map and its attendant disengagements and realignments, preferring to simply disregard the widely prevailing Arab/Islamic image of Israel as a pathology, base their flawed position on a problematic acceptance of the Palestinian claim to the remaining “territories” (Judea/Samaria). Leaving aside the very questionable nature of the underlying demographic argument (e.g., the commonly stated and unsupported assertion that current Palestinians are descended directly from the ancient Canaanites), these supporters conveniently ignore the continuous Jewish presence in these lands. They also ignore that more than one million Palestinians are now full citizens of Israel. This is a juridical condition that is hardly mirrored in the Arab world, where 900,000 Jews were slaughtered or expelled from area states after 1948, and which presently denies Jews any remotely parallel rights of nationality. Yet, it is the Palestinians – not the Israelis – who cling relentlessly to the idea of Jihad or holy war.
The unchanging struggle to evict the Jews from “all of Palestine” (that is, from Israel proper, as well as from Judea/Samaria/Gaza), is driven by this idea. According to Islamic orthodoxy, the Prophet is said to have predicted a final war to annihilate the Jews. Mohammed, it is reported, had stated: “The hour (i.e., salvation) will not come until you fight against the Jews; and the stone would say, `O Muslim! There is a Jew behind me: come and kill him.'”
Israel’s Peace Process supporters, in advancing Palestinian legal claims, forget, inter alia, that the PLO had openly urged Saddam Hussein to launch annihilatory attacks upon Israel during the 1991 Gulf War. Yassir Arafat had enthusiastically embraced Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, sending units of the Palestinian Liberation Army (PLA) to actively assist with the inter-Arab killing, rape and torture of Kuwaitis. Following the Iraqi aggression in early August 1991, Arafat and the PLO had plainly and vigorously supported Baghdad.
At the Cairo Summit of August 10, 1990, Arafat deflected attention from the invasion toward the crises in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Abdul Abbas sent his own paramilitary forces into the occupied state to help “police” the sheikhdom. So, too, did the PFLP’s George Habash and the DFLP’s Nayef Hawatmeh. At the time, Mohammed Milhem, a senior aide to Arafat, publicly threatened Fatah-led terrorism “everywhere” in support of Iraq. Today, U.S. President Barack Obama uses American tax dollars to “train” Fatah “security forces.” Doesn’t anyone remember U.S. aid to the Afghan “freedom fighters” then called Mujahedeen?
Arab/Islamic critics of Israel often speak of sinister Jewish migrations to “Palestine†after World War I, neglecting to mention that (1) there has been a substantial and continuous Jewish presence in the land for over three thousand years; and (2) there has been a steady Jewish majority in Jerusalem. Nor do they bother to recall that after World War II, when the General Assembly proposed to partition Palestine, this offer followed an earlier (1922) illegal partition by the British which gave almost 80% of the land promised to the Jews by the Balfour Declaration to create the Arab state of Trans Jordan. From the standpoint of authoritative international law at the time of the 1947 partition vote in the United Nations, the Jews had already been unlawfully deprived of four-fifths of their lawful entitlement.
How did protracted warfare first arise between Israel and the Arabs?. Not even militant Arab leaders or anti-Zionist historians could conceivably accept the view that the 1948-49 conflict was a war of Jewish origin. On February 16, 1948, the U.N. Palestine Commission reported to the Security Council: “Powerful Arab interests, both inside and outside Palestine, are defying the resolution of the General Assembly and are engaged in a deliberate effort to alter by force the settlement envisaged therein.” Ironically, the Arabs themselves were entirely honest in accepting responsibility for starting the war. Jamal Husseini informed the Security Council on April 16, 1948: “The representatives of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We did not deny this. We told the whole world that we were going to fight.”
As for the British commander of Jordan’s Arab Legion, John Bagot Glubb, he remarked candidly: “Early in January, the first detachments of the Arab Liberation Army began to infiltrate into Palestine from Syria. Some came through Jordan and even through Amman…. They were in reality to strike the first blow in the ruin of the Arabs of Palestine.â€
The State of Israel came into being on May 14, 1948. The five Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, Trans Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq immediately invaded the new microstate. Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, expressed their combined intention publicly: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” In terms of international law, the Arab League thus spoke from the beginning in unhidden support of genocide. This is hardly surprising, especially in view of their candid and warm personal cooperation with Hitler and the Axis against the Allies in World War II.
Israel’s critics maintain that the 1967 War was one of Israeli aggression, rather than a war of Israeli self-defense. Yet, on May 15, Israel’s Independence Day, Egyptian troops began moving into the Sinai, massing near the Israeli border. By May 18, Syrian troops, too, were preparing for battle along the Golan Heights, 3000 feet above the Galilee, from where they had freely shelled Israel’s farms and villages for years. Egypt’s Nasser ordered the U.N. Emergency Force (UNEF), stationed in the Sinai since 1956, to withdraw, whereupon the Voice of the Arabs proclaimed, on May 18, 1967:
As of today, there no longer exists an international emergency force to protect Israel. We shall exercise patience no more. We shall not complain any more to the UN about Israel. The sole method we shall apply against Israel is total war, which will result in the extermination of Zionist existence.
Two days later, an enthusiastic echo came from Hafez Assad, then Syria’s Defense Minister, who proclaimed: “Our forces are now entirely ready…to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland…. The time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation.” President Abdur Rahman Aref of Iraq joined the voluptuous chorus of genocidal threats: “The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy, which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear – to wipe Israel off the map.”
“…to wipe Israel off the map”? Does this sound familiar, today?
On June 4, Iraq formally joined the military alliance with Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The Damascus regime’s commitment to military final solutions for Israel has been described by scholars Ahmed S. Khalidi and Hussein Agha as stemming from “…an apparently strong conviction that the struggle with Israel is no mere political or territorial dispute, but rather a clash of destinies affecting the fate and future of the Middle East.” Syria’s approach to Israel, say Khalidi and Agha, remains “bound up with the view that force, whether active or passive, is the final arbiter of the conflict with Israel, and the ultimate guarantor of any settlement in the area.”
Was Israel the aggressor in 1967, as the Arabs and their supporters continue to maintain? It hardly seems possible. The jurisprudential correctness of Israel’s resort to anticipatory self-defense was well established in longstanding customary international law, in the “general principles of law recognized by civilized nations,” and in the “teachings of the highly-qualified publicists” (all authoritative sources identified at Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice).
International law is not a suicide pact. Israel could not have been expected to wait patiently for its own annihilation. Indeed, when the Government of Golda Meir decided not to exercise the lawful option of anticipatory self-defense in October 1973, when Egypt and Syria were preparing to launch yet another war of genocidal aggression against the Jewish State, Israel almost paid for it with its own collective disappearance.
Although Israel eventually prevailed against the Arab aggressors, it did so at a staggering cost in human life. The Yom Kippur War produced 2326 deaths of Israeli soldiers, nearly ten thousand injuries, and hundreds of prisoners. These costs to Israel were the direct results of A’man’s (Military Intelligence Branch) failure to predict the Arab attack, a failure still known in Israel’s intelligence community as the Mechdal, a Hebrew term meaning “omission,” “nonperformance” or “neglect.”
The Arabs argue that Israel has no legitimate claim on Jerusalem. Yet, Jerusalem has long been a Jewish city, and calling for an end to Israel’s sovereignty over an undivided Jerusalem is simply a call for an end to Israel. Ironically, when, in 1947, the United Nations called for an international (U.N.-administered) city, it was not the Jews – but the Arabs – who refused.
When the Jordanian army seized the Old City during its war of aggression against Israel in 1948, it promptly desecrated all Jewish holy sites in the area, turned Jewish cemeteries and synagogues into urinals, and cruelly murdered all Jews who remained on the Jordanian side of the 1948 armistice line. Of course, Jordanian control over East Jerusalem from 1949 – 1967 was flagrantly unacceptable under international law. This is the case from the standpoints of both the Arab kingdom’s illegal method of acquisition, and of its subsequently brutal methods of occupation.
Do President Obama and Israel’s own Road Map supporters object to these earlier and egregious violations of international law by the Kingdom of Jordan? If they do, they are doing it very quietly. To date, they certainly haven’t even mentioned them.
The viscerally fashionable statement that “Jerusalem is holy to all three monotheistic religions” is now generally taken as prima facie true. Yet, for Muslims, even for those who regard the city as their own because of its presumed Canaanite origins, it is not Jerusalem, but the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca, that is religiously paramount. It is Mecca, not Jerusalem, to which Muslims must pilgrimage at least once.
For Christians, Jerusalem contains some, but not all, of their holiest shrines. For Jews, all main holy sites are within the post-1967 Jerusalem municipal borders, or in very close proximity.
At prayer anywhere in the world, Jews face toward the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Muslims, even those praying on the Mount, face away from it, towards Mecca. When they pray on the Mount, Muslims have their backs toward the Dome of the Rock, while those praying in the Al-Aqsa mosque also look away from Jerusalem, and toward Mecca.
In the Jewish Holy Scriptures, Jerusalem is mentioned 656 times. Jerusalem’s well-being is central to all Jewish prayer. In the Koran, Jerusalem is never mentioned; not even once. With the brief exception of the Crusader period, no conqueror of Jerusalem made the city his capital. Driven into exile by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C.E., the Jews returned fifty years later, and rebuilt Jerusalem as their capital. It was the capital of the Jews, yet again, under the Maccabees.
The rights of both Jews and Christians were openly trampled on by the Muslim conquerors of Jerusalem. Churches were made into mosques. Slaughterhouses were deliberately established near Jewish places of worship. Mosques were built next to churches and synagogues just so their minarets could literally “overtower†them.
In the 2554 years between 587 B.C.E. and 1967 C.E., Jerusalem was conquered more than twenty times, and, as part of many empires, was ruled from different and distant capital cities. Only for the Jews (for more than 650 years), for the Crusaders (for 188 years), and for the State of Israel (since 1949) has Jerusalem served as a capital city.
The official map of “Palestine” issued by the Palestine Authority (PA) shows the projected State of Palestine as comprising all of the West Bank (Judea/Samaria), all of Gaza, all of the State of Israel, and even a “slice†of the Kingdom of Jordan. Additionally, it excludes any reference to a Jewish population, listing holy sites of Christians and Muslims only. An official cartographer, Khalil Tufakji, was commissioned by the PA to design and to locate a proposed Capitol Building. This he drew to be located on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. It would be constructed, he indicated, directly on top of an ancient Jewish cemetery.
From the Oslo Accords’ very beginnings, on September 1, 1993, Yasser Arafat reaffirmed that the “peace” agreements were an intrinsic part of the PLO’s 1974 phased plan for Israel’s destruction: “The agreement will be a basis for an independent Palestinian state in accordance with the Palestinian National Council resolution issued in 1974….The PNC resolution issued in 1974 calls for the establishment of a national authority on any part of Palestinian soil from which Israel withdraws or which is liberated…” Ominously, on May 29, 1994, Rashid Abu Shbak, a senior PA security official, had remarked: “The light which has shone over Gaza and Jericho will also reach the Negev and the Galilee.”
Speaking of maps, it will be instructive to consider the following: The Arab world is comprised of 22 states of nearly five million square miles and 150,000,0000 people. The Islamic world contains 44 states with well over one billion people. The Islamic states comprise an area 672 times the size of Israel. Israel, with a population of about six million Jews, is – together with Judea/Samaria – less than half the size of San Bernardino County in California. The Sinai Desert, which Israel presented to Egypt in the 1979 Treaty, is itself three times larger than the entire State of Israel.
What about the history of Palestinian compliance with the so-called Peace Process? Incontestably the PA and Hamas are both guilty of multiple material breaches of the original Oslo Accords. For example:
1. PA/Hamas still fail to confiscate arms and to disarm militias. The Palestinian police (still drawing upon terrorists for recruitment) are legally obligated to disarm all militias acting in areas under its jurisdiction, to confiscate all weapons other than pistols, and to license pistols in accordance with regulations to be established by the two sides (Annex I, Art. II, 1 and art. XI). In fact, all of the militias which were operating when the PA first assumed control over Gaza and Jericho – Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Fatah – remain armed. In total violation of the Oslo Accords and the successor Road Map, Hamas – even after Israel’s Operation Cast Lead – is still establishing a thriving military industry in Gaza, still complete with extensive cross-border smuggling from Egypt. Even before Prime Minister Sharon’s ill-fated “disengagement” from Gaza, Hamas had established multiple factories for manufacturing various kinds of ammunition. Moreover, and notwithstanding U.S. President Barack Obama’s support of the Road Map, Hamas is now actively engaged in assorted and growing collaborations with al Qaeda.
2. The PA still refuses to present Israel with lists of Palestinian policemen. To enable Israel to prevent terrorists from joining the Palestinian police force (an expectation that Israel has consistently been unable to satisfy), the PA is obligated to submit the list of all potential recruits for Israel’s approval (Annex I, Art. IV, 4). This requirement is especially critical regarding those Palestinians who were initially recruited from those areas where Hamas and Islamic Jihad influence has always been particularly strong. The PA has never submitted any of the names from when it recruited forces for Gaza and Jericho. The PA repeated its codified commitment concerning recruitment for the additional areas governed by the Interim Agreement, but it has still continued and enlarged its policy of systematic noncompliance.
3. The PA has long exceeded the permissible number of policemen. The early Gaza-Jericho Accords of May 1994 limited the number of Palestinian policemen to 9000 (Annex I, Art. III, 3), but during the period when the PA controlled these two areas they enrolled approximately 20,000 people in their so-called “security forces.” The Interim Agreement expanded the PA’s jurisdiction to additional parts of Judea/Samaria, and increased the permissible number of policemen to 24,000 in areas A and B, including Gaza (Annex I, Art. IV, 3). Early on, however, the PA police signed on more than 30,000 men and perhaps as many as 40,000 or even 50,000. This would suggest that the PA police have always been recruited not as a police agency, but as an army.
4. The PA still continues to refuse to extradite any suspected terrorists. The PA is still obligated to turn over to Israel for trial all individuals for whom Israel provides an arrest warrant and proof of terrorist activity (Annex IV, II, 7). Yet, to date, Israel has requested several hundred suspects in mass murder, murder or attempted murder of Israelis, and not one has been handed over to Israeli authorities. Leading PA officials have made it perfectly clear that they have absolutely no intention of honoring the extradition provisions of the Oslo Accords, and that they will continue their wholesale illegal intransigence under the Road Map. Reciprocally, it should be pointed out, Israel has absolutely no right under international law to free terrorists – an egregious practice which has been accepted by several successive Israeli governments, and always with deeply regrettable human outcomes.
5. The PA has failed entirely to use its court system for the punishment of terrorists. The Palestinian police are obligated to “arrest and prosecute individuals who are suspected of perpetrating acts of terror and violence.” (Annex I, Art. II, 1). Yet, for years, not one of the top leaders of the military wings of PA, Hamas or Islamic Jihad has been sentenced in this regard – a policy of flagrant Palestinian law-violation that continues without apology, and assuredly without any sanctions from the so-called “international community.â€
6. The PA leadership has become more rather than less complicit in its persistent incitement to terror. The Palestinian leadership is obligated to refrain from incitement to terrorism (Art. XXII). Yet, there have been many statements by PA government officials calling stridently for Jihad, and praising those who have brought unspeakable death to Israeli men, women and children.
The list of PA violations of Oslo goes on and on. There is the incontestable failure to prevent incitement (codified at Annex 1, Art. II, 35); harassment of suspected former collaborators (codified at Art. XVI); failure to provide information on Israeli MIAs (codified at Art. XXVIII of the Interim Agreement and at Art. XIX of the Gaza-Jericho Agreement); the failure to change the PLO Covenant (codified at Art. XXXII), a failure that means that the PA (let alone Hamas) has still not renounced its intent to annihilate the Jewish State; the abuse of human rights and the rule of law (codified at Art. XIX); the failure to control PA police activity in eastern Jerusalem (codified at Annex I of both agreements – the Gaza-Jericho Accord and the Interim Agreement – which carefully delineate the areas in which the Palestinian security forces may operate).
There are other PA/Hamas violations of Oslo, any one of which could comprise an entire magazine article. They include unilaterally halting security cooperation with Israel, in contradiction to Art. II(2) of Annex I to the Oslo Accords; failing to coordinate movement of Palestinian police (under Art. V(6) of Annex I to Oslo 2; the movement of Palestinian policemen between Area A and Area B, or in Area C, must be coordinated in advance with Israeli security officials; detaining Israeli citizens (according to Art. XI (4d) of Annex I to the Oslo Accord: “Israelis shall under no circumstances be apprehended or placed in custody or prison by Palestinian authorities.”); failing to enforce restrictions on Visitor’s Permits (under Art. 28 (13b) of Annex III to the Oslo 2 Accords, “The Palestinian side will notify Israel of any extension.”); and constructing, without authorization, a Gaza strip sea port and the Dahaniye airport (the first in violation of Art. XIV (4) of Annex I to the Oslo 2 Accords – the second in violation of Art. XIII(3) of Annex I to the Oslo 2 Accords).
Generally, both Israeli and Arab proponents of “peace” feel that, for Israel, the Oslo agreements and Road Map represent a pretty good bargain. Ignoring the entire history of genocide against Jews that led to Israel’s statehood in the first place, they neglect to consider that this “bargain” will ultimately involve nothing less than another Jewish Diaspora. But there is no more contrived component of the pro-Peace Process argument than this one: Accommodation (surrender) to the Palestinians opens the way to subsequent peace treaties with Syria and Lebanon. Along with peace treaties already signed with Egypt and Jordan, these new agreements will leave Israel in a state of peace – for the very first time – with all its immediate neighbors. However, looking at (1) the aforementioned map of Palestine (which incorporates the current State of Israel), (2) the aforelisted PA/Hamas violations of Oslo – especially the refusal even to abrogate a codification of genocidal intent – and (3) the incessant Arab and Islamic calls for Jihad, is there any reason to believe that Israel’s enemies will now subordinate their overriding doctrinal and religious expectations to the diametrically opposite expectations of international law?
There is no greater power in all world politics, especially in the Islamic Middle East, than power over death.
More precisely, regarding these doctrinal and religious expectations, it will be helpful to consider the following hadith, an Arabic term which refers to the oral tradition by means of which sayings or deeds attributed to the Prophet Mohammed have been handed down to Muslim believers: “Verily, the word of God teaches us, and we implicitly believe it, that for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for him to be killed by a Jew, ensures him an immediate entry into Heaven and into the august presence of God Almighty.”
Have Israeli and American supporters of the current Road Map forgotten that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had defended his 1979 Treaty with Israel in the Arab world by identifying it as no more than a tactical expedient? President Sadat claimed that the Treaty was “founded upon Islamic rules, because it arises from a position of strength, after the holy war and victory Egypt achieved on 10th Ramadan 1393″(October 1973). Generally overlooked, the Treaty provides a legally permissible rationale for abrogation by Egypt. A minute to Article VI, paragraph 5, of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty stipulates: “It is agreed to by the Parties that there is no assertion that this Treaty prevails over other Treaties or agreements, or that other Treaties or agreements prevail over this Treaty.”
In keeping with standard practice throughout the Arab/Islamic world, Al Da’wa ,The Mission, a prominent Islamic publication, has identified the status of Israel with the status of the individual Jew. Here, as we have noted earlier about authoritative Arab/Islamic views in general, Israel is merely rendered as the Jew in macrocosm: “The race (sic) is corrupt at the root, full of duplicity, and the Muslims have everything to lose in seeking to deal with them; they must be exterminated.”
Following are some earlier statements by senior PA officials, all of which were flagrantly anti-Jewish, and several of which incorporated sordid anti-Jewish stereotypes. They complement the earlier-cited Arab/Islamic quotations about Jews and Judaism: (1) “Five Zionist Jews are running the policy of the United States in the Middle East: Madeleine Albright, William Cohen, Dennis Ross, Miller and Martin Indyk. It is not possible that the American nation, which consists of 250 million people (sic), can not find anyone other than five Zionist Jews to conduct the peace process with the Palestinians.” PA Justice Minister Freih Abu Middein, Yediot Ahronot, April 13, 1997 (2) “We are fighting and struggling with an enemy who is Shylock. We must know that he is Shylock.” Othman Abu Gharbiya, PA Chairman Arafat’s Adviser on National Political Guidance, in a radio interview, Voice of Palestine, March 15, 1997 (3) “The Jewish lobby is working very hard to jeopardize the process.” Former PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, in an interview, Beirut Daily Star, March 25, 1997, Agence France Presse, March 26, 1997 (4) “Israeli authorities…infected by injection 300 Palestinian children with the HIV virus during the years of the intifada.” Palestinian representative Nabil Ramlawi at a session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Jerusalem Post, March 17 1997.
The theme of Palestine as the predestined grave of Israel, and of the Jews in general, is a persistent motif in Arab/Islamic orientations toward Israel. Here, the following claim, made more than a generation ago by Dr. Yahya al-Rakhawi in Al-Akhbar, the organ of Egypt’s Liberal Party, is still typical: “When the State of Israel was established and. was recognized by many, in both East and West, one of the reasons for this recognition was the desire of the people in the East and West to get rid of as many as possible of the representatives of that human error known as the Jews. Behind this motive was another, secret purpose: to concentrate them in one place, so that it would be easier to strike at the right moment.”
Neither strategically nor jurisprudentially are war and genocide mutually exclusive. Certain of Israel’s Islamic enemies are now making preparations for just such a strike. Principal among these, of course, is the Islamic Republic of Iran. To assist in these exterminatory preparations, an ongoing war of terror and attrition against the Jewish State is laying the foundations for the eventually planned war of annihilation.
Although it may no longer be possible for Israel to entirely prevent such a war, a war that could involve various forms of unconventional weapons, the government of Israel may still diminish expected harms by recalling the true history of Arab-Israeli conflict, and by finally extricating their beleaguered country from the inevitably lethal consequences of Oslo and the Road Map.
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LOUIS RENÉ BERES (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) lectures and publishes widely on Israeli and US foreign and military policies. He is Strategic and Military Affairs columnist for The Jewish Press.
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