Is the Palestinian issue a core cause of Mideast turbulence? Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on March 27th, 2017

Video#38: http://bit.ly/2lSMHoS; Entire online seminar: http://bit.ly/1ze66dS

  1. Irrespective of –  and unrelated to – the Palestinian issue, the Middle East is boiling, firing the 14-century-old Sunni-Shia intra-Muslim confrontation, exacerbating intra-Arab violence in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and threatening to explode in every Arab country. The Arab Tsunami, which has erupted independent of the Palestinian issue, has been leveraged by Iran’s Ayatollahs, in order to advance their supremacist, megalomaniacal goal of dominating the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and beyond, notwithstanding the Palestinian issue, which has never played a substantial role in shaping the stormy intra-Arab and intra-Muslim relations and the Middle East agenda.

    2. Contrary to Western preoccupation with the Palestinian issue, the Middle Eastern agenda dramatically transcends the Palestinian issue, which is neither the cruxof the Arab-Israeli conflict, nor a crown-jewel of Arab policy-making and nor a core cause of the 1,400-year-old turbulence, violent intolerance, instability, unpredictability, subversion and terrorism in the Middle East. The Palestinian issue is completely irrelevant to the tectonic Arab Tsunami, which has engulfed the Middle East from the Persian Gulf to Northwestern Africa.

    3. The intensifying Arab Tsunami, which erupted in 2010, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands people, the dislocation of millions, and threatens to topple every sitting Arab regime, has exposed the myth of the supposed centrality of the Arab-Israeli conflict, in general, and the Palestinian issue, in particular. None of the recent – as well as past – domestic and regional upheavals in the Middle East has been directly, or indirectly, related to the Arab-Israeli conflict or the Palestinian issue. Contrary to conventional “wisdom,” the Palestinian issue has always been a side – and not a main – dish on the tectonic Middle East menu, which has been dominated by intra-Muslim and intra-Arab explosive ingredients.

    4. No Arab country has ever considered the Palestinian issue a top priority, warranting shedding blood, sweat or tears. Arab policy-makers have always talked the talk on behalf the Palestinian issue – in order to divert attention away from critical domestic and regional failures – but have never walked the walk, financially or militarily.  They adhere to the Arab saying: “On words one does not pay custom.”

    5. The top priority for Arab leaders, personally and nationally, is homeland security and countering-terrorism, in the face of intensifying, clear and present domestic and regional lethal threats. Therefore, they are preoccupied with the Muslim Brotherhood – the largest transnational Islamic terror organization – and additional Islamic terror organizations.  The Muslim Brotherhood – not the Palestinian issue – has plagued Egypt since 1928. The Muslim Brotherhood, and its ideology, nurtured the Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS and other Islamic terror organizations.

    6. Therefore, President Al-Sisi has followed in the footsteps of President Sadat, who resisted President Carter’s pressure to place the Palestinian issue at the center of the 1977-79 Israel-Egypt peace process. Sadat was concerned about the destabilizing impact of a Palestinian entity, as evidenced by the subversive track record of Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas in Egypt (1950s), Syria (1966), Jordan (1970), Lebanon (1970-1983) and, worst of all, in Kuwait (1990).

    7.  Moreover, in 2016, President Al-Sisi – just like all pro-US Arab leaders in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States – expands intelligence, counter-terrorism and overall geo-strategic cooperation, operationally and technologically with Israel, a global role-model of counter-terrorism, in defiance of Palestinian opposition. They believe that when smothered by the lethal sandstorms of Islamic terrorism and Iran, one must leverage the mutually-beneficial ties with Israel, rather than be preoccupied with the Palestinian tumbleweed.

    8. Iran’s policy of megalomaniacal supremacy, terrorism, subversion and hate-education, and its determination to become a nuclear power, are driven by the 2,000-year-old ambition to dominate the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, Middle East and beyond, and not by the Palestinian issue.

    9. The disintegration of the Arab Middle East, especially Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, is a derivative of the endemic, tribal, religious, ethnic, geographic and ideological intra-Muslim fragmentation, not the Palestinian issue.

    10.  The next video will connect the Middle East dots.

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