RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Al-Aqsa Mosque controversy has exposed, once again, the non-centrality of the Palestinian issue in the overall Arab order of priorities.http://theettingerreport.com/OpEd/OpEd—Israel-Hayom/Palestinian-issue-marginalized-by-Arabs.aspx

Contrary to Western media headlines, Arab policy-makers and the Arab Street are not focused on Palestinian rights and Al Aqsa, but on their own chaotic, raging local and regional challenges, which are not related to the Palestinian issue.

For example, while the top Palestinian religious leader, Mufti Muhammad Hussein, castigates Arab leaders for their inaction on behalf of the Al Aqsa Mosque, Egyptian President General Sisi, and the Egyptian street, are preoccupied with traumatizing economic and social decay and challenges; the dwindling level of tourism, which is a main source of national income; the lethal, domestic threat of Muslim Brotherhood terrorism; the Libyan chaos and its effective spillover into Egypt; the entrenchment of Islamic terrorism in the Sinai Peninsula, across the Gulf of Suez; the Gaza-based terrorism; the threatening collaboration of Turkey-Qatar-Iran and Turkey’s support of Hamas; the potentially-explosive border with Sudan; etc.

General Sisi invests much more time in geo-strategic coordination with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, other Arab Gulf States, the US and Israel – which are perceived as critical allies in combatting terrorism – than with the Palestinian Authority, which is perceived as a destabilizing entity.

According to the July 20, 2017 issue of the London-based Middle East Monitor, “Al Aqsa has been abandoned by those who profess the leadership of the Muslim World…. [Egypt’s and Saudi Arabia’s] cold indifference…is unworthy of institutions that profess to be the preeminent leaders of Muslims around the world…. The religious institutions in Makkah, Madinah and Cairo have gone absent without leave despite the dangerous situation at the Noble Sanctuary in occupied Jerusalem…. Both countries are spearheading a regional drive for full normalization of relations with Israel. Their reasoning is that friendship with Israel is the best guarantee of US support for themselves….”

The London-based Palestinian newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, published a cartoon, depicting the Arab World as an ostrich burying its head in the sand, while the Al Aqsa Mosque bleeds.

Since 1948, and in defiance of Western foreign policy, academia and media establishments, the Arab/Islamic agenda has transcended the Palestinian issue.

While showering the Palestinian issue with substantial talk, the Arab/Islamic walk has mostly been directed at other issues: the 1,400-year-old regional, intra-Arab/Islamic unpredictability, fragmentation, instability and intolerant violence; the Islamic Sunni terrorist machete at the throat of all pro-US Arab regimes; the clear and present danger, posed by Iran’s Ayatollahs, to the same regimes; the destructive role played by Qatar in the context of – and in assistance to – the Ayatollahs; the lethal, regional ripple effects of the disintegration of Iraq, Syria and Libya; the inherent, tectonic (disintegration) potential in every Arab regime; the impact of the global energy revolution on the potency of the Arab oil producing regimes; and the enhanced role of Israel in the battle against the aforementioned threats.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Conflict management, when applied to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, is insufficient to achieve Israel’s interests. What is needed is a strategy of renewed settlement that will educate the Palestinians about the costs of their actions, divide their ranks instead of tactically unifying them, and keep it a conflict over land – which can eventually be resolved – rather than over religion, which is probably unsolvable.https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/temple-mount-crisis/

Israel’s bureaucratic establishment – the IDF, Shabak, and Mossad, as well as many politicians, opinion makers, and commentators – supports the idea of conflict management in the relationship between Israel, the PA, and Hamas until some future time that might be more auspicious for peace.

They are wrong. As any businessperson knows, maintaining market share means losing ground to the competition. The same is true of politics in our region. Absorbing and containing Palestinian violence is a losing strategy, as the recent events on the Temple Mount prove.

The answer lies in the vision and strategy of settlement.

Why settlement and not some other strategy?

Israel’s policy of conflict management has encouraged the Palestinians to focus on the Temple Mount. Throughout the conflict, the Temple Mount has been the Palestinians’ most successful rallying point.

In 1929, when the Mufti popularized the slogan “al-Aqsa Is In Danger”, the population of Mandate Palestine rallied to defend it. It was only on the Temple Mount, 33 years after the Six Day War, that Israeli Arab citizens rioted in large numbers together with their counterparts from over the Green Line. They chanted, “In spirit and blood we will defend al-Aqsa”. Never before had they rallied over any other symbol of Palestinian nationalism.

The strategy of conflict management – the approach of dealing tactically with Palestinian violence – is turning the clash into a religious conflict, and religious conflicts are notoriously difficult to resolve. A renewed strategy of Israeli settlement would shift the conflict once again to nationalist land claims. Conflicts over land are by no means easily solved, but they at least have the potential to be be resolved at some future date.

A strategy of Israeli settlement in Judea and Samaria is also tactically wise. Conflict management promotes tactical unity among the Palestinians, who agree that because Israel wants to contain violence, it is in their interest to continue to foment it. A settlement strategy would divide the enemy rather than unite it. Abbas’s PA and its ruling party would almost certainly turn their attention to stopping settlement, while the Islamists – Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizb al-Tahrir, and their supporters – would champion the defense of al-Aqsa. Dividing the energies of Israel’s foes would go a long way towards reducing violence.

A Nablus resident who confessed this week to having strangled, bashed in the head of, and buried his Israeli girlfriend two months ago told reporters on Wednesday that he had done so to “help free Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.”

Mohammed Kharouf made this statement to the press after the Jerusalem Magistrates’ Court lifted a gag order on his case: the killing of 29-year-old Michal Halimi, a married, pregnant Jewish woman from the settlement of Adam. Halimi, whose body was discovered last week, had left her husband several months ago to move in with Kharouf, her Palestinian lover. It has not yet been established which of the men fathered the baby she was carrying.

Because this is the stuff novels are made of — a story that includes inter-ethnic intrigue, lust and the spilling of blood — the tragic tale has garnered much attention. But the perpetrator’s declaration that his motive was nationalistic, even though this is clearly a lie, is just as worthy of note.

Kharouf knew that his affair with a Jewish woman — let alone one carrying a child of dubious origin — would be sufficient to blacken his family’s reputation in Palestinian society, even if he “rectified” the situation by slaughtering the source of the shame. The wrath of his parents and their peers would make imprisonment in Israel seem like a holiday in comparison. Killing a Jewish Israeli in the name of the Palestinian cause, however, would turn Kharouf into a hero in the Palestinian Authority, which would provide him and his family with a lifelong stipend of more than $3,000 per month, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

It is this travesty, the monetary incentive for Palestinians to commit acts of terrorism, that spurred U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Dan Coats (R-‎Indiana) and Roy Blunt (R-Mississippi) last February to sponsor the Taylor Force Act. Named after ‎the former U.S. Army officer who was ‎stabbed to death on a trip to Israel in March 2016 by a knife-wielding Palestinian on a rampage in Tel Aviv, the bill aimed to halt American aid to the PA until it ‎stops paying salaries to imprisoned terrorists and the families of ‎those “martyred” while murdering innocent people.

On Thursday, a day after Kharouf declared in Jerusalem that he had killed his girlfriend on behalf of the Palestinian people, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee convened in Washington to pass the Taylor Force Act, which received bipartisan support after being amended several times in recent weeks. The adjustments were made to enable the transfer of funds to the PA for hospitals and other humanitarian projects, and to give the Palestinian leadership the opportunity to receive more money if and when it proves it has stopped rewarding terrorists.

This is a good symbolic move, but the PA is about as likely to cease its practice of paying terrorists as Kharouf is to retract his lie about killing Halimi for Palestinian nationalist reasons.

Mere weeks ago, at the end of June, PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced that he would not stop paying stipends to terrorists and their families, which he referred to as a “social responsibility.” After meeting in Jerusalem on June 21 with Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, and with Jason Greenblatt, the president’s special Middle East envoy, and U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem Donald Blome, Abbas still would not succumb.

Last week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his security cabinet caved in to the demands of the PLO and its partners in Hamas, the Islamic Movement, Jordan, Iran and Turkey by agreeing to remove metal detectors and other security screening equipment from the Temple Mount. The equipment was installed last month in response to Palestinian incitement and acts of jihadist violence against Israelis, including the murder of two policemen, at Judaism’s holiest site.http://carolineglick.com/losing-and-winning-the-temple-mount/

After polls showed 77% of Israelis felt he and his cabinet members capitulated to terrorism, Netanyahu issued a statement thanking US President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Jared Kushner and Trump’s senior negotiator Jason Greenblatt for their help in resolving the crisis.

The underlying message of Netanyahu’s statement was that he and his ministers folded like a cheap suit to our enemies’ demands, effectively ceding Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount to our enemies because Kushner and Greenblatt pressured them to do so.

But then this week, a congressional intern did us the favor of surreptitiously recording and leaking remarks Kushner made on the issue in off-record remarks to interns at the White House. Kushner’s remarks, which came in response to a question about his role in mediating the Palestinian conflict with Israel, were fairly detailed.

Regarding the Temple Mount crisis, Kushner justified Israel’s decision to place metal detectors at the entrance of the Temple Mount. In his words, following the murder of the policemen by terrorists armed with guns smuggled onto the Mount, “putting up metal detectors on the Temple Mount… is not an irrational thing to do.”

Kushner also emphasized several times the central role that Palestinian incitement played in fomenting the violence on the Temple Mount. He drew the logical conclusion that the same incitement which fomented the violence on the Temple Mount led to the massacre of the Saloman family in their home in Halamish two weeks ago.

Unlike all previous US mediators, Kushner didn’t blame “both sides” for causing the violence. He placed the blame squarely on the Palestinians who incited and committed murder.

In speaking this way, Kushner made clear that he isn’t the type of person who will apply bone-breaking pressure on Israel to capitulate to the demands of terrorist murderers. Certainly Netanyahu and his ministers are strong enough to withstand whatever pressure Kushner and Greenblatt may have brought to bear on them last week.

Indeed, as one administration official put it, “The idea that the same Netanyahu who withstood eight years of unrelenting pressure from the Obama administration crumpled under pressure from Kushner and Greenblatt is simply ridiculous.”

So if it wasn’t American pressure that convinced Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and their colleagues in the security cabinet to crumple, why did they do it?

All of their instincts were pointing them down the opposite path.

In the weeks preceding the Six-Day War, Israel was faced with ever increasing existential challenges which warranted resolute action. Israel’s generals correctly argued to the political echelon that with each passing day, Israel’s strategic position became more compromised. The situation was particularly acute on Israel’s southern border with Egypt where the Egyptian army deployed seven divisions including three armored divisions. Official Arab government pronouncements, with ever increasing shrill and belligerence, made clear that the intention was to wipe Israel off the map.

On June 5th 1967, Israel launched a preemptive strike aimed at destroying the Arab armies before they could launch their own attack (some historians have argued that the Arabs fired the first salvo by closing the Tiran Straits). Codenamed Operation Focus, the Israeli Air Force implemented its well-rehearsed plan of action and struck first, catching most of the Arab air forces on the ground and destroying the bulk of them. Contemporaneous with the air assault, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sprang into action, quickly routing the Arab armies in a matter of days.

It was a complete and decisive Israeli victory with few parallels in military history. Israel’s success in the Six Day War was attributed to many factors but chief among them was the fact that Israel had robbed the enemy of the initiative. Had the Arab’s attacked first, Israel would have still emerged triumphant but at a much higher cost in terms of men and material.

The doctrine of preemption is one that is ingrained in Israel’s military thinking. Israel is a small country with little strategic depth and a vulnerable civilian population. Preemption, the concept of striking the enemy first when there is a clear, present and imminent danger coupled with intent to injure, is a strategically sound doctrine and this is especially true in Israel’s case given its unique vulnerabilities, regional challenges and genocidal enemies.

In addition to exercising its right of military preemption, Israel has also acted preventative manner. Conceptually, this doctrine differs slightly from preemption as the threat while real, is not necessarily imminent. In 1981 and 2007, Israel destroyed the nuclear facilities of Iraq and Syria – both implacable foes – after intelligence confirmed that those facilities were capable of manufacturing atomic bombs. Israel has also struck Sudan and Syria dozens of times in efforts to thwart weapons transfers to Hamas and Hezbollah.

Hezbollah is currently mired in Syria’s civil war with 1/3 of its forces actively engaged in Syria to prop up Assad. In light of this, most Israeli experts agree that the probability of war breaking out in the near future is low. The last thing Hezbollah needs now is a two-front war. Nevertheless, Hezbollah’s raison d’être is to serve the Islamic Republic’s interests and do battle with Israel. A showdown with the terror group is therefore inevitable. The only question is “when,” not “if.”

Confluences of several factors make the probability of war more likely in the intermediate term. First, thanks to Iranian, Russian and Hezbollah assistance, Assad’s grip on power is the strongest it’s been since the beginning of the civil war while rebel groups opposing Assad are divided and often battle each other. This development will enable Hezbollah to shift its emphasis and resources toward Israel.

Second, though Hezbollah has suffered substantial casualties since it began its military entanglement in Syria – at least 2,000 of its members have been killed – the group has emerged militarily stronger. It has been lavishly equipped by Iran with modern weapons, including T-72 tanks, weaponized drones, Konkurs anti-tank missiles and Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles, and thanks to the Russians, improved its electronic warfare and special operations capabilities.

Third, in 2006, Hezbollah was believed to have possessed 11,000 rockets and missile of various calibers and guidance systems. Today, Hezbollah is believed to possess between 100,000 and 150,000 missiles and rockets. To place things in proper perspective, that figure is more than the combined arsenal of all NATO countries, with the exception of the United States. Moreover, with Iran’s assistance, the terror group has managed to build subterranean factories buried 50 meters below ground. These factories are capable of producing everything from small arms to Fateh-110/M-600 surface-to-surface missiles, making Hezbollah partially self-sufficient in arms, a capability that it lacked in 2006. If Iranian claims are to be believed, the Fateh-110 has a range of 300km and carries a payload of 500kg. The missile is believed to possess an accuracy level of 100 m CEP, which means that there’s a 50/50 chance that the missile will fall within 100 meters of its intended target. Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah has made clear on numerous occasions that his missiles would target a vulnerable ammonia plant in Haifa, Israel’s nuclear research facility in Dimona and other critical civilian infrastructure in any war with Israel.