AT PENPOINT
The latest bloodletting in Gaza has ended with a truce between the Israelis and Hamas, and though there is now no threat of a general war developing, the entire episode has ended up exposing ugly truths about both participants and observers that they would have preferred to keep concealed.
Perhaps the Israeli government had most to hide, and its exposure has been most damaging. The way in which its policy had been shown up as a failure has left it in a cul de sac. The whole thrust of the Netanyahu government was that it would obtain peace from both Palestinians and Arabs on its own terms, because they knew they were beaten. It had signed peace treaties with two combatants of the various wars against it, Egypt and Jordan, and it added treaties with three more Arab states (but non-combatant) last year, the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan.
It was widely rumoured that Saudi Arabia, once a combatant and a leader of the Muslim world against Israel, would sooner or later join the bandwagon, which was widely expected to lead to a large number of Arab and Muslim states recognizing Israel and establishing diplomatic relations with it.
All of this was in pursuit of the goal of security for Israeli citizens. The level of that security was shown up by the rocket salvos from Gaza into Israeli territory. That they caused no casualties is another matter, but the effects in terms of air raid precautions and the fear among the citizenry was also immense. The highly expensive Iron Dome air defense system also proved ineffective in protecting the civilian population, as it let through a few missiles. Iron Dome is indigenously developed, but has received major US funding for both development and deployment. The US Army has acquired and deployed two batteries.
While Israeli policy has had its bankruptcy exposed, so has that of the USA. Its purpose was to create peace in the region. That has clearly not been achieved. Its relentless backing of Israel has shown the world that it does not support liberation or self-determination, but only the pursuit of Zionist interests. Its support for Israel is not simply because of the clout of the American-Israeli Political Action Committee, which funnels vast funds of elected officials, on Capitol Hill. It is not merely because American Jews and evangelicals are Zionists (with the latter believing the Second Coming of Christ requires the building of the Third Temple– on the site of Al-Aqsa), but because the presence of Israel in the Middle East means that it has a toehold in a region highly important to it. Israel allows the USA a military presence in the region, whose oil wealth is crucial to its prosperity. Though there is a Palestinian diaspora in the USA, it is not valued. If the US policy is ‘what Israel wants, Israel gets’, it is not because of American Jewry, but because of Mid-East oil.
Tracing the history of Israel, it may be discerned that it was dominated by American Zionist Jews. One symbol of this is that the present PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been educated in the USA after having been born in Israel itself. He has been PM since 2009 (after having served a term from 1996 to 1999. Being PM is very important to him, for it saves him from arrest on corruption charges, for which the trial continues. It is seen by some as no coincidence that the recent conflict torpedoed the coalition that was being built to replace him, because the pro-Hamas party that was supposed to join it had to pull out.
The government may preen itself on helping achieve the truce that ended the fighting, but it cannot help awkward questions being raised by the people of Pakistan who found that there was no help to be sent to Palestine, and then by the Kashmiris, who must be forced to wonder whether there will be another accounting of a truce brokered as a victory.
The extent of Arab friendship towards Palestinians was also tested, and the Arab regimes were found wanting, and not just those states which had made peace with Israel, perhaps because they still hoped to make an accommodation with it. It is worth remembering that the OIC was founded after an arson attempt on Al-Aqsa, by a visiting Australian evangelical who thought this would clear the way for the building of the Third Temple, and thus for the Second Coming. It should be remembered that the Israeli bombing of Gaza took place because Hamas fired missiles from there, in reply to the Israeli police’s invasion of Al-Aqsa.
After having been used to the support of the entire Muslim world, the Palestinians found that they were completely alone. All of the armies of the Arab world, indeed of the Muslim world, did nothing to help. Of the Ajami Muslim armies, the classic Ajami, Iran, did nothing despite all its previous protestations. Its Al-Quds Force, which is dedicated to the liberation of Jerusalem, did not go beyond firing some rockets from Lebanon. Clearly, Iran is not really interested in liberating Jerusalem as in projecting Iranian power in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Lebanon, where it finds Shia populations it can appeal to. Incidentally, Iran’s appeal to Shias in the region shows the weakness of national bonds.
However, Palestinians, though with the full complement of communal and sectarian divisions, seem to have come together in their misery. What started as a problem for Palestinians in the West Bank engulfed those in Gaza, and even those in Jordan and Israeli Arab citizens themselves.
One of the more disturbing developments of this episode was the emergence of Jew-Arab clashes in Israel. Arabs in Israel already face discrimination from the government. Now they faced riots. A certain number of cities in Israel were held up as examples of how Jews and Arabs could live peaceably side by side, like Lod, Ramla and Acre. However, just as Israel attacked Al-Aqsa and then Gaza, gangs of Jewish louts started terrorizing the Arabs of these cities. The Arabs hit back, and the rioting began.
This is the first sign of a problem that Israeli right-wingers (everybody, more or less) face: Demography. Jews have fewer children than Arabs. Israel will become an Arab-majority state. How will it then be possible to keep it a Jewish state? Israel also has to contend with the political problem posed by the increasing number of Arabs elected to the Israeli Knesset. What happens when the Arabs enter the Cabinet? How can you have a Jewish state where Jews are a minority?
But before this happens, Pakistanis have got to face the fact that the PTI did a pretty poor job of representing their sentiments. The protests in major cities reflected the kind of frustration that was engendered by the attack on Al-Aqsa. The PTI’s haplessness was shown by Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s saying on CNN that Jews had ‘deep pockets’, thereby gladdening the hearts of the PTI case, and then hastening to deny anti-Semitic bias when the TV reporter accused him of it. That seems to have been the extent of the PTI’s claim of having won.
The government may preen itself on helping achieve the truce that ended the fighting, but it cannot help awkward questions being raised by the people of Pakistan who found that there was no help to be sent to Palestine, and then by the Kashmiris, who must be forced to wonder whether there will be another accounting of a truce brokered as a victory.
