Redstate

Crashing through Windows of opportunity

By haystack Posted in War — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Whatever may be said about the Iraq war, and the war on terrorism, there is scarce argument from any position regarding the motivation from the mujahideen: Israel's occupation of Arab lands and the (fill in the blank) treatment of the Palestinian people.

So has the justification been passed, along generations, that the Zionists are evil, are doomed to collapse , and must be destroyed, and such has been the culture of hate and death from a good piece of the Arab world since the Jews were returned to Israel in 1947 at the hands of the UN, and for a thousand years before that.

It should come as no surprise then, in the wake of the US plan for a new way forward in Iraq, that the surrounding states offer up a carrot to help the world see stability in the region in exchange for a few more pounds of flesh from the Jews.

[update:The fight for Palestinian love appers to be leaning in Iran's favor. Abbas apparently favors Rifles over peace accords]

More below the fold...

Attempts at fair and unbiased analysis will be quite difficult if for no other reason than the degree to which emotion and ideology play a factor in the causes and effects of this whole Middle East thing.

A striking discussion in the Taipei Times may help put it in the middle of the table though:

A new policy is needed not only to halt the US' drift into impotence as it tries to prevent Iraq from spiraling into full-scale civil war, but also because the map of power in the Middle East has changed dramatically.

That map has been in constant flux for the last 60 years, during which the main players -- Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel, and Iran -- have formed and broken alliances. Now, something like a dividing line is emerging, and if Bush finally begins to understand the region's dynamics, he may be able to craft a policy with a chance of success.

This regional realignment is typified by the emergence of a de facto alliance that dare not speak its name. Israel and Saudi Arabia, seemingly the most unlikely of allies, have come together to contain their common enemy: Iran, with its mushrooming influence in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. Iran not only threatens Israel (and the region) with its desire for a nuclear capability and its Shiite proxy militants; it is also seeking to usurp the traditional role of moderate Sunni Arab regimes as the Palestinians' defenders.

Now, given the history acknowledged here of forged and broken and forged anew alliances, there is really no cause for cheering throngs, and great parades. There IS, however, room for a little optimism that there may be any forging going on at all.

Much like has been true across history, where powers rise and ultimately fall, in the wake of the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the slicing up of vast lands between various peoples, the ultimate "peace" with Israel remains forever bound to slicing up borders and the giving and taking of land.

As my good friend Jeff Emanuel said recently:

I'm curious when it is that war became the "game" it is now, and when, after a war, it became appropriate to demand that the land seized by the victorious nation be relinquished when the vanquished aggressor said, "OK, OK, you win - now give me my land back!"

Sorry, you lost. Or, better yet, let's make a deal: your conquered land in exchange for the lives of the men lost in your attack.

Just let me know when you've got them ready to return, and the Golan Heights, West Bank, etc. are yours.

As correct as this may be, apparently it has and will continue to cost the victors of war those spoils to which they are entitled in their victories...if a lasting peace is to be pursued at least (however unlikely, given the thousands of years this war has been waged). So, it would seem, is the state of the Israelis in today's Middle East crisis.

In the ongoing saga of these "strange bedfellows", the Taipei piece hits on an important point:

After decades of using concern for the Palestinian cause to shore up popular support for their own ineffective and undemocratic regimes, these moderate Arab leaders have now been put on the defensive by Iran's quest for hegemony. If Iran succeeds in being seen as the genuine patron of Palestinian national aspirations, it will also succeed in legitimizing its claim for dominance in the Middle East.

Israel, a country in shock following its failure to destroy Hezbollah last summer, and humiliated by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's vow to "wipe Israel off the map" -- a threat backed up by Iran's support of Hamas and Hezbollah -- now talks about a "quartet of moderates" as the region's only hope. Indeed, Israel now sees its security as relying not so much on a US guarantee, but on Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey (which is seeking regional influence in fear of rejection by the EU) restraining Iran and its paid proxies. According to Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres, Israel hopes to isolate and contain the Shiite/Farsi spheres of power by forging open cooperation with the Sunni/Arab domain.

Saudi Arabia is just as eager to contain the Iranian threat and the growing "Shiite crescent" that, with the empowerment of the Shiites in Iraq, has moved westward to begin to include the Shiite regions of the Kingdom. So it should be no surprise that the Saudi regime was the first to condemn Shiite Hezbollah at the start of the war with Israel, and that it announced last month that it would support Iraq's Sunnis militarily should a precipitate US withdrawal incite a Sunni/Shiite civil war there.

The Shiite threat to the Saudi government is ideological. Indeed, it goes to the heart of the Saudi state's authority, owing to the Al Saud royal family's reliance on Wahhabi Islam to legitimate its rule. Since the Wahhabis consider the Shiite apostates, the challenge from the Shiites -- both within and without Saudi Arabia -- represents a mortal threat.

These are heavy hands being played here, and they dip deep into the well of paranoia. While the children in the West play games with our media-consuming public, railing against the President's lust for oil, and his imperialistic ways of tyranny and world domination, the real stuff...the stuff of religion and thousands of years of culture and history and ideology are what plays in this mix.

It was suggested that "Israel, after all, is a "reliable enemy" for Saudi Arabia, having destroyed Nasser's Egyptian army in 1967 -- a time when the Saudis were fighting Egypt by proxy in Yemen."

This "enemy of my enemy" protocol continues to serve all the parties well, and the idea of "stability" in the region means something a great deal different to the Arab and Israeli world than it does to those of us who do not live among them.

[C]overt support from Israel, the US and the Saudis for Abbas and Siniora does little to help them in their domestic battles. From Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Sudan to Bahrain and Yemen -- indeed, throughout the Muslim world from Jakarta to Nigeria -- Islamic radicals have won the popularity sweepstakes. A recent poll in Egypt ranked Nasrallah, Meshal and Ahmadinejad as the three most popular figures. This leads to an unavoidable dilemma: Bush will have to choose between supporting democracy and backing those who want to fight Islamic radicalism.

Yet Israel, the US and the region's moderates can benefit from the deepening schism in the Arab/Muslim world. That schism is being consolidated by Saudi support of all the region's Sunni Muslims. It is this sense of "Sunni solidarity" that is becoming the decisive factor in the war for the soul of Islam, and in the struggle for mastery in the Middle East that is now underway.

While comments like these from Alan Dershowitz may be of grave concern to Israel in the name of her own survival:

[S]ince WWII, genocides such as the ones in Cambodia, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and the current genocide in Darfur, have been largely ignored by the international community because it is obsessed with Israel and pays no attention to the real problems of the world.

Six million additional people have died since the end of the Second World War because of this obsessive focus on Israel

It is the second half of his statement that concerns the Saudis and others fearful of Iran's emerging dominance in the region:

If the international community allows this man, this Hitler of the 21st century – who is currently without the means to bring about Hitler’s result, but is in the process of trying to develop those means – if the international community rejects the evidence against this man, they will have been found guilty in the court of public opinion and we need to challenge that international community in that court.

The purpose of Holocaust denial is to delegitimize Israel, to demonize Jews and to legitimate attacks on Israel and attacks on Jews. When the president of Iran says that he will wipe Israel off the face the world, wipe Israel off the map, he doesn’t mean the regime in Israel. He knows that the only way to wipe Israel off the face of the map is to wipe Israelis off the face of the earth.

Deliciously ironic in this Middle East crisis is the notion that the radical Muslims believe Israel's existence is the cause of all their ills, and yet the non-radicals DESPERAETLY need Israel to exist because their absence would be the cause of their OWN ills. And Israel sits in the middle.

In this latest round of back door dealings, the Israelis' new allies are prepared to stabilize Iraq and help the US get out of the war there in exchange for Israel's release of a little more land, the slicing up of a few more square miles of Israeli held territory in order to appease the Palestinians BEFORE the Iranians can. In the meantime, Israel sits in the middle.

The ultimate solution to war in the Middle East may, perhaps, never be realized given the history and the animosity between the cultures. That various factions have, and continue to attempt, waffling alliances and coalitions to keep things on balance should be considered a positive influence here.

The role of the West to be arbiters in some way; in eliminating dictators when his neighbors cannot muster the resources to do it themselves, may be looked at in hindsight 20 years from now as brilliant genius on the part of the sitting Administration.

While unlikely, it DOES at least offer some food for thought.