It is in the Jewish culture that when enough Jews fantasize about something, the fantasy becomes as potent as reality. This gives the Jews the right to act on their fantasies as if they were reality.
A Jewish fantasy peddled this days has it that the Arab
countries have abandoned the Palestinians in favor of forging better relations
with Israel under the influence of what’s known as the Abraham Accords. This
point has been made so many times by so many committed Jews, other
commentators—be they moderate Jews or gentiles—have come to believe it, and
have been adding to the strength of the fantasy, not knowing how wrong they
are.
You can see an example of that in the article that came
under the title: “The Abraham Accords and the Imposed Middled East Order,” and
the subtitle: “Having just marked
two years since their ratification, the Abraham Accords continue to represent a
top-down regional order destined to yield instability, not peace.” It was written
by Jon Hoffman, and published on October 3, 2022 in the National Interest.
Jon Hoffman is a well meaning and thoughtful commentator
who worked with the limited information he had, thus produced an incomplete
canvas of what’s unfolding in the Middle East at this time. What he misses is
the content of the internal debates taking place, not just inside the Arab
countries but inside the entire Muslim world.
Whereas the Arabs are focused on Palestine, which they
view as a stolen rump carved out of their homeland – separating its North
African part from its West Asian part – the other Muslims are focused on the
occupation of Jerusalem, which they view as the ultimate desecration of the
ground from where the Prophet ascended to heaven.
Hoffman’s article is long, and must be read in its
entirety to be fully appreciated. But the following condensed passage should
give the reader a glimpse of what’s in it:
“The Abraham
Accords represent the formalization of a coercive political, economic, and
security order designed to maintain the status quo in the region. A top-down
imposition, the framework of the Abraham Accords is designed to sideline
Palestinians in order to push for high-level ‘normalization’ and the formation
of a more formal coalition through which regional actors can maintain the
status quo. This order is upheld via intense exclusion, repression,
surveillance, and security guarantees from the world’s preeminent superpower.
Furthermore, the accords are designed to keep the US deeply engaged in the Middle
East as a security guarantor. In this new order, Israel’s project of apartheid
and the survival of regional Arab autocracies have become intimately linked.
This autocracy-apartheid nexus has led to a Middle East that is more
exclusionary and repressive, while reinforcing authoritarianism in the region
and Israel’s dominance over Palestine”.
But if all of that is erroneous, what are the Arabs and
the Muslims thinking and saying to each other that most “Western” commentators
are missing?
The first to grasp the realities of what existed on the
ground, was the late President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, having led the army that
expelled the Israelis who were occupying the Sinai. In fact, this was in
fulfillment of his predecessor’s (Gamal Abdel Nasser) maxim that what’s taken
by force will only be returned by force. Looking ahead even beyond Nasser’s
vision, Sadat promised the Americans that despite possessing the means to cross
the border into Israel and crush its war machine once and for all, he will not
do so. However, he did not at that time, say why he would not do so.
The reason started to emerge later, and continues to be
debated today sotto voce among the Arabs and the Muslims. The debate rests on
finding a good answer to the question: What’s the endgame?
The Arabs that gave refuge to the Jews time after time
when they were mistreated, even exterminated in Europe, felt betrayed by the
Jews when the latter teamed up with their European “executioners,” and savaged
their former Arab defenders verbally with lies, and physically with the use of
European state of the art weapons. But why would the Jews do that? They did it
for the promise of getting Western help to steal Palestine and turn it into
Israel. This was the Jewish act that caused the Arabs and the Muslims to
believe that what the Europeans thought of the Jews and did to them, were not
the result of a fundamental European wickedness but the result of a deeply
flawed Jewish culture that invited such treatment over and over again.
Does that mean the Arabs and the Muslims have no choice
but to repeat the performance of the Europeans who saw no solution to what they
termed the Jewish problem, but to impose a Final Solution that would exterminate
all Jews? Surely, having a large concentration of Jews in Palestine gives the
Arabs and Muslims the opportunity to start that process by crushing the Israeli
war machine. Hordes of “Jew-haters” from around the world would follow by
descending on occupied Palestine and participate in the massacre of Jews. As if
this were not enough, you’d see copycats do the same thing in every country
around the world.
But even when the Arabs seemed to have no choice but to
go for the inevitable, they instead opted to implement the Anwar Sadat approach.
So the question that many people pose is this: In the interest of avoiding the
macabre endgame that is certain to follow if the Arabs decided to give the
Palestinians all that is owed to them, did the Arabs sideline the cause of
Palestinians?
The answer to that question is: No, they did not, even if
it looks like they abandoned the Nasser maxim to the effect that what was taken
by force will only be returned by force. It is that the difference between the
liberation of the Sinai, and the liberation of Palestine involve two completely
different processes. Whereas the battle in the Sinai involved two armies, the
one in Palestine will involve civilians.
And when on 9/11, it became apparent that the battle will
spill over and affect places as far away as New York, Saudi Arabia avoided that
kind of endgame when it bought the Sadat reasoning and proposed an initiative
to resolve the question of Palestine peacefully. It took the Israelis a while
to embrace the principle but they finally affirmed to the General Assembly of the
United Nations that they are open to the idea of a two-state solution.