Israel’s Plans for a New Arab World
Dr Faysal Mikdadi
Israel’s aim has always been dividing the Arab World, weakening Arab states, creating a powerful Israeli hegemony in the Middle East whilst expanding its own territories. It is helped by the unconditional support of the United States as well as by misguided Christians who, amazing as it may sound to anyone with two brain cells, actually believe in the nonsense in Genesis about some God promising Palestine to the Jews!
Kamal Kanj, the noted journalist, quotes Israeli former Foreign Ministry official Odes Yinon, writing in the early 1980s, that it would help Israel to turn Iraq and Syria “into ethnically or religiously unique areas”.
On Iraq, he wrote: “Its dissolution is even more important than Syria. Iraq is stronger. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to breaking up Iraq into provinces along ethnic and religious lines.” In 2003, Israel successfully watched the US launch a proxy war in Iraq to get rid of it as a threat to Israel.
On Syria, he called for dividing it into “an Alawi (sic) state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus and the Durzes in the Hauran and in northern Jordan”. As ever, Assad is doing the job for Israel.
And today, Israel is squaring up to that other regional power Iran, with American and, ironically, Arab blessings.
At the time of writing in 1982 Israel had already successfully neutralised Egypt which was quickly homogenised and sanitised by US Dollars, Mubarak’s corruption, greed and its people’s refusal to define themselves as anything, let alone as Arab Muslims, which they undoubtedly are; although I appear to be meeting an endless number of Egyptians these days vociferously denouncing their Muslim Arab heritage. It is as if the denying of an obvious national identity would allow the lost souls to join the ranks of so-called civilised Christian Western norms. Also at the time of writing, Israel was attempting to tame both Palestinians and Lebanese through its invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It succeeded with the Palestinians by expelling their fighters from Beirut and through the failed Oslo Accord which has left Palestinians either in the Diaspora or in disjointed and economically dependent Bantustans controlled by Israel’s military occupation with American collusion. Israel failed miserably with Lebanon because of the valiant (according to the Americans, “terrorist”) Hisbollah, the Lebanese National Resistance Movement, that eventually humiliated Israel both in 2000 and 2006.
So, Israel’s fortunes have been mixed although largely more successful than otherwise. This is mainly because of unconditional support from the Western powers, Israel’s own genius for organisation and its successful long term planning. However, Israel has been met with signal success because its opposition in the Arab World is dolefully divided and disorganised. T. E. Lawrence’s experiences in the last Century showed the Arabs to be a “noble savage” people whose courage was unparalleled but whose suspicions of other Arabs always took precedence over national aspirations. Nothing has changed except that one hundred years of dictatorships, blind obedience through lack of education and through various unquestioning faiths, has led my poor compatriots into losing the “noble” part of the “noble savage”. They have not lost their courage as is seen through the various uprisings all over the Arab World. However, these uprisings will be about as relevant as the Arab Awakening in the late Nineteenth Century which eventually led to fragmentation, division on tribal, ethnic and religious lines and a hundred years of aping the Western World by adopting its trappings of civilisation in appearance though rarely in substance.
The net result of this story will be continued success for Israel and continued subjugation for us Arabs whether to Israeli hegemony (Palestine), US / Western control through a mixture of aid (Egypt), consumerism (United Arab Emirates), proxy politics (Lebanon, Jordan and Syria), obscurantism (Saudi Arabia), military defeat (Palestine and Iraq) and other equally debilitating influences.
Israel’s success story is remarkably similar to that of the United States. The first Zionists were the Plymouth Brethren. The founding fathers were the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. The IDF were the cavalry coming over the hill to drive away the Native Americans and to occupy more land belonging to them, to Mexicans and to other unfortunates who have disappeared into the mists of history.
And Israel’s manipulation has the Arabs playing right into their hands – from Arafat, Saddam Hussein to Gaddafi to Mubarak to Assad..etc..
This is a heartbreaking story of incompetence, double standards, lies, imperialism, racism, dictatorships, divisions and, worse of all, deniability that can rewrite history on both sides. It is our Arab recipe for continued oppression and Israel’s recipe for continued successful expansion.
Dr Faysal Mikdadi is Head of Education at Facilitate Global and can be contacted at faysal.mikdadi@facilitateglobal.org