I
read an article in the London edition of the Al-Arab newspaper.
It is
always interesting from a strategic point of view to get a feeling of the mood
of the Arab world and this article entitled “Now is not the time for
chants about Jerusalem” was built around the premise of Muslim
yearning to pay in Jerusalem. From an Israeli perspective, that Yearning is
indelibly linked with conquest, and conquest brings with it wars and terror in
failed attempts to eradicate the Jewish State.
If
Arabs were as honest as Kheir Allah Kheir Allah, the author of the piece, it
would become obvious to any practical Arab or Muslim that there is one
overriding way they can indeed pray in Jerusalem that wouldn’t demand
bloodletting as a way of achieving that ambition.
I
will get to that solution later in this assessment.
Mr.
Allah gives us a glimpse into the realities of most of the Middle East. It is
not a pretty picture.
He
invites us to look at Lebanon.
While
Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah implores his minions to jihad in order to
pray in Jerusalem, he does this from his protected bunker in a secure, but not
so covert, location. Believe me when I tell you that Israel knows exactly
where he is located.
Hezbollah
has ruined Lebanon, financially as well as politically. They have wasted the
resources of that country fighting Iranian battles in Syria that has decimated
the Lebanese economy.
Mr.
Allah tells us that the Lebanese banking system is on the verge of collapse
and, as long as Nasrallah is pulling the Lebanese purse strings, there is
no immediate incentive for the World Bank, the IMF, or anyone else to come
along and rescue them with Hezbollah choking Lebanon.
Abdullah
al-Wardat, the regional director of the World Food Program, predicts that over
a million Lebanese are at risk of falling below the food poverty line this
year.
With
Lebanon in such dire straits it is incredible to think that only a number of
years ago this country was the “Switzerland of the Middle East,” the banking
center of the region. Beirut was called the Cote d’Azur of the eastern
Mediterranean.
Those
were the heady days before Arafat’s PLO, before the Assad father Syrian
intervention, the rise of Islamic Hezbollah, and the interference of Iran.
These were
peaceful days when Christians were fully 50% of the population and government
rule was by amicable division of labors.
Look
at it now. Christians have fled. It is the epicenter of divisiveness with
Hezbollah profiting from global drug trade and money-laundering operations,
including in Europe, the profits of which it refuses to share with the Lebanese
population to drag it out of its misery. It exports its indoctrinated
manpower to fight proxy wars for Iran and Syria.
Which
takes us to Syria in which a London opthamologist heralded a brighter future but who
turned out to be an Alawite butcher.
Syria
is now lying in total ruin with an estimated 13 million refugees or displaced
people, more than half the population of that country. The death toll in
Assad’s war against his own people is given at over half a million, including
tens of thousands of children.
Al-Arab
puts the number of Syrian’s living below the poverty line at 86%.
They
also put the figures needed to protect Assad, his family and his coterie at an
estimated $30 Billion. This is just to protect the Syrian leader’s grip on
power. It is assessed that it will take in excess of $500 Billion to
reconstruct Syria.
Who
exactly is going to cover that cost? Hardly Iran. They are ambitious to use
Syria as a battlefront runway against Israel but, as we have seen, Israel is
savvy about what Iran is up to and strikes frequently, without boots on the
ground, to destroy the Iranian forward bases and weapon assembly facilities
which leaves Syria with even more collateral damage.
As
for the Palestinians, they have become a distraction, a nuisance, for much of
the Arab world that knows all too well they are nothing more than an
occasionally deadly pinprick in the side of Israel.
Many
Arab critics blame Palestinian leaders for missing too many opportunities for
peace. In short, they have lost patience with them and are paving semi-covert
relationships with Israel.
Any
righteous Muslim is aware that Palestinians make false claims to ownership over
Islamic holy shrines in Jerusalem. Their history places the wardenship of these
shrines with the Hashemite Jordanian king. This was a position, often thought
wrongly by Israelis, that was adopted by Moshe Dayan after Israel re-liberated
the Old City of Jerusalem in a defensive war against Jordan in 1967.
In
the battle for Jerusalem, the IDF succeeded in driving Jordanian forces out of
the city. The Jordanians had occupied the eastern side of Jerusalem in an
earlier war of aggression in 1948.
During the 19 years of their occupation of
Jerusalem, they had brutally driven all the Jews out of their ancestral homes
in the Old City, deliberately destroyed all the Jewish synagogues and teaching
centers, used Jewish gravestones from the Mount of Olives as paving stones, and
the Jewish Temple walls as urinals.
Based
on such a history, Israel can be forgiven for trusting nobody but itself for
protecting the faith freedoms in the holy city of Jerusalem. But
this gives an opportunity to Muslims who wish to pray in peace in Jerusalem.
Having
to accept that peaceful prayers comes with the necessary price of security to
all, there is no reason why Muslims cannot make their pilgrimage to Jerusalem
just as Jews and Christians do on a regular undisturbed and protected basis.
Allowing
their citizens to visit Israel may require Arab readers to literally bite the
bullet and accept that Israel is ready to welcome their people on condition
they come in peace.
Their
visitors will be vetted by Israeli security and intelligence agencies for
obvious reasons. This can be done partly by cooperation between Israel and the
visitors government intelligence agencies.
I
accept this may seem like a fantasy but, quite honestly, so was the two-state
solution. That was a non-starter due to the duplicitous flawed character of the
Palestinian leadership starting with Arafat and continuing with Mahmoud Abbas
and all the Hamas/Palestinian Islamic Jihad bad actors. That fantasy turned out
to be a nightmare for Israelis.
But,
in the yearning to “give peace a chance” it may be worthy for
Israel to welcome and let Arab and Muslim visitors see Israel as a prosperous,
diverse peaceful society.
The
problem of that may be that these visitors will return home to discover how
regressive their own countries are compared to Israel, and how much they have
been lied to through the years by their past leaders about the Jewish State.
Barry
Shaw is the International Public Diplomacy Director at the Israel Institute for
Strategic Studies. Author of '1917. From Palestine to the Land of
Israel.'
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