Zionism needs Israeli Jews to feel frightened
When the Palestine file was closed by Israel’s 1948 victory on the battlefield and the armistice agreements, the divided and impotent Arab regimes secretly shared the same hope as the Zionists and the major powers. It was that the file would remain closed for ever. The Palestinians were supposed to accept their lot as the sacrificial lamb on the altar of political expediency.
Nor is there any mystery about why the Arab regimes were at one with the Zionists and the major powers in hoping that there would never be a regeneration of Palestinian nationalism. They all knew that if there was, there would one day have to be a confrontation with Zionism; and nobody wanted that.
When Yasser Arafat, Abu Jihad and a few others lit the slow burning fire of the regeneration, it was the security services of Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon which took the lead in trying to put it out.
Fast forward to 1982, Before Sharon sent the IDF all the way to Beirut to exterminate the PLO’s leadership and destroy its infrastructure, [Persian] Gulf Arab leaders met in secret, without advisers present, in order to agree a message to the Reagan administration. The message was to the effect that they would not intervene in any way when Sharon made his move. After that message was sent, one of the Arab leaders present, Oman’s Sultan Qaboos, said to Arafat: “Be careful. You are going to ask for our help and it will not come.”
And let me add this. Last year I had a private conversation in London with a major royal from the Arab world. I said to him, “Nothing is going to change in the Arab world until your regimes are more frightened of their own masses than they are of offending Zionism and America”. He replied, “You’re right.” I also said to him, “If the Zionists do resort to a final round of ethnic cleaning to close the Palestine file, Arab leaders, behind closed doors, will give thanks and celebrate.” His reply was the same, “You’re right.”
You’ve implied in your article “Obama speaks at the UN… Goodbye to peace” that if the Arab and Muslim leaders were effectively united against the United States whose ultimate objective is to consolidate and empower the quisling government of Mahmoud Abbas, Israel couldn’t have succeeded in imposing its expansionistic wills on the Palestinian nation and its chances for legitimizing a Greater Israel which goes beyond the borders of 1967 would have been insignificant; however, we don’t find such a solidarity among the Muslim and Arab leaders. except in the streets, as you put it. So what will be the fate of Palestinian nation? Should they surrender into what Israel has foreseen for them, that is displacement, homelessness and destruction?
My point has never been that Arab and other Muslim leaders have to be “against” the U.S. The main difference at leadership level between the Jews and the Arabs is that the Jews know how to play the game of international politics and the Arabs don’t. Put another way, Zionism’s key players know how to play the cards they were dealt and Arab leaders don’t.
Zionism’s five main cards were and are the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust for blackmail purposes; money (virtually unlimited funds) and the influence it buys; the organized Jewish vote in close American election races; overwhelming military superiority; and, more generally speaking, breathtakingly, brilliant organization and coordination.
The Arabs had, and still have an ace that would have trumped all of Zionism’s cards: OIL.
Imagine what would have happened in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 war if Arab leaders had put their act together and sent one of their number secretly to Washington DC to say something very like the following to President Johnson behind closed doors: “If you don’t get Israel back behind its pre-war borders, we’ll turn off the oil taps.”
If Johnson had believed that Arab leaders were united and serious, he would have replied with something very like the following: “I can’t guarantee swift action on Jerusalem but give me two or three weeks for the rest.”
If the Zionists had been in the Arab position, that is how they would have played their hand. And that is not pure speculation on my part. Over the years I have been told so by a number of Israeli leaders including former Directors of Military Intelligence.
The main point is that if Johnson had believed that Arab leaders were united and serious, they would not have had to turn off the oil taps. A secret, credible threat to do so would have been enough to cause Johnson or any president to put America’s own best interests first.
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