"Israel Hayom", June 27, 2014, http://bit.ly/1nOZQnO
According to the Saudi Arabian-based newspaper, Arab News, "the Arab Spring is not about seeking democracy, it is about Arabs killing Arabs… about hate and
sectarian violence…. The Arab Spring is an accumulation of years of
political corruption, human rights violations, sectarianism and poor
education systems. It showed that the Arabs were never united and are
now divided beyond anybody's imagination. We hate each other more than
we hate the outside enemy. Syrians are hurting Syrians and the Israelis
are the ones who treat the Syrian wounds [in an Israeli field hospital built on the Golan Height]."
Connecting the dots of the increasingly boiling Arab Street highlights the 1,400 year reality of intense intra-Arab violent intolerance,
hate education, transient (one-bullet) regimes, tenuous policies,
non-compliance with intra-Arab agreements which are usually signed on
ice and not carved in stone, explosive unpredictability, lack of
intra-Arab peaceful coexistence and a savage violation of civil
liberties. In 14 centuries, the Arab street has never
experienced freedom of religion, speech, press, association or movement,
which constitutes a prerequisite for free elections and peaceful
coexistence.
The Arab world is swept by domestic, regional,
national and intra-Arab terrorism,
systematically and intentionally targeting civilians and employing car
bombs, bullets, missiles and chemical warfare. Ethnic cleansing has
engulfed Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Tunisia and Libya, underlying the lack of
national cohesion on the Arab street and the merciless intra-Arab/Muslim
fragmentation along ethnic, tribal, cultural, geographic, ideological
and religious lines. The national cohesion of the three most powerful
Arab countries throughout the 20th century - Egypt, Iraq and
Syria - has collapsed, threatening Iraq and Syria with chaotic
disintegration. Studying the fate of minorities in Arab countries,
reveals the expected devastating Arab/Muslim attitude towards the
"infidel" Christian, Jews or Buddhist.
Connecting the dots of the increasingly boiling Arab Tsunami
has intensified anxiety and panic among the inherently unstable pro-US
regimes of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman,
and Bahrain. These regimes are aware that Egypt's Mubarak, Libya's
Kaddafi, Tunisia's Ben Ali and Yemen's Salah (possibly joined by Syria's
Assad) were perceived to be as stable as the Rock of Gibraltar, but
were overthrown summarily and brutally by fanatic Islamic terrorists.
They are cognizant of the clear, present and lethal threat posed by Iran
and Iran's adversary, the ISIS ("Islamic State in Iraq and Syria"),
which intends to sweep Jordan, Kuwait and the rest of the Gulf. They are
concerned about the lava erupting from the endemic civil war in the
intractably fragmented Yemen, which controls the route of the oil
tankers from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean.
Connecting the dots of the increasingly boiling Arab Street
emphasizes the mutually-inclusive nature of the Arab Streets. The
December 2010 Tunisian upheaval fueled the February 2011 Libyan and
Egyptian eruptions, which fed the February 2011 turmoil in Yemen and
Bahrain, and provided tailwind to the March 2011 civil war in Syria. It
intensified terrorism and disintegration in Iraq, thus posing an
imminent deadly threat to the Hashemite regime in Jordan, which could be
transformed into another heaven for Islamic terrorism on Israel's
longest, and most vulnerable, border.
Connecting the dots of the increasingly boiling Arab Street accentuates Israel's unique role
as the only stable, reliable, effective, democratic and unconditional
ally of the US, whose posture of deterrence – in the face of Islamic
terrorism and Iran - is a life insurance policy for the Hashemite regime
and other pro-US Arab regimes in the Middle East.
Connecting the dots of the increasingly boiling Arab Street
underscores the recklessness of past pressure on Israel to retreat from
the Golan Heights, as well as the current pressure on Israel to
withdraw from the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria, which dominate
the border with Jordan (the Jordan Valley) and over-towers Jerusalem,
Israel's international airport and 80% of Israel's infrastructures and
populations in the 9-15 mile sliver along the Mediterranean (the
pre-1967 Israel). An Israel without the mountain ridges of Judea and
Samaria would be transformed from a producer – to a consumer – of
national security; from a strategic asset to a strategic burden.
Connecting the dots of the increasingly boiling Arab Street exposes the gullibility of well-intentioned peace negotiators, who consider the Arab Tsunami an Arab Spring,
transitioning itself to democracy, embracing Western norms of peaceful
coexistence, compliance with agreements and civil liberties. They
believe that a signed agreement can overrule a 14 century old shifty and devious culture. They
ignore the fact that the Arab-Israeli conflict has never been "the
Middle East
conflict;" that the Arab Tsunami has revealed the Palestinian issue as a
marginal player in Middle Eastern politics; and that the Palestinian
issue has never been the crown-jewel of Arab policy making or the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict. They ignore the aforementioned reality-driven analysis by the Saudi Arab News, thus pressuring
Israel to go through suspension of
disbelief, lowering its security threshold and relying on
peace-driven-security, rather on security and deterrence-driven peace,
while the Arab Street is boiling.
Wishing you Shabbat Shalom and a rewarding weekend,
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, Jerusalem, "Second Thought: A US-Israel Initiative"
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