In the great Middle East whodunit, the verdict is in: The Jews are innocent. They aren’t responsible for the violence, extremism, backwardness, discontent, or predatory government of their Arab neighbors.
The past few months should have finally shattered the persistent illusion that the Israeli-Palestinian question determines all in the Middle East. In an essay in Foreign Policy magazine titled “The False Religion of Mideast Peace,” former diplomat Aaron David Miller recounts the conventional wisdom running back through the Cold War: “An unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict would trigger ruinous war, increase Soviet influence, weaken Arab moderates, strengthen Arab radicals, jeopardize access to Middle East oil, and generally undermine U.S. influence from Rabat to Karachi.”
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Behind these assumptions has long stood a deeply simplistic understanding of the Arabs. Professional naïf Jimmy Carter insists, “There is no doubt: The heart and mind of every Muslim is affected by whether or not the Israeli-Palestinian issue is dealt with fairly.” This is reductive to the point of insult. Carter thinks that Muslims have no interior lives of their own, but are all defined by a foreign-policy dispute that is unlikely to affect most of them directly in the least. He mistakes real people for participants in an endless Council on Foreign Relations seminar.
The Israeli-Palestinian issue certainly has great emotional charge, and most Arabs would prefer a world blissfully free of the Zionist entity. But the Israelis can’t be blamed — though cynical Arab governments certainly try — for unemployment and repression in Arab countries. Monumental events in recent decades — the Iranian revolution, the Iran–Iraq War, and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait — were driven by internal Muslim confessional, ideological, and geo-political differences. Israel has nothing to do with the Sunnis hating the Shia, or the Saudis hating the Iranians, or everyone hating Moammar Qaddafi.
Adam Garfinkle muses in his book Jewcentricity: “Imagine, if you can, that one day Israelis decided to pack their bags and move away, giving the country to the Palestinians with a check for sixty years’ rent. Would the Arabs suddenly stop competing among themselves, and would America and the Arab world suddenly fall in love with each other?”
Yet the pull of the illusion is so powerful that even those who don’t profess to believe in it, like George W. Bush, eventually get sucked in. Barack Obama came into office ready to deploy his charm and fulfill the millennial promise of the peace process once and for all. He couldn’t even get the Palestinians to sit down to negotiate with the Israelis, in an unintended “reset” to the situation decades ago.
According to the illusion, the region should have exploded in rage at Jewish perfidy and American ineffectualness. It exploded for altogether different reasons. We witnessed revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt without a hint of upset at the Israeli settlements or America’s continued failure as a broker of peace. We’ve seen the Arab League petition the United States — whose sole function is supposed to be monitoring Israeli housing developments and paving the way for a Palestinian state — to undertake a military operation against another (recently suspended) member of the Arab League, Libya.
It’d be easier if the key to the Middle East really were sitting around a negotiating table with a couple of bottles of Evian, poring over a map adjudicating a dispute so familiar that people have built diplomatic, academic, and journalistic careers on it. The current terrain of the Middle East as it exists — not as we assume it should be — is hellishly disorienting by comparison: What to do when an ally invades another ally to knock around protesters in violation of our values? When a tin-pot dictator thumbs his nose at us and the rest of West and crushes his opponents with alacrity despite our earnest protestations? When popular uprisings threaten our allies more than our enemies?
Talk about taking down a strawman. Who really argues that problems with the governments in Arab countries are DIRECTLY related or even indirectly related to Israel? All that matters is that Arabs/Muslims sympathize overwhelmingly with the Palestinians and abhor Zionism, and that feeling has been used by extremists to recruit followers and target the U.S for its support of that Zionist country. In general, the the struggle of the Palestinians causes, in part, ill-will in Muslims and Arabs towards the United States and resolving the issue would significantly improve relations between the West and the Arab world. It would not, and need not, affect anything else beyond that.
The implication of this article is that there should be no pressure for a Palestinian state to be established since the dispute does not really directly affect the lives of Arabs or their goverments. This is like saying the South African apartheid shouldn't have been ended since it didn't REALLY affect the lives of blacks in the rest of Africa.
No Abe, on the contrary, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the straw man in this case.
I have had many a Muslim, to include several Arabs in northern Iraq, tell me they could care less about the Palestinian-Israel conflict. They are more worried about their neighbors.
Mr. Lowries article speaks to this. The real straw man, the Palestine-Israel issue, is used by tyrants and radicals alike to divert attention away from their own atrocities and failures of governance. Your facts, at face value are correct. The majority of Arabs do seem to “sympathize” with the Palestinians. But that is also because various media outlets and various tyrants foment that sentiment to distract from their own issues. The sad truth is that a Palestinian state would still not quell the growing unrest amongst the Arab populace at their own tyrannical governments. And a Zion free Palestinian state will not settle the unrest or rage amongst the “Arab street”. They will just continue to look to an external target.
quote: "Most liberals. The ones who keep telling us that nothing will improve in the Middle East until the problem with Israel is solved."
A straw-man if ever there was one, and perhaps one that is much easier to believe than the fact the "liberals" want the issue resolved out of a sense of justice and sympathy for the Palestinians and their plight.
The argument--which I think is fair--that some liberals (and, in fact, foreign policy realists) hold is that America's relations with the Arab/Muslim world be easier if a Palestinian state were established, and that the likes of Osama would lack a key recruitment tool.
The idea that the establishment of a Palestinian state would wash away all the problems of the Arab world is laughable, and no wonder it, instead of the position held by the likes of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, is singled out for refutation. In any case, the insistence on this articles thesis is quite sinister as it seems to be arguing against the conflict getting resolved since it wouldn't really, you know, bring about change in other Arab countries. So let the Israelis do whatever they want with the West Bank, suggests the article, since it doesn't really affect the lives of the people in Algeria!
Guess what: The Holocaust didn't directly affect the lives of most people in the world either.
abe, If nobody makes such an argument, why is it that I hear leading Democrats and other liberals make just such an argument on a weekly, if not daily basis.
There was a Pew poll within the last decade looking into what concerns Arabs the most. The choices were: education, jobs, health, etc - 10 questions I think - and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict among them. What was remarkable (and that's why I remember) is that in Morocco, the Palestinian question was out-polling any other concern. (BTW, the least concern it was raising in Lebanon, but was on the top or very high for all other Arab nations)
If we presume that the people being polled did not just say what the pollsters wanted to hear, and they were sincere enough - it's still quite schizophrenic. But very telling.
Morocco is more than 2 thousand miles away from Israel. I am not sure they even have any meaningful trade relationships. But they say that Israel's sins is what concerns them more than their jobs, health and kids education!!! Even if it's true - it's a mental disease. Even if its true - it does not mean we should do anything to placate their fantasies.
Israel proved many times with giving away something very solid - dismantling Sinai settlements, Gaza settlements, leaving the buffer zone in southern Lebanon - that they can risk something very tangible for illusive peace (for better or worse). The Clinton era offers went even further. They were not enough, they will never be enough, because the goal was not - is not - peace with Israel, but Israel's elimination.
The example of Morocco's mentality is so striking because it shows to what degree people can be divorced from reality. If we let them. And the West does take this seriously, Europe does, American Left does. American "realists" too. When the proper response should've been: this is rubbish, stop deluding yourself. You are not miserable in Morocco because of anything Israeli do 2 thousand miles away. Clear up your head.
"We witnessed revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt without a hint of upset at the Israeli settlements or America’s continued failure as a broker of peace."
Wonderful - now there is no need to send billions to Israel and Egypt.
How about if, instead of the Arab world focusing all of its attention on a Palistinian state, (BTW, what are Gaza and the West Bank, anyway? Just wondering) they could try to do little, decent things to improve the lot of the Palestinian people themselves? You know, if it were actually true that "Zionists" are the most evil thing on the planet, irredemably foul to the depths of their rotten souls, why on earth would you expect them to ever do anything to help Palestinians? Why waste any energy whatsoever, or a single Palestinian life, in a useless effort to make them to The Right Thing, when it is in the power of every sympathetic Arab to do The Right Thing right now, today, no matter what the Israelis do? Start with offering the Palestinians who have been living in the territories of other Arab nations for several generations citizenship and a shot at decent educations and jobs. That would do more good for more Palestinians than a million street demonstrations in support of a Palestinian State. Talk about "Pie in the Sky, by and by!"
No one thinks that a lasting, fair resolution to the Palestinian question solves all of the Muslim world's problems or ends all animus felt in the region towards the west in general and the US in particular.
Rather, some assert that a just resolution to the Palestinian question is a precondition to stability and peace in the region. One can assert that this is a _necessary_ condition without asserting that it is also a _sufficient_ condition. One can also argue that it is a necessary condition without asserting that it must precede any or all other conditions.
@abe
‘In any case, the insistence on this articles thesis is quite sinister as it seems to be arguing against the conflict getting resolved since it wouldn't really, you know, bring about change in other Arab countries….
…Guess what: The Holocaust didn't directly affect the lives of most people in the world either..
Wrong and wrong.
1) The point of this article is not to ‘argue against resolving the conflict’ but to provide context for why Israel should be supported, not abandoned.
2) Conditions that allow a Holocaust to occur do indeed affect the lives as many for when a society engages in a Holocaust the flames are not easily contained to the few.
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