By Khalid Amayreh Journalist — Occupied Palestine

US President Barack Obama meets with Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak
at the White House in Washington August 18, 2009.

In his recent visit to the United States, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak surprised his American interlocutors when he said that Arab states would not normalize relations with Israel before the termination of the Israeli occupation and establishment of a Palestinian state.

Mubarak argued that as far as the Arabs were concerned, previous normalization endeavors were not encouraging as successive Israeli governments interpreted the Arab goodwill in this regard as connoting tacit acceptance of the consolidated Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, including the colonialist Jewish settlement expansion.

The Egyptian President could have argued further, perfectly correctly, that Israel, especially the current right-wing government of Benyamin Netanyahu, is effectively using the “normalization issue” as a sort of distraction or “red herring” to divert attention from the settlement expansion issue as well as Israel’s adamant refusal to give up the spoils of the 1967 war.

Indeed, Israeli intellectuals, especially those who value honesty, have repeatedly argued that the current Israeli government is only interested in “posturing” and “prevarication” and that it is pointless to pin any serious hopes on it for a true partnership for peace.

Liberman was only saying publicly what many Israelis say privately.

This candid appreciation of the most fascist-minded government in Israel’s history was plainly vindicated by Netanyahu’s own gung-ho speech at the Bar-Illan University near Tel Aviv on 14 June. In that infamous speech, Netanyahu made it clear that as far as Israel was concerned, any prospective Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would have to be tightly and completely controlled by Israel.

Israel, he said amid cheers from the audience, would have to control the borders, border crossings, harbors, airports, airspace, territorial waters and international relations of such a state which he said would have to be completely demilitarized.

In other words, the contemplated Palestinian state would have to be more or less a Palestinian Judenrat under Israeli supervision and control.

Unfortunately, this clarion Israeli insolence passed unchallenged, not only by key Arab states, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but also by the bulk of the international community, including the United States and the European Union.

Needless to say, the stark absence of any meaningful challenge to Netanyahu’s blatant arrogance seemed to have convinced the Israeli government that neither the Arab states nor the international community ought to be taken seriously and that a policy based on posturing and verbal maneuvering would suffice in managing the crisis, at least for the time being.

There is no doubt that Israel is interested in normalization with Arab states only to the extent to which these states can be used to degrade Palestinian interests.

For example, it is an open secret that Israel has been using the Egyptian regime for the past few years as an effective and harsh tool for tormenting Gazans and perfecting the nearly hermetic siege imposed on the coastal enclave.

The same thing can be said of other Arab states, such as Jordan and the Gulf-states, whose “cooperation” had been enlisted by Israel and her western allies to impose a harsh financial blockade on the elected government of Hamas, thus contributing to the impoverishment and degradation of the Gaza-Strip’s 1.5 million human beings whose only “crime” was their audacity to elect a political party that Israel, the US and their allies didn’t like.

The scandalous Arab propensity to collaborate with these cruel designs against a fellow Arab people must have emboldened the Zionist state to wage its Nazi-like blitzkriegs on Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008/9 in which thousands of innocent civilians were murdered, maimed and incinerated while thousands of buildings and private homes were utterly destroyed.

The disgraceful official Arab reaction to these crimes against humanity made Israeli officials, like Avigdor Lieberman, calls openly for dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.

Lieberman is not a black sheep in a society that breathes and consumes racism. He was only saying publicly, what many Israelis say privately.

Absence of Real Deterrence

The game of normalization with Israel has a beginning but has no end.

In a certain sense, the Arab regimes, especially key Arab

states, can’t absolve themselves of responsibility for Israeli insolence and rejection of a dignified peace that would end the occupation and grant the thoroughly tormented Palestinians a semblance of justice and dignity.

For decades, these Arab regimes preferred to behave as “nice guys” by refraining from building up a true strategic deterrent that would make Israel thinks twice before going too far in bullying Arab-Muslim states from Morocco to Persia.

All of this happened while Israel was building a huge nuclear arsenal and other weapons of mass destruction that put hundreds of millions of Arabs, Turks, Iranians and other Muslims under the mercy of Israeli whims.

It is this clarion impotence that enabled racist thugs like Lieberman to threaten to bomb the Aswan dam in upper Egypt and blanket-bomb Tehran as well as threaten to flatten Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank.

What is even worse than basking in their despicable impotence and powerlessness, some Arab regimes have shamelessly resorted to the logic of appeasement, thinking that by endearing themselves to fanatical Zionist leaders, Israel would relent and allow Palestinians to live as dignified human beings and grant them self-determination.

But appeasement only invites more blackmail and more bullying, and Israel would only be encouraged to demand more and more and still more conditions.

We who live here in Occupied Palestine watch the Israeli media and engage ordinary Israelis in lively discussions about their concept of peace with Arabs and Muslims. And, unfortunately, the Israelis, or most of them, don’t accept the concept of human parity and equality and insist that Jews, by virtue of being Jews, must receive a distinctive preferential treatment in every conceivable sphere of human activity, form security to religion.

This is why the issue of normalization ought to be placed in its proper context, as public relations ruse aimed first and foremost at making sure that the proverbial ball remains in the Arab-Muslim court, while Israel continues to pulverize and Judaize Palestinian land.

Wolfs attack unguarded ranches, but fear the ferocity of the lion-hearted.

Moreover, it is nearly certain that the game of normalization with Israel has a beginning but has no end because Israel and Zionist circles around the world would never be satisfied until all Arabs and Muslims become bona-fide Zionists.

A few years ago, an Israeli pundit explained that normalization with the Arabs and Muslims should also include “psychological and religious normalization” including allowing Jews free access to Makkah and Madina, altering Quranic texts which some Jews may find objectionable, as well as changing Arab and Muslim textbooks that are critical of Zionism.

In other words, Israel would stop at nothing, and would continue to make deliberately impossible demands upon Arabs and Muslims, all for the purpose of evading real peace, the peace that would require ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.

Strength Pays Off

The former Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfigar Ali Bhutto was not particularly known for his piety and religiosity. However, he deserves to be lauded for nurturing the Pakistani nuclear program which eventually enabled that important Muslim country to stand tall, once and for all, in the face of nuclear-armed India, which had invaded and humiliated Pakistan several times.

Pakistan, unlike oil-rich Arab states, is a poor country. However, unlike these Arab countries, Pakistan had a will of its own.

Similarly, North Korea, one of the most impoverished countries under the sun, decided to build a nuclear weapon and actually detonated one a few months ago despite all the hectoring and saber-rattling from the US, Japan, South Korea and other countries.

Well, North Korea, irrespective of the repugnant character of its tyrannical regime, can exercise its sovereignty without being bullied by predator states such as Israel.

The Arab poet said:

Wolfs attack unguarded ranches, but fear the ferocity of the lion-hearted.

Perhaps Arab leaders, such as Mubarak and the King of Saudi Arabia, ought to return to elementary school to learn old Arab poetry in order to know what it takes to get Israel to walk in the path of peace.

-###-

http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1248188091288&pagename=Zone-English-Muslim_Affairs%2FMAELayout

Khalid Amayreh is a journalist living in Palestine. He obtained his MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983. Since the 1990s, Mr. Amayreh has been working and writing for several news outlets among which is Aljazeera.net, Al-Ahram Weekly, Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), and Middle East International. He can be reached through politics.indepth@iolteam.com