How Can One Compromise with Those Holding Such Positions?

One of the leading representatives with Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, Jibril Rajoub, was giving an interview on Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen TV when he allowed the truth to leak out. Mr. Rajoub when queried as to whether the Palestinian would ever plan to return to negotiations with the Israelis replied that negotiations would be considered only if the Palestinian Authority’s preconditions are met. It was in further explaining what he viewed as the Palestinian Authority’s desire in place of negotiations that he stated, “Listen. We as yet don’t have a nuke, but I swear that if we had a nuke, we’d have used it this very morning.” Rajoub is the Deputy Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee and chairman of the Palestinian Authority Olympic Committee. This should make for some serious doubts as to the sincerity of any position including compromise with the Israelis the Palestinian leadership express in interviews given to western media outlets. As many other as well as we have pointed out, if only the world would take the time, investing some effort even if only to satisfy curiosity and translate what the Palestinian spokespeople express when speaking in Arabic translating and placing them in their reports with equal prominence they give their articles denouncing Israeli efforts at self-defense, the public would be well served in making an informed and balanced evaluation of the realities of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. Unfortunately, it appears that truth and honest reporting are the first two casualties in the mainstream media coverage of virtually all things concerning the Middle East and its relevance and importance to the current world struggles.

 

In another recent television appearance, another senior PA official, Sultan Abu al-Einein on Palestinian Authority TV stated about the recent stabbing murder of Evyatar Borovsky by a Palestinian terrorist recently released from Israeli custody, Salam al-Zaghal, “We salute the heroic fighter, the self-sacrificing Salam al-Zaghal. He insisted on defending his honor, so he went against the settler and killed him. Blessings to the breast that nursed Salam Al-Zaghal.” Such comments being broadcast on Palestinian, Lebanese, Egyptian and other Arabic broadcast media are far from being the exception, they are by far the rule. It is solely due to the willful negligence of our Western mainstream media that prevents such claims from being widely known and the hidden truth behind who are the true impediments to peace being more broadly recognized. When covering the Middle East much of the media either omits information or represents misinformation unchallenged as if it were fact. There is a near constant drumbeat claiming that the presence of Israeli communities on established Palestinian claimed land which prevents any possibility for peace and stands in the way of negotiations. What is not explained are the facts that the Palestinians not only claim the areas known as the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem but also the rest of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, the Galilee and all of the land that makes up Israel, every single square inch. The Palestinian leadership reserves the right to continue the resistance until all of Palestine is freed which is an actual declaration that the terrorist attacks must continue even after any peace accord which may be signed in the future. Whenever this fact is admitted in the Western media it is portrayed as belonging only to Hamas and Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are represented as being moderates who are willing to make peace. The unfortunate truth is that the Fatah, the PLO, the Palestinian Authority and the entire Arab League all hold fast to their claim to replace all of Israel with an Arab state and the eradication of any trace of Judaism as their only acceptable goal. Since the Khartoum conference of 1967 the entire Arab World has held to the Declaration of the Three No’s; No peace, No negotiations, and No recognition. Such a position does indeed make holding peace talks rather difficult.

 

The truths which are lost because of the ruse known as the Palestinian’s claim to reconstruct their ancient homeland called Palestine are that there never was in all of history such a place as Palestine, the British used the term Palestinian to describe the Jews who resided within the British Mandate, The Balfour Declaration addressed the rights of the Arab populations residing within the British Mandate, Transjordan (currently called Jordan) was created as the Arab State for those Arabs living within the British Mandate and required the Jews to relinquish their legal claim to 78% of the British Mandate, Israel was not required by UNSC Resolution 242 to relinquish any of the West Bank but to relinquish only those lands acquired as a result of the 1967 War that were not determined by Israel to be vital for secure borders. Of the lands under UNSC Resolution 242 Israel has already relinquished well over 75% of the area by returning the Sinai Peninsula to the Egyptians, and lastly the original conflict was never between the Israelis and the Palestinians but between the Arab World and Israel.

 

Even should one look at the Oslo Accords one would almost immediately draw some interesting conclusions. The Oslo Accords drew three distinct areas within what is often referred to as the West Bank, and was historically referred to as Judea, Samaria and Benyamin (which kind of explains why those wishing to prevent Israel from claiming these areas had to rename them), into three separate areas, A, B, and C. Area A was given over to complete control of the Arabs under the auspices of the PLO and Yasser Arafat. Area C was given over to total Israeli control. Area B was jointly controlled by both the Arabs and the Israelis. This makes an obvious demarcation suggesting the intended solution originally was that Israel required all of Area C as their minimum needs to have basic security and the Arab population already, as it existed, was concentrated within Area A. This left Area B which held some concentrations of Arab villages and farms, some open lands, and some lands claimed by Jews who had their lands confiscated by the Jordanians after the 1948 war which the Arabs referred to as the war to eradicate the Jews and Israel calls their War of Independence, which gives some insight to the perspectives of the two sides. Since Area B was placed under dual control one might be led to think that these were the lands disputed between the two sides as originally observed when the Oslo Accords were enacted. It also would be prudent to believe that the negotiations should have been over where the border should be placed in order to fairly divide the lands within Area B. Instead we have muddied the original intents to the point that there have been discussions of granting the Palestinian Arabs a corridor across the Negev Desert so that their areas near the Jordan River have easy access without entering Israel to Gaza and the Mediterranean Sea, never mind that by doing such Israel is cut in two and is no longer contiguous, as long as the Palestinian areas are contiguous everything should be wonderful. There was a period when Mahmoud Abbas felt he had such a strong position he began claiming the entirety of Jerusalem as the capital city for the Palestinians. Fortunately, somebody managed to disavow him of such a felonious concept. All of this is a prime example of how far removed today’s perceived realities are from the original ideas of the Oslo Accords, let alone from the decisions, treaties, conferences, and even the White Papers which were all ratified soon after World War I and blessed by the League of Nations, the United States, Russia, and even the leadership of the Arab World, King Faisal. Sometimes time worsen wounds, not heals them.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Obama and the Middle East Dilemma

While everyone stares at the ever shifting, ever blurring Syrian Chemical Weapons red line which is now befuddling the White House, the Syrian civil war continues to wind on and on eventually to determine who will prove supreme, bad or worse. There is no good side to choose in this fight. It now comes down to Assad backed by Iran and Hezballah, the Syrian Free Army which is backed largely by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the al Nusra Front which represents al-Qaeda and even should Bashar Assad be toppled there will still be Hezballah allied with the IRGC guerilla forces attempting to preserve the influence of their Iranian masters. As far as the United States is concerned there is no actual good guy for them to back though President Obama has appeared to have a soft spot for the Muslim Brotherhood in the past.

 

The one democratic country which is very concerned over the eventual results and intermediate activities in Syria is, of course, Israel. While the Israelis are not particularly fond of any of the players, their previous knowledge of Assad may make him the least troublesome of the evils for Israel. Do not misunderstand that Assad would make Israeli leaders overjoyed as they have fought three conflicts against his forces; one in the Six Day War in 1967, once again when both Syria and Egypt launched the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and their final conflict was an air war over the Bekaa Valley in 1982 where the Israelis knocked sixty Syrian fighters from the skies in two days of dog fights losing absolutely no planes themselves. For the memory of these defeats Bashar al-Assad might be sufficiently gun shy that would make his remaining in power preferable to having to teach a new leader the perils of engaging the IDF from scratch.

 

Whatever the eventual result of the civil war in Syria the one thing Israel absolutely cannot allow is for Iran or anybody else to funnel new and more dangerous weapon systems to Hezballah in Lebanon. This is what spurred the recent air raids by the Israelis on Damascus and along the Syrian-Lebanon border over the past week. The Israelis were removing transports carrying new weapon systems which would have posed a serious increase in the threat potential of Hezballah. One can only imagine what such systems might have entailed as Hezballah already possesses at a minimum sixty-thousand rockets of various ranges with which to threaten Israel. Despite such a seemingly overwhelming threat potential, Iran has still decided it is worth the possible losses to attempt to further arm Hezballah in order to turn their threat into a certainty that Tel Aviv would be decimated in return for any actions taken against the Iranian nuclear program. Iran has made it very certain that it matters not who attacks their nuclear program, Israel will receive the brunt of the Iranian response through Hezballah and Hamas and Syria providing Syria is still a part of the Iranian Shiite Crescent across the Middle East.

 

Meanwhile, back in Washington DC President Obama is doing a number of pirouettes on the head of a pin trying to avoid being pinned down to his red line should Syria use chemical weapons threat. Syria has, according to Israeli, French, British and even most United States sources, already deployed Sarin nerve agent against the rebel forces and civilians. There have been reports of multiple usages yet President Obama continues to squirm and wrestle with these facts attempting to twist them into a cloud of doubts in order to back away from the precipice and avoid actually being forced to act. The problem President Obama is facing is that he really miscalculated when making a threat he never expected to have to ever face. Now that reality has not only caught up but has swept past his threat of action crossing over his red line, President Obama must now fudge the facts and blow enough smoke that he can claim that his red line was more flexible and has remained inviolate, but with his red line not only crossed but rather obliterated, President Obama has been left appearing completely toothless in all ways concerning Syrian use of chemical weapons.

 

There is one huge problem beyond the simple fact that President Obama has been rendered impotent concerning events in Syria; all of his threats and posturing over the Iranian nuclear program are now mute and meaningless. This can only serve to make the Iranian nuclear weapons threat even more potent as it is now obvious that President Obama never actually intended to ever take action in order to prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons. This leaves all of Europe as well as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the other nations within the GCC, and anyone else who Iran may see as an opponent directly in the crosshairs of a potential nuclear Iran. What makes things even more clouded is that now all of the intelligence information which originated with the United States or was heavily influenced by the United States now cannot be considered to be anything other than a ruse to prevent the appearance of a need to act. This is very likely to cause a complete reevaluation of the entire Iranian situation by Israel at the very least. The backing away from his red line by President Obama has resulted in the entire world now realizing that they are on their own when it comes to the Iranian threats. This can only lead to a more dangerous Middle East, like anybody thought such was even possible.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Will Iraq be the Next Syria?

The news coverage given by the mainstream media about the growing violence between the different factions in Iraq has been very slanted in order to shield the Shiite Muslims from responsibility for mass violence while heaping all of the blame upon the Sunni Muslims and especially al-Qaeda terrorists. The only groups being covered fairly are the Kurds who are, as much as they are able, living their lives independent from any governance from Baghdad while exercising as much autonomy as they possibly are able. During the past week there was reported in some of the international media of the Shiite commanders in the military ordering their troops to disperse unarmed groups of Sunni protesters using live fire from the main machinegun of Abrams M1A1 heavy battle tanks. Also not given much coverage at the time was after United States President Obama allowed the Shiite leadership of the Iraqi government to order the segregation of the United States military forces to an isolated base out in the middle of the dessert and restrict any United States military movements or maneuvers under restrictions allowing only those actions approved by the Iraqi Shiite dominated government that charges were drawn up for treason against the Sunni Vice-President of Iraq. Following soon behind this was the purge of most of the Sunni and Kurdish representatives within the government, especially any who held positions of consequence. The United States backed candidate to lead Iraq, President Nuri al-Maliki, has taken complete and unchallengeable control over the reins of power and now rules as the Shiite version of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

 

The most evident difference between al-Maliki and Iraq under Saddam Hussein is that under Saddam the Christians were among those who were protected along with the favored Muslims who were the Sunnis while they are the Shiites under al-Maliki. Surprisingly, in many ways al-Maliki is just as vicious and strident in his hatreds as Saddam ever was. The main consequence of this along with numerous other positions supported by President Obama is that the Sunni Muslims, who are over seventy percent of all followers of Islam, will never again trust the United States to stand behind their promises and protect those whom they promised security when their assistance was necessitated by the tactical situation. The Sunni were the Iraqis who assisted the surge troops brought into the Sunni Triangle in order to take on al-Qaeda in Iraq on their home ground and drove them from Iraq enabling the establishment of the Iraqi’s first honestly and freely elected government. This brought al-Maliki to power with the blessings of the United States under both President George W. Bush and then under President Barack Obama.

 

What was even more troubling was the fact that as time passed it became unavoidably evident that al-Maliki was really a puppet willing to do the bidding and give his loyalty to Iran. One might have expected his showing his allegiance to Iran would have made al-Maliki a nonstarter for any position supported by the United States considering the efforts by the United States and their allies to prevent the Iranian nuclear program from reaching its goals. Despite this, al-Maliki has consistently moved closer and closer to Iran to the point that he has blessed with protection the Iranian transfers of supplies across Iraq in order to bolster the dictator Bashir Assad in his fight against the rebel forces in Syria. This travesty and complete waste of all the efforts which were committed in the removal of Saddam Hussein simply to allow al-Maliki to make Iraq into a subsidiary nation under Iranian control is an insult to the brave Americans who fought and even died to free Iraq from one oppressor only to place them under a new and different oppressor. This also completed the Iranian dream of a Shiite crescent reaching from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea along the path starting in Iran and passing through Iraq and Syria and terminating in Lebanon which is controlled through Hezballah. The two weakest links in this chain are Syria and Iran as both have sizeable non-Shiite populations. What we have witnessed in Syria where Christians are being targeted by all sides while there is a fight between Bashir Assad as the pro-Iranian influence, against two rebel forces one of which is pure Sunni Islamists represented by the al-Nusra Front, and the Muslim Brotherhood represented by the Free Syrian Army. What is often left out is that even should Bashir Assad fall it would not automatically mean the end of the Iranian influence as Iran has also built a semi-rebel force consisting of Basenji Militia, IRGC and Hezballah who would continue to be content to control as much area as they were able with a concentration on connecting Damascus and its international airport with the coastal Alawite and Shiite areas of Syria.

 

Meanwhile, in Iraq the Sunni are likely to revolt and to form around al-Qaeda on one side and possibly with Saudi Arabia Wahhabi influence as another front similar to the Muslim Brotherhood rebel forces in Syria and the latter will attempt to forge an alliance with the Kurdish forces in the north of Iraq. The Kurds would be well served to stay out of such a revolt and instead declare themselves a state using the Palestinian Authority as their precedent for establishing Kurdistan in an area which minimally includes the northern forty percent of Iraq and pull as many of Kurdish ancestry from within eastern Turkey and northern Iran to solidify their new country in the north of a fractured Iraq. What is actually the most ironic, sarcastic and completely insane quality is what likely lies just over the horizon for Iraq, the distinct possibility that Iraq will end up splitting into three states, Shiite Iraq, Sunni Iraq (also could be called Southern Iraq and Northern Iraq), and Kurdistan, just as Joe Biden had suggested it should have been divided up to start with. Who knew that Biden was not just somewhat strange and spoke insanities from time to time, but could actually be prophetic. Wait a minute, let’s not get carried away just because old Joe finally got one right, after all, a stopped clock is correct twice a day.

 

Beyond the Cusp