Middle East Reality Strikes President Trump

 

President Trump has yet to figure out the single most important truth about the Middle East. If you are unsure what this truth is, do not feel bad as none of the Presidents since President Truman have figured it out either and even President Truman and those before him back to President Jefferson did not figure it out either. Truth be told, President Jefferson was the sole President to figure out the Middle East equation, an equation which has not altered a single iota since then. The other problem is most people in this era have little memory or ever had knowledge of history, even the history of their own nation. This is true of Americans and apparently all too true of far too many modern Jews despite the center of our faith being remembering our past and celebrating that past where such is called for and mourn those happenings which can only be commemorated while not appropriate for celebration. The claim that Jews spend an inordinate amount of time and energy commemorating the past is true and will continue to be true as it is our past, which sets us apart and our very beginnings, which define our faith and our existence today. That is a truth about Judaism and why Israel, this little slice of land which is less than one-fourth of one percent of the lands in the Muslim world usually defined as the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa), is of such paramount importance to the Jewish People even in this modern era. But this is about President Trump and the problem his “Deal of the Century” faces as it has just run headfirst into the difficulty of the Middle East.

 

Presidents Jefferson, Truman and Trump

 

President Trump has based his “Deal of the Century” on replacing the implacable PLO or Palestinian Authority with Jordan, Egypt or possibly even Saudi Arabia. The easiest one of these nations to rule out is Saudi Arabia. President Bush who was a great friend of the Saudi Royal Family approached them for assistance in finding a solution during his administration. Instead of coming rushing to his aid, they simply took some time and met with other leaders of the Arab League and other Arab nations and eventually produced the Saudi Plan. The plan is also called the Arab Plan and is not very much different from the previous demands. Like every other proposed plan, this one also demands the pre-June 1967 lines, also known as the Green Line, completely erasing the losses from the Six Day War and resetting the area back to the borders which the Arab world found so inviting for destroying Israel that they simply had to attack. This is the initial demand, basically demanding a do-over for the Six Day War. Then it demands that there be a satisfactory solution be found for the Palestinian refugee problem. This is another standard where it is demanded that Israel accept anywhere from five to eight million Arab refugees and grant them their rightful citizenship in Israel transforming Israel into another Muslim majority nation which after the next election will soon star to destroy the Jewish population if any Jews wait that long before fleeing for their lives. Their claim is that since Israel is a democratic nation which provides for religious freedom, what complaint can the Israelis have in accepting these refugees? The problem is we have seen what happens to a nation once the Muslims become the majority by looking north to what had been predominantly Christian Lebanon which is now ruled by Hezballah which is armed and threatening to destroy Israel. The promise to Israel was should they accept this deal the Muslim Arab nations would consider recognizing and normalizing relations with Israel. Many people love to claim they promised to accept and have normal relations with Israel which is untrue, they only promised to think about doing such. Our bet is they would wait until Israel became yet another Arab Muslim nation before changing anything. The entirety of the Saudi Plan would be unacceptable but oddly enough, it was rejected by Yasser Arafat before it was presented as a plan to Israel.

 

That was the grand deal from Saudi Arabia and we are willing to bet that even the new leader, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, would not bring that big of a change, especially this early in his rule. His immediate plans are apparently domestic though he is not about to completely ignore the outside world. Prince Mohammed bin Salman will definitely watch the Saudi Arabian nemesis, Iran, and watch them closely. Israel is a problem which he does not require and as much as he probably would love to befriend President Trump, there are some requests which would be one too far. Prince Mohammed bin Salman might be willing to place the agreement of Saudi Arabia to any plan which proves acceptable to the Arab League and the rest of the Arab World as well as the Palestinian Arab leadership. That is where the knot of the problem sits.

 

Looking to Egypt and a year ago, that might have been a possibility but President Sisi is not sitting in as strong a position and much of his efforts will be to assure that he remains President of Egypt even if elections have to be massaged. His is an easy problem to define, and it is defined Muslim Brotherhood. Yes, he outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, but being outlawed and being expunged from the Egyptian population are two very different things. Much of the rural and poor population in Egypt receives assistance from Muslim Brotherhood Imams and officials and with the food, you win their support. It is a political equation as old as politics and probably older. President Sisi has also been in a running struggle with the Imams at Al-Azhar University in his effort to modernize Islam and turn them from their absolutist beliefs and bring Islam back from the precipice which abrogation placed them. President Sisi is attempting to end the insistence of domination over all other religions and the inevitability for conquest of the world bringing all to worship only Allah and allow for Islam to become a modernist religion where it will find a path for accommodating a plurality of religion and for the existence of lands which are not ruled by Muslims. Sisi is fighting fourteen-hundred years of history coming from the initial Caliphate and continuing through the Ottoman Empire. Should he fail, then Islam will continue on its path of confrontation and attempts at conquest continuing from time to time until they finally either conquer the world and bring all to Islam or are eradicated by a world no longer willing to accept their consistent resorting to confrontations. So, Egypt is out.

 

This leaves Jordan. President Trump has first placed his hopes with Jordan. Just this past week Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu visited King Abdullah in Amman, Jordan. Probably the easiest and most informative means of taking measure of their meeting would be to quote their statements which they released after their talks. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s response was given in an official Press Release stating, “Prime Minister Netanyahu and King Abdullah of Jordan met today in Amman. The King and the Prime Minister discussed regional developments, advancing the peace process and bilateral relations. Prime Minister Netanyahu reiterated Israel’s commitment to maintaining the status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem.” You have to love the conciseness of his emotionless, flat statement completely devoid of emotion.

 

King Abdullah was far more expressive in his communique. His statement came as follows (We initially tried to go to the link but found it nonfunctional. The article we relied upon for the King’s response can be read here),

 

“His Majesty King Abdullah, at a meeting on Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who departed Jordan after a short visit, stressed the need to make progress in efforts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on the basis of the two-state solution and in accordance with international law, relevant UN resolutions, and the Arab Peace Initiative.
“King Abdullah reaffirmed that the only way to achieve peace and stability in the region is by reaching a two-state solution and the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 4 June 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital, living side by side with Israel in peace and security.”
“The King affirmed that Jordan will continue upholding its historical role in safeguarding Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, in accordance with the Hashemite Custodianship.”

 

There are two items worth note, the first being the inclusion of safeguarding Christian holy sites with no reference to Jewish sites. The inclusion of Christian is taking additional right to having the right for control beyond the original agreed upon Islamic sites thus insisting on Jordan now having responsibility for all of the Temple Mount according to the King and further claiming that there is no holiness to Jews of the Temple Mount. This is a step towards preventing Jews from having access to the Temple Mount and a step backwards from recent events. The problem of the Temple Mount will likely now only start to escalate if Jordan decides to press the exclusion of Jews from the Temple Mount and, if the King follows the extremist views of the Palestinian Authority, denial of use of the plaza before the Western Wall, which Abbas has claimed is holy only to Islam. This path would lead to a direct confrontation testing relations between Israel and Jordan, a relationship which has grown colder on recent times.

 

The second issue is King Abdullah was simply restating the unresponsive position which Mahmoud Abbas and also Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Arab position since 1917 when the British declared their intent for a Jewish State with the Balfour Declaration and again throughout the following San Remo Conference, Treaty of Serves, the Mandate System, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 and finally the Declaration of the independence of the State of Israel in May of 1948. What he stated was that Jordan would demand that there be a Palestinian Arab state formed along the pre-Six Day War Green Line including eastern Jerusalem and the provisions of the Arab Initiative as described above includes the imposing of five to eight million Arab refugees into Israel making it another Arab Muslim nation as soon as elections would be held.

 

So, what is it that President Trump has run into? He has struck what we would refer to as the Islamic Brick Wall. President Jefferson figured it out as the Barbary Pirates demanded more and more protection payments and whenever the United States resisted returned to taking sailors from American ships until the payments were made. He also had heard it from the Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman in London representing the Dey of Algiers who controlled the Barbary Pirates. Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam, “It was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

 

Islam is a religion of conquest founded on beliefs which coalesced in the first hundred and fifty to two hundred years where abrogation placed the parts of the Quran written in Medina which contradicted the Mecca verses as abrogating the earlier verses. Egypt President Sisi is one of the most public persons who have called for abrogation to be reversed and the Mecca Quran, the original writings of Muhammad, as having primacy. Until Islam, if ever they should, follows the desires of President Sisi and his fellow patrons for amending the precedence of the later verses allowing the multicultural and more open Mecca verses guide modern Islam, there cannot be surrender of any lands by Islamic nations. This means that Israel, as well as Spain (Andalusia), must be erased and the lands returned to Islamic rule. Further, Muslims are to be pledged to forging a world where only Allah is worshiped and Islam is the sole religion. This is why Islamic nations strive to eradicate all other religions within their borders. This is also why Israel is the only nation in the Middle East where the Christian population is increasing. Saudi Arabia has places where no non-Muslim is permitted to tread, and by places, we mean entire cities such as both Mecca and Medina. Further, it is illegal and punishable by death to be a follower of Judaism, Christianity or religion other than Islam in Saudi Arabia. The supremacy of Islam is so defined that it even reaches to the point that one must practice the correct form of Islam thus the enmity between the Sunni and Shiite Muslims and Saudi Arabia and Iran, each the preeminent nation of each form of Islam. Iran has already made it clear that their intent is world conquest starting with Saudi Arabia and then on to Israel and the United States. The Saudi Arabians are more passive as Sunni Islam includes at least 85% of all Muslims with almost the entirety of the rest being Shiites. Either way, Islam, both Sunni and Shiite with Shiite being the more active currently, live by the concept of the sword, thus it matters little to the world which one is dominant, they will both eventually attempt to dominate. What is possibly a saving grace is that many in Islam pledge to make their founding school of Islam the dominant form which is part of why there are as many Islam-Islam wars. Below is a map of the numerous separate founders of the various forms of Islam. One can notice that Iran, Iraq, Qatar and Bahrain are the most populated Shiite Islamic centers while most of the rest of Islam belongs to some form of Sunni Islam.

 

The main Islamic madh’habs (schools of law) of Muslim countries or distributions

 

Both forms of Islam hold Mecca and Medina as their most holy cities and none outside those speaking about Israel believe, and not even those speaking of Israel, that Jerusalem is the third most holy city in Islam. In Shiite Islam after Mecca and Medina they are Najaf, Karbala, Kathemiya, Samara, Mash’had and Qom are the next most holy cities. In Sunni Islam Mecca and Medina, they are Istanbul, Cairo, Kufa and Karbala. Oddly enough, Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Quran as Muhammad removed any reference to Jerusalem after the Jews refused him as their prophet. This happened even before he presented the Quran to be written down by a scribe, as Muhammad did not read or write. The reason that Jerusalem is noted today as the third most holy city is because it is the city which Islam desires to conquer, or reconqer, next. The honor of being the third most holy city has also been shared by Damascus, Constantinople, Rome, Paris, London and New York amongst others. It is all part of the promise from Allah that in the Quran states that Islam will rule the world and all will bend to Allah and his people.

 

Beyond the Cusp