Changing
American Views On Israel May Determine Peace Outcome
Saeed Naqvi
To win the March 17 Israeli elections or
to postpone them (because he may lose), Benjamin Netanyahu is turning heaven
and earth. Last month’s Israeli air strikes killed six Hezbullah commanders and
an Iranian General in the Syrian town of Quneitra.
The purpose was to invite retaliation.
Warlike atmosphere would block Secretary of State John Kerry with his skates on
towards a nuclear deal with Iran.
What will be his next gambit? Some big
skirmish in Gaza or Southern Lebanon or further afield. But after his March 3
meeting with Obama?
One may be forgiven for asking what came
of the meeting of 21 world leaders in London, who swore to fight the ISIS?
Those fighting the ISIS on the ground are Iran, Syria, Hezbullah, precisely last
month’s Israeli targets. And now Jordan has been dragged in. At what possible
cost? American public see the ISIS is the biggest threat to US interests, not
Iran as Netanyahu does.
Whether Netanyahu wins or loses, Israel
for the time being looks the most secure real estate in the region. But how
long does a nation look safe when everything around it is falling apart?
Israel was once a softer place, with
gentle Kibbutz and, in the shadow of Mount Hermon, Fa Giladi seemed a wonderful
place to read, reflect, write. Peace was broken occasionally by shelling from
Habbariya in Southern Lebanon. Both, Palestinian resistance and Israeli
determination, seemed reconcilable – at some future date.
Then, suddenly, everything began to look
irreconcilable once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990. Even before that date,
Ariel Sharon had moved into Lebanon. That was the beginning of the gradual
decline of the world’s most elegant city – Beirut. Nabi Beri’s Shia Amal gave
way to the religious, militarized Hezbullah. So, Israeli action splintered Lebanon
into its religious components.
A decade later when Bosnian brutalities
were daily fare in the global media, a senior French official told me in Paris:
“The balance of power had shifted against the Christians in Lebanon; it was now
shifting against the Muslims in Bosnia.”
At the time that Sharon was in Lebanon,
the Soviets were in Afghanistan. Began the biggest manufacture in history of
Islamist Jihadists on a scale that would match Pope Urban’s crusades beginning 1095.
Zbigniew Brzezinski said he would not worry about some “stirred up Muslims” so
long as the West won the Cold War.
That may have been Brzezinski’s
perspective. But various world capitals, New Delhi included, were gripped by
deep anxiety. The Indian Foreign office, like the rest of the establishment,
was split down the middle. The Foreign Secretary was waiting for the coup to
succeed in Moscow, while his colleagues celebrated when Boris Yeltsin appeared
atop a tank in Moscow.
The inauguration of bandit capitalism in
Russia was a benign act, we were told. The other day I saw Bill Clinton sharing
his deep understanding of Russia with Fareed Zakaria. “Yeltsin was a much
better President than Vladimir Putin”. The entire New York Times reading public
of the free world would agree.
Was it Western triumphalism or pique, I
cannot be sure, but one by one targets were picked from among the Arab states
once in the Soviet bloc. Saddam Hussain’s picture appeared on the cover of Time
magazine as Hitler. He may have been worse than Hitler, but the thousand mile
road he laid from Amman to Baghdad was like a continuous billiard table.
Hospitals, schools, colleges, universities thrived.
The best fish in the world, Masgouf,
caught from the Dajlah (Tigris) and roasted on open fires along the river is
now a delicacy lost. When I looked for my favourite Masgouf hut two years ago,
I was told they now get their fish from a nearby lake because the river fish
had turned scavenger. This was discovered by a customer who found a baby’s
finger in the stomach of the fish.
I would not miss my delicacies if there
were other compensations. But no. Totally secular Baath socialism was replaced
by acute Shia-Sunni divisions.
After a decade of what Obama thought was
a pointless involvement in Iraq, he was, at work again, this time in Damascus
and then in Tripoli, destroying a secular and a moderate society to be replaced
by rampaging Islam.
Nothing will ever measure upto Beirut,
but Damascus too was quite a “markaz” for gracious living. Tripoli would not be
boring if it had bistros and bars lining up the splendid boulevard. But it
could boast being a city without Mullahs; the most educated in the
neighbourhood could lead the Friday prayers. Its military academics for women,
an efficient cradle to grave welfare system were not to be sniffed at.
Iraq, Syria, Libya, possibly because of
their earlier Soviet affiliations, needed to be cleansed more thoroughly. In
the new landscaping of the region, Israel looks fine. But, is it really? Surrounded
by dysfunctional societies which were once the region’s most efficient states. Dictatorships,
yes, but functional, unlike Afghan democracy where the winner is declared CEO
and the loser, President.
Israel must know that a sort of fatigue
is setting in all around at its persistent intransigence. I commend to my
Israeli friends that they read Shibley Telhami’s opinion poll on shifting ideas
in the US about Israel, something even Thomas Friedman is worried about. There
may be a shaft of light.
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