Palestinians Must Face Reality, Stop Their Ingratitude Towards The Gulf States

 The reaction of the Palestinian Authority (PA), headed by President Mahmoud 'Abbas, to the August 13, 2020 announcement of UAE-Israel normalization was blunt and harsh. The PA accused the UAE of betraying the Palestinians and their cause, as well as Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, of "aggression towards the Palestinian people," of stabbing the Palestinians and the Arab and Islamic nation in the back with a "poisoned dagger," and of making concessions to Israel for nothing in return.

The PA leaders called the UAE's move unacceptable and an act of deception, and accused the UAE of abandoning the Arab Peace Initiative and capitulating and groveling to the U.S. Calling on the UAE to reverse its "disgraceful decision," they also warned other Arab countries not to follow its example. The condemnation reached its peak at a September 3, 2020 conference of Palestinian faction leaders that included representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad alongside representatives of Fatah and other factions. At the conference, 'Abbas, as well as Mu'in Hamed, leader of Al-Sa'iqa organization, a PLO faction, spoke bluntly and derisively of the Gulf states, calling them "illiterate" and saying that the Palestinians, who are far more educated than they, do not need anyone's help.

The Palestinian leadership's statements provoked much criticism on social media and in the Arab press, especially in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt. Daily newspapers in these three countries have published dozens of articles since the normalization agreement was announced expressing support for the UAE's decision and condemning the Palestinians, especially their "ungrateful" leadership. The writers claimed that this leadership has exploited the Palestinian cause for seven decades to extort more and more funds from the Gulf states. Some even accused Palestinian officials of taking the money for themselves and of deliberately rejecting every peace initiative in order to perpetuate the situation and remain in power. They further claimed that since the world and the global balance of power have changed, slogans like "Palestine from the River to the Sea" are no longer relevant, and also that the Arab countries are entitled to prioritize their own interests.

For more on this go to MEMRI

 

 

A Scorecard on the First Decade after the Arab Spring

Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs 

• Today, the Middle East is a combination of confused Arab nation-states that have shown their weakness and incapacity to contain the Iranian threat. The instability of Arab regimes allows the formation of sectarian and extremist Islamic militias that threaten the Middle Eastern and world order. The disintegration of the Middle East nation-states has placed the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on hold.
• Turkey, with its Muslim Brotherhood leader, President Erdogan, has adopted an unprecedented activist and aggressive policy. Turkey was deeply involved in facilitating the introduction of ISIS fighters from Europe and Asia into Syria and Iraq. Turkey's intelligence services were also implicated in the supply and training of jihadists in Egypt and Libya. Turkey's intelligence agents were caught red-handed in Sinai fighting alongside jihadist organizations against the el-Sisi regime of Egypt.
• This past decade saw the reappearance of Russia as a superpower in the Middle East. Moscow has sought to fill every vacuum and to replace the United States politically with new arms and economic deals. As a result of its massive military presence in Syria, Moscow became the mediator Israel could not circumvent and a force on the ground with whom Israel had to coordinate deconfliction arrangements to prevent unwanted clashes between the militaries of both countries.
• Illustrative of the weakness of the Arab regimes was their inability to deal with existential dangers. Ethiopia is building the biggest hydroelectric power facility in Africa on the Blue Nile, whose inauguration is scheduled for 2022. The Blue Nile provides 85 percent of the water flow to Egypt downstream. Moreover, filling the Ethiopian dam threatens the water level in Egypt's Aswan Dam, where a severe drop could jeopardize the production of electricity by the dam's turbines. There is little wonder that Egypt has several times contemplated military action against the Ethiopian dam.

• Iraq has always depended on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In recent years the Iranians have diverted at least 42 rivers and springs of water from Iran, causing a migration of Iraqis from the water-stricken areas. The Turks have built five big dams on the Tigris. As a result of these projects, Iraq has lost more than 50 percent of its water. Before 2003, Iraq generated power from 12 hydroelectric stations. Reduced water flow because of Turkey and Iran, coupled with drought and the war with the Islamic State, have left Iraq's major cities with only an intermittent supply of electricity.

Protecting The Persecuted

As Christians in the Middle East risk death for practicing their faith, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) is doing what it can to keep them safe.

There is perhaps no better description of the plight Christians are suffering in today’s Middle East. From Syria to Sudan, Christians are slaughtered for being the other. According to the human rights organization Open Doors, some 215 million Christians are currently facing persecution, with some suffering the worst fate: death.

International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) founder, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, has seen the anguish this has caused those who flee dangerous countries firsthand. In Jordan, the organization has recently opened a clinic to treat refugees from Iraq and also provides some 100 families with food, rent and medicine.

“Like the Jewish communities across the Middle East and North Africa, there were Christian communities in these places for 2,000 years, and now they’ve been essentially wiped out,” Eckstein said.

For more on this story go to https://www.jpost.com/Christian-News/Protecting-the-prosecuted-564828

Lebanese Journalist: Israel Excels and Arabs Failed a Century After Balfour

Feb 22, 2018

A Lebanese journalist has conceded that looking back at a century of history in the Middle East, the Arab world has failed where Israel has shined.

In a November 25, 2017 article marking the 100^th  anniversary of the Balfour Declaration published in the London-based daily Al-Hayat, Lebanese journalist Karam Al-Hilu compared the meager accomplishments of the Arab world in the past century with those of the rest of the countries of the world, and particularly Israel.

The Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 was a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Baron Rothschild stating that “His Majesty’s government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Al-Hilu noted that Israel’s supremacy in the areas of science, economy, society, and politics is the source of its strength, as well as the source of the Arabs’ failure in confronting it.

“A century after the Balfour Declaration the Arabs have not managed to build a [a single] state that possesses knowledge, justice, and the economic, social, and human capability for confronting Zionism,” al-Hilu wrote, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) recently published,

Arab Lack of Achievements

“One hundred years have been squandered [by the Arabs], in all aspects; during them, the Arabs have been confronting Israel while their cultural infrastructure was in crisis – in the areas of knowledge, politics, economy, society and thought,” he charged.

According to a 2014 Arab Knowledge Report published by the United Nations (UN), despite the existence of 500 Arab universities, with an enrollment of nine million students and faculties of 220,000 lecturers, scientific achievements are meager in the Arab world, which has failed to adapt to digital culture and other basic aspects of human progress.

Expenditure on scientific research for its part is negligible.

Scientists and research output are a rarity in the Arab world, and the research that is published there constitutes only 0.8 percent of the global average. The number of patents registered to the Arabs in the past 50 years does not exceed the number of those registered by Malaysia alone.

“Not a single Arab university ranks among the 500 best in the world, while Israel supersedes the Arabs at an astronomical rate, in inventions and in hi-tech export. Israel has completely wiped out illiteracy  [among its citizens], while among the Arabs, 23 percent remain illiterate,” he further noted.

Arab Law and Justice

The Arabs have also not succeeded in building a single state of law and justice, he pointed out.

Transparency.org’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2016, published January 2017, shows that six of the 10 most corrupt countries in the world are Arab. Countries such as Egypt and Tunisia are ranked 108^th in corruption, and Lebanon is 136^th, while Israel takes 33^rd place, which places it with the developed countries.

“[The Arabs] have not managed to establish a country [in which there is] economic justice; the class gaps [among the Arabs] are very great and unemployment, particularly among young people, tops out at 35.7 percent in Egypt, 32.1 percent in Iraq, and 45.3 percent in Mauritania,” he added.

For the Arabs to change the course of history and rectify this situation, as part of the “resistance to Israel,” they must start by “reading these numbers and these facts,” claimed al-Hilu.

While the Arab world has “spared no blood, martyrdom, or [self-]sacrifice” in its fight against Israel, “it has been negligent in the areas of science, economy, society, and politics that are the source of Israel’s strength – just as they are the source of our failure in confronting it,” he concluded.

Arab and Muslim journalists and commentators have previously expressed envy over Israel’s success in various realms, especially compared to the stagnation of the Arab and Muslim world.

The UN Fraud

UN Watch is an  NGO fighting the battle for Israel in the United Nations. Here are just three examples of their wonderful work on Israel’s behalf in the most biased international arena.

1. When UNRWA launched a global campaign showing 11-year-old girl “Aya from Gaza” in a bombed-out building—portraying Israel as a cruel oppressor of Palestinian children—UN Watch exposed a fraud: the photo was actually from Syria! The story went viral online. UNRWA suffered massive embarrassment, and was forced to remove the photo worldwide.

2. When the U.N. held its 'Hate Israel Day,' we brought the Son of Hamas to deliver an epic speech exposing Palestinian crimes. He stunned the assembly into silence, and literally caused heads to turn. The video has been seen more than 8 million times on Facebook and YouTube. Israel’s prime minister called it “an extraordinary moment of truth at the United Nations.”

3. When Arab states accused Israel of Apartheid, I took the floor at the U.N. to remind the world that “Israel’s 1.5 million Arabs enjoy full rights to vote and to be elected in the Knesset; they work as doctors and lawyers; they serve on the Supreme Court.” Then I asked the accusers: “How many Jews live in your countries? Once upon a time, the Middle East was full of Jews. Algeria had 140,000 Jews. Algeria, where are your Jews? Egypt used to have 75,000 Jews. Where are your Jews?"  The speech went viral—viewed more than 5 million times—and continues to reverberate.

Global Terror

The Global Terrorism Index (GTI) is an attempt to systematically rank the nations of the world according to terrorist activity. 

The index combines a number of factors associated with terrorist attacks to build an explicit picture of the impact of terrorism over a 10-year period, illustrating trends, and providing a data series for analysis by researchers and policymakers. It is the product of Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) and is based on data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) which is collected and collated by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland.

Note that Israel is 33 in the list, better placed than France and Russia. The UK is only one place better off at 34 and the USA at 36 .

For more information  read here

Palestinians: Why a "Regional Peace Process" Will Fail

• Many Palestinians sometimes refer to Arab leaders and regimes as the "real enemies" of the Palestinians. They would rather have France, Sweden, Norway and Belgium oversee a peace process with Israel than any of the Arab countries.
• Hani al-Masri, a prominent Palestinian political analyst, echoed this skepticism. He, in fact, believes the Arabs want to help Israel "liquidate" the Palestinian cause.
• The Jordanians are worried that a "regional solution" would promote the idea of replacing the Hashemite kingdom with a Palestinian state. Former Jordanian Minister of Information Saleh al-Qallab denounced the talk of a "regional conference" as a "poisonous gift and conspiracy" against Jordan and the Palestinians.
• The Lebanese have for decades dreamed of the day they could rid themselves of the Palestinian refugee camps and their inhabitants, who have long been subjected to apartheid and discriminatory laws.
• Israel as a Jewish state is anathema to Palestinian aspirations. Any Arab or Palestinian leader who promotes such compromise is taking his life in his hands. And Palestinian history will record him as a "traitor" who sold out to the Jews and surrendered to American and Israeli pressure.
• Abbas and his Ramallah cohorts are already up at night worrying about the talking between Israel and some Arab countries, particularly Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. Such "normalization", in the view of the PA, is to be reserved for after Israel submits to its demands.
• Any "regional solution" involving Arab countries would be doomed to fail because the Palestinians and their Arab brethren hate each other. Any solution offered by the Arab governments will always be regarded as an "American-Zionist dictate."
• Here is what Palestinians really want: to use the Europeans to impose a "solution" on Israel.

For full article by Khaled Abu Toameh  •  February 27, 2017 see  https://tinyurl.com/gsxno3p  

Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) 2016

The report Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) 2016: Youth and the Prospects for Human Development in a Changing Reality was recently issued by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)

Never before has the region had such a large share of youth; youth of ages 15–29 make up around 30 percent of the popu­lation, or some 105 million people. In a region in which 60 percent of the population has not yet reached the age of 30, the report predicts that such youthful demographic momentum will be of critical importance for at least the two coming decades.

Unfavourable development backdrop ,

The report also indicates that the global financial and economic crisis in 2008–2009, coupled with political insta­bility since 2011, have had a negative impact on human development in the region. Average annual growth in the HDI dropped by more than half between 2010 and 2014 relative to the growth between 2000 and 2010.

Growing inequality: Further analysis of HDI data shows also that inequality is rising in Arab countries.

Increasing conflict: 

Home to only 5 percent of the world’s population, the Arab region has witnessed 17 percent of the world’s conflicts between 1948 and 2014, and 45 percent of the world’s terrorist attacks in 2014. In that same year, the region was home to 47 percent of the world’s internally displaced people and 57.5 percent of all world refugees including Palestinian refugees displaced by one of the longest lasting territorial occupations in modern his­tory.

Exclusion and inequality continue to frustrate youth.

Against this backdrop, the Report documents tremendous obstacles young peo­ple across the Arab world are facing in their personal development across the broadest range of institutions, resulting in multiple forms of cultural, social, economic and political exclusion.

High unemployment: Failure to translate gains in education into decent jobs for youth in pace with population growth, not only curtails benefits of a demographic dividend but may fuel greater social and economic tensions in the region as well. In 2014, unemployment among youth in the Arab region (29.73 percent) exceeded twice the global average (13.99 percent), and according to estimates, the situation is expected to worsen in the near future. The report warns that Arab economies may not be able to generate the 60 million new jobs required, by 2020 to absorb the number of workforce entrants in order to stabilize youth unemployment.

Pervasive discrimination against women: Echoing previous AHDRs, the report underlines how deep-seated discrimination, embedded in cul­tural beliefs and traditions in childrearing, educa­tion, religious structures, the media, and family re­lations, along with  many legal obstacles, continues to prevent women from acquiring and using their capabilities to the fullest.

Pathways from frustration to radicalization.

The factors above combine to create an overall sense of exclusion and lack of opportunity that pervades much of the region. The lives of many young people across the region are marked by frustration, marginalization and alienation from institutions and the transitions that are necessary to begin adult life in a fulfilling manner.

Citing recent opinion research, the report asserts that the overwhelming majority of young people in the Arab region have no desire to engage in violent extremist groups or activ­ities. They reject violence and regard extremist groups as terrorists.

However, it notes that the minority that is open to participating in violent groups that claim to struggle for change continue to be active, thus become radicalized and the radical­ized can become violent, violent radicalization and violent extremism grow and are accelerating the tremendous damage they wreak in Arab countries.

'We Misled You': How the Saudis Are Coming Clean on Funding Extremism

On his latest trip, a former senior U.S. official finds a new attitude in Riyadh. But will it stick?

By Zalmay Khalilzad  September 14, 2016  POLITICO MAGAZINE

On my most recent trip to Saudi Arabia, I was greeted with a startling confession. In the past, when we raised the issue of funding Islamic extremists with the Saudis, all we got were denials. This time, in the course of meetings with King Salman, Crown Prince Nayef, Deputy Crown Mohammad Bin Salman and several ministers, one top Saudi official admitted to me, “We misled you.” He explained that Saudi support for Islamic extremism started in the early 1960s as a counter to Nasserism—the socialist political ideology that came out of the thinking of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser— which threatened Saudi Arabia and led to war between the two countries along the Yemen border. This tactic allowed them to successfully contain Nasserism, and the Saudis concluded that Islamism could be a powerful tool with broader utility.

Under their new and unprecedented policy of honesty, the Saudi leadership also explained to me that their support for extremism was a way of resisting the Soviet Union, often in cooperation with the United States, in places like Afghanistan in the 1980s. In this application too, they argued, it proved successful. Later it was deployed against Iranian-supported Shiite movements in the geopolitical competition between the two countries.

But over time, the Saudis say, their support for extremism turned on them, metastasizing into a serious threat to the Kingdom and to the West. They had created a monster that had begun to devour them. “We did not own up to it after 9/11 because we feared you would abandon or treat us as the enemy,” the Saudi senior official conceded. “And we were in denial.”

Why this new frankness? First, it’s fair to ask how far the new policy really goes. Clearly, there are some questions about whether some extremist Sunni groups, such as al-­Nusra in Syria, are still getting Saudi money. But as the Saudis described it to me, this new approach to grappling with their past is part of the leadership’s effort to make a new future for their country, including a broad-based economic reform program.

In their current thinking, the Saudis see Islamic extremism as one of the two major threats facing the kingdom—the other threat being Iran. On Iran, there is continuity. I remember when King Abdullah asked me to pass on to President George W. Bush in 2006 that he needed to cut the “serpent’s head” and attack Iran and overthrow the regime. The new leadership, like their predecessors, blames Iran for regional instability and the many conflicts going on.

The new Saudi leadership, in other words, appears to be downgrading ideology in favor of modernization. In fact, one senior Saudi official explicitly said that the Kingdom was pursuing a “revolution under the cover of modernization”—meaning that modernization was now the driver of Saudi policy.

Can it succeed, when so little has changed politically in a country still run autocratically by the House of Saud? The biggest unknowns are the temptations of the past—whether the Saudi leadership is united behind the new program and whether those who benefited from the old order will attempt to derail the reform agenda and thus destabilize the country. The opposition could come from the powerful religious establishment, which might oppose the opening of entertainment centers, the reform of religious institutions, even limited coeducation and increased female participation in the workforce.

There have been many reform programs announced before in Saudi Arabia, only to fade into insignificance. Also, modernization undermines two pillars of Saudi political legitimacy, the endorsement of the Wahhabi clerical establishment and the traditionalism that undergirds any monarchical government. As modernization creates economic uncertainty for those benefiting from the present inefficient order, the result could be political turmoil. And it is an open question as to whether the Saudi people have been sufficiently prepared at all relevant levels in terms of education and skills to compete in the world economy, as they will need to do in a modernized economy.

If not, social tensions and unrest may arise among those who are not prepared to compete.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement, a Hundred Years Later

Yossi Kuperwasser  MAY 18, 2016

The Sykes-Picot Agreement that divided

up the Middle East. Graphic: Wikipedia.

The rationale behind the 1916 plan produced by British diplomat Mark Sykes and his French counterpart, Francois George-Picot — and the international agreements that followed it about the future of the Middle East after World War I — was a mixture of British and French interests, with some basic understanding of the characteristics of the Middle East at the time.

The problematic pillars that were supposed to provide stability to this order were: Arab nationalism — though this pillar underestimated the role of religion, tribal and sectarian affiliation; the aspirations of other nationalities in the region; resentment towards foreign ideas; dividing the region between several invented nation-states under autocratic rule; and the expectation that the Arabs would submit themselves to foreigners in a way that would serve Western interests.

The Western powers were aware of the deficiencies that prevented the Arab states from functioning in a way that guaranteed stability, but supported the status quo, which had been surprisingly kept, due to the commitment of the ruling elites to the new borders and the autocratic nature of the Arab regimes.

This was the case until the Arab upheaval in 2011. The autocratic systems in non-monarchic states collapsed, and the Middle East witnesses to this day a fierce battle over the fate of the Sykes-Picot legacy, between “radical Islam” and the “pragmatic” forces. All factions of radical Islam deny the concept of nationalism, and believe in reviving the Islamic nation as a single political entity governed by Islamic law. But while the “ultra-radicals” (Islamic State and al Qaeda on the Sunni side, and radical leadership of Iran on the Shiite side) call for establishing Islamic rule as soon as possible, the “realist radicals” (the Muslim Brotherhood and the Rouhani camp in Iran) believe that the time is not ripe to establish the caliphate, since the West is not yet weak enough to be defeated.

However, these “realist radicals” consider the West sufficiently weak to need to rely on them to protect it against the threat from the ultra-radicals. The realist radicals’ major achievement is Western readiness to enable them to acquire a nuclear weapons arsenal in 10-15 years while intensifying their regional influence.

On the other hand, the Arab pragmatists — such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, most of the Gulf Emirates and Egypt — support preserving the existing boundaries and state structure in the Middle East.

A major challenge to Sykes-Picot comes from frustrated sects and peoples whose aspirations for self-determination were not met. The Kurds, for example, are moving steadily towards independence in Iraq and Syria.

The West lost its appetite to dominate the region the way it deemed necessary during the Cold War. This reluctance reflects weakness, confusion and ascendancy of a world view which is based on a feeling of guilt for the way Muslims were treated in the past, and baseless optimism regarding the ability to solve all remaining disputes through dialogue and contrition that would reap forgiveness from them.

This leads to a hesitant policy towards protecting the existing order. Though the West is seemingly committed to this goal (it opposes the Islamic State, contests the Kurds’ efforts and continues to refer to the states in the region according to former boundaries), it is not ready to invest real assets in this context, even after realizing that refraining from action may encourage huge Muslim immigration to Europe.

This Western confusion enables Russia to gain power in the region.

For Israel, this situation is challenging. The instability is exploited well by its enemies from the radical Islamic camp. If the radicals widen their influence, they may threaten the stability of the monarchies, which survived the first round of the upheaval. Radical terrorist elements may use this instability to acquire better military capabilities, while a nuclear arms race may develop in the aftermath of the Iran nuclear deal.

Finally, Israel should worry about the different world views that have developed between itself and the West, and about the perceived weakness of the United States in the eyes of regional players. The wave of Muslim immigrants to Europe may make the West even more sensitive to what it considers to be concerns of the Muslim world regarding Israel.

But the new situation also presents Israel with opportunities, like developing security cooperation with the region’s pragmatic elements, making it easier to explain that its dispute with the Palestinians is not the key obstacle to regional stability, and that it has genuine security concerns that justify its insistence on having secured and defensible borders. It also makes it easier for Israel to convince Western countries of its strategic value to them and their interests.