Between the River and the Deep Sea

 What do the Israelis and their Arab/non-Arab friends think about the Palestinian struggle for independence? 

Ariel Sharon, the hero of the 1967 Arab-Israel War, and a former Israeli PM, during an interview with Time magazine, stressed the oft-repeated Zionist argument that there is space for only one state between “The River and the Sea” (River Jordan and the Mediterranean). When asked by the interviewer what would happen to a Palestinian state, he replied, “There is a Palestinian state – Jordan”. Notwithstanding Sharon’s rhetoric, the proponents of a future Palestinian state give four reasons in its favour: 

 1. Demographics are not on Israel’s side and will never be. With a much higher Palestinian birthrate and a shrinking Jewish population, Israel is likely to be swamped by a sea of Arab populations in years to come. 

2. Hamas was a reaction to the ghettoization of Palestinians. Its elimination will not end the problem until the root causes are addressed.

 3. Oppression can never suppress the Palestinian people. 

 4. The robustness of the Israeli response will never endear its cause to the world citizenry if not to the Governments. Politically costly Israeli bombing has created an overwhelming sense that Israel has far exceeded its ‘right of self-defense’. It does not bother Israel and its American and European interlocutors if demographics are not on Israel's side. 

In the past both the Arabs and Israelis exploited the grievances and miseries of the Palestinians to grind their axes. Notwithstanding the rhetoric about Arab nationalism, marketed first by Egypt’s Jamal Abdel Nasser, the Arabs, since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, were restricted within their respective state boundaries. From a larger perspective, the modern Arab states owe their existence to the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement negotiated between Britain and France during WWI. The dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, as a result of the war, allowed Britain and France to divide the former Ottoman possessions into their respective spheres of influence and arbitrarily redraw the boundaries of the Arab Middle East. 

Until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Syria continued to be governed as a group of Ottoman provinces. From 1888 there were three Syrian groups: Damascus, Aleppo, and Beirut. As a result of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Palestine and Lebanon were carved out of Greater Syria. Palestine was put under the British mandate whereas Lebanon and the rump Syria went under French occupation. The UN, in 1947, voted for the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. Jerusalem was to have the status of an international city. Whereas the Arab states rejected the UN plan, Jews accepted it (as a stop-gap measure, as they eyed the whole of Palestine).

 The state of Israel was proclaimed in May 1948 and was immediately attacked by armies of its Arab neighbors. The Egyptian military, busy making toilets for the king, was badly mauled by the Zionist paramilitary armies – Haganah and Stern Gang. However, the Egyptians managed to cling to the 41 square km Gaza Strip bordering Egypt. Trans- Jordan had a British-trained army which, under Glubb Pasha, its British commander, could take on the far better-trained Haganah and Stern Gang, and occupy the West Bank of the river Jordan and East Jerusalem. Golan Heights, part of French-mandated Syria, was occupied by Syria. The Paulet–Newcombe Agreement or Paulet-Newcombe Line was a 1923 agreement between the British and French governments regarding the position and nature of the boundary between the British and French-mandated territories. The Paulet- Newcombe Line placed the entirety of the Sea of Galilee, along with a ten-meter-wide strip on the eastern shore, within the British Mandate. In 1948, the Syrian Army occupied this ten-meter strip and thus controlled the Golan Heights up to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Till the 1967 War, the Syria- Israel border ran in the middle of the Sea of Galilee.

 Despite liberating Gaza, the Egyptians kept the strip as a refugee camp, dependent on the dole-outs by UNHCR (The UN Refugee Agency) and the oil-rich Gulf states. The Palestinians were denied entry into Egypt. Nasser, as part of his political strategy, exploited the Palestinian issue. At its first summit meeting in Cairo in 1964, the Arab League initiated the creation of an organization representing the Palestinian people. The Palestinian National Council convened in East Jerusalem (Then under the Jordanian rule) on 28 May 1964. After concluding the meeting, the PLO was founded on 2 June 1964. Its stated "complementary goals" were “Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine”. Ahmad al Shukeiri (1908 -1980) was the first Chairman of the PLO, serving from 1964–1967. Shukeiri was headquartered in Cairo, under Nasser’s nose. Shukeiri’s only role in Cairo was to exhort the West Bank Palestinians to topple King Hussain’s government. Just before the 1967 War, King Hussain visited Cairo to sign a mutual defence agreement against Israel. Nasser, showing mock anger at Shukeiri in Hussain’s presence, directed him to accompany the king on his way back to Jordan. Hussain, it must be acknowledged, despite the Palestinian hostility, gave full citizenship rights to his Palestinian subjects. 

 Let us talk now about the Other Arab states: Between the creation of Israel in 1948 and the Camp David Accord in the aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the world did not take the Gulf monarchies seriously. KSA owes its existence to the Sykes-Picot Line drawn by Britain and France after defeating the Ottoman Empire in WWI. UAE and Qatar gained independence from Great Britain in September and December 1971 respectively. Whereas Saudi Arabia and UAE are today playing an important role in the Arab Middle East, till after the Camp David Accord between Egypt and Israel in 1978 these Gulf monarchies were overshadowed by the charismatic leadership of Egypt’s Jamal Abdel Nasser. The Arab states, whether they liked it or not, had to toe the line determined by Cairo. After its defeat during the 1967 Arab-Israel War, Egypt gradually lost its clout in the Arab world. 

In 1973, Anwar Sadaat, Nasser’s successor, tried to partially restore the status quo ante by attacking Israel in a two-front war planned with Syria. The Myth of the Arab Boycott The Arab League boycott of Israel was a strategy adopted by the Arab League and its member states in 1945 to boycott economic and other relations between Arabs and Jewish settlers in Palestine to stop all trade with Israel which added to that country's economic and military strength. The boycott continued after the creation of Israel. Egypt recognized Israel in 1979 as a quid pro quo for the return of Sinai and Sharm el Sheikh. 

As a result of the peace process initiated after the Second Gulf War, Israel was formally recognized by Jordan in 1989. The Gulf states and Morocco  ended Israel’s economic boycott the same year and established mutual trade relations with her. Although the Israeli trade missions in Bahrain, Oman, and Morocco were closed in 2000 due to Israel's harsh treatment of the Palestinians, trade and economic ties continue. Also, Israeli tourism to Morocco is encouraged by the World Federation of Moroccan Jewry, a Jewish NGO. Whereas Saudi Arabia does not have diplomatic ties with Israel; this does not deter it from continuing with a back door diplomacy with the latter on how to deal with Iran. Alas, Hamas has thrown a bloody spanner in the US-sponsored India- Middle East- Europe Corridor. Talking about Iran, its anti-Israel rhetoric is just that - rhetoric, aimed at currying favour with militias like Hezbollah. Otherwise, it had been receiving arms, notably TOW anti-tank missiles, from Israel during the first Gulf War. UAE and Oman’s recognition and establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel, while Saudi Arabia waits in the wings, is not a new phenomenon. The so-called Arab boycott of Israel was for the consumption of illiterate Arab masses only. The back door channel with Israel was never closed. 

Where does Pakistan fit into this algorithm? Pakistani rulers, even as their Arab counterparts, have a common DNA when it comes to hypocrisy. Nawaz Sharif did not have business relations only with India's Jindal. He had also bought Israeli machinery for his Jeddah steel mills. Folks! Grapevine has it that Pakistanis, ranging from politicians to bureaucrats, to maulanas, frequently visit Israel. In the past, Maulana Ajmal of JUI had created news when his secret visit to Israel was exposed in the media. At the Ben Gurion airport Pakistanis request the Israelis not to stamp their passports. Then, depending upon their preferences, they pay homage at the Aqsa Mosque, the Tel Aviv Diamond Exchange, or frequent the cat houses in Tel Aviv. So, who will establish the Palestinian state? And where? 

 Triple is a novel written by the British author Ken Follet.  Follet weaves his story where, as Egypt comes closer and closer to developing a nuclear bomb, Mossad’s number one Israeli agent is given an impossible mission: to beat the Arabs in the nuclear arms race by finding and stealing two hundred tons of uranium. The world’s balance of power will shift. And the Mossad, the KGB, the Egyptians, and Fedayeen terrorists will play out the final, violent moves in this devastating game where the price of failure, according to the Zionists and West’s propaganda, is “a nuclear holocaust”. After Mossad’s “Popeye” smashes the “Evil Palestinians”, the Israeli agent tells his daughter, “You would have heard about the Welsh separatists agitating against Britain. Nobody takes them seriously. This is what is going to happen to the Palestinians.” 

The concluding chapter of Follet’s novel: The Egyptians had crossed the Suez Canal and pushed the Israelis back into Sinai with heavy casualties. On the other front, the Golan Heights, the Syrians were pushing forward with heavy losses to the Israeli side. The proposal before Israel’s emergency cabinet meeting, held on Monday, 8 October 1973, was to drop atom bombs on Cairo and Damascus. The Israelis conveyed to the Americans that they planned to drop these bombs on Wednesday, 9 October unless they started the airlift (of American arms to Israel, sic) immediately. The airlift turned the tide of the war and later a similar crisis meeting took place in Cairo. Once again, nobody was in favour of the nuclear war in the Middle East. Once again, the politicians gathered around the table began to persuade one another that there was no alternative. And once again,  an unexpected contribution stopped the war. This time it was the Egyptian military that stepped in. Knowing of the proposal that would be before the assembled presidents, they had made checks on their nuclear strike force in readiness for a positive solution, and they had found that all the plutonium in their bombs had been taken out and replaced with iron fillings. It was assumed that the Russians had done this, as they had mysteriously rendered unworkable the nuclear reactor in Qattara, before being expelled from Egypt in 1972.

 That night, President Sadat talked to his wife for five minutes before falling asleep in his chair: 

“It’s all over”, he told her. Israel has won permanently. They had the bomb, and we do not. And that single fact will determine the course of history in our region for the rest of the century. “What about the Palestine refugees”? his wife said. The president shrugged and began to light his last pipe of the day. “I remember reading a story in the London Times… this must be five years ago, I suppose. It said that the Free Wales Army had put a bomb in the police station in Cardiff. “I remember, his wife said. “They have coal mines and choirs.” …… “I will tell you something else” the president went on. “Have you any idea how long ago the Anglo-Saxons conquered the Welsh? It must be more than a thousand years ago. You, see? A thousand years, and they are still bombing police stations! The Palestinians will be like the Welsh…. They can bombe Israel for thousand years, but they will always be the losers.” 

 Saleem Akhtar Malik 

20 October 2023