Fitzgerald: A problem that cannot be solved, only managed

Abbas -- Abu Mazen -- has no power to commit anyone to anything. That is, he has no power to commit anyone on the Arab side. But Bush and Rice have set things up, in this ill-thought out attempt to come up with something, anything, that might be considered a "diplomatic victory in the Middle East" (given the obvious failure to deal adequately with the worldwide Jihad, and the obvious squandering of men, money, matériel, morale and attention in Tarbaby Iraq), so that Abbas' mere appearance at this Annapolis farce, happily of short duration, will commit Israel to several things.

His appearance will commit Israel yet again, publicly, in the form of the speeches and public commitments made by a hopelessly maladroit, terminally weak, and quite possibly corrupt prime minister, to the very idea not only of the "Palestinian people" (an idea that has to be undone, not further ratified for the nth time, by some idiotic Israeli unaware of how that clever construct prevents the recognition of the Lesser Jihad against Israel) but to the idea of a "solution" to that Lesser Jihad.

A “solution" is what Rice repeatedly calls for. In this she echoes Indyk, and the self-assured platitudinous dead-wrong "everyone-agrees-that-there-are-four-core-issues" Aaron Miller, along with every hass and ross and tinpot shuttle-diplomat whose entire career has been spent engaged in some phony "peace process" that continues to ignore The Real Core Issue: Islam, and the refusal, by Muslims, properly following the texts and tenets of Islam, to countenance the permanent existence of an Infidel state, whatever its size, on land once ruled by Muslims, land and, what's more, on land that is smack in the middle of Dar al-Islam.

There is NO "solution" – none -- to the Arab Muslim opposition to Israel's existence. Any further surrenders by the Israelis will only whet, not sate, Arab and Muslim appetites. The Western world, and that includes Rice and Bush and so on, attributes a desire to compromise to the Muslim Arabs -- a genuine ability to accept, and accept forever, the existence of Israel. No, it is not possible. Even if a handful of unrepresentative plausible Muslims, and I do not mean the Slow Jihadists of Fatah, who differ from the Fast Jihadists of Hamas only in matters of timing and tactics, not in ultimate goals, were actually to say they could countenance an Israel reduced in size and power, why should Israel entrust its fate to what they think, or think they think? Do they speak, can they speak, for the primitive Muslim masses, any more than Ahmad Chalabi could speak for the "Iraqi people"? Policy has to be made on a basis other than that of this or that plausible smiler, saying exactly what he thinks, at a minimum, must be said to please his powerful Infidel hosts or interlocutors.

But those who have studied Islam, studied the behavior, over many decades, of the Arabs, know perfectly well -- unless those students are apologists for Islam, collaborators with Muslims, out of conviction or cupidity (or sometimes both), or possibly are antisemites (or sometimes both) -- that the Arabs have no intention of recognizing Israel. Ask the defectors from that world. Ask Wafa Sultan. Ask Nonie Darwish. Ask Walid Shoebat. They know.

No, there is not a "solution." There is one way to prevent open warfare. It is to create, and maintain, a situation in which Israel is not only vastly more powerful militarily, but is widely understood in the Arab and Muslim world to be so, which allows Arab leaders the excuse of not going to war based on their invocation of the concept of Darura, or Necessity. That, and that alone, can justify, in the minds of the Muslim masses, a failure to take military action against Israel. Moral arguments are not relevant.

And so the Lesser Jihad must be held in check, and it can be held in check, but only if egregious meddlers from outside, eager to score points, allow it to be held in check. But instead, the Arab war on Israel, blandly miscalled the "Palestinian-Israel" conflict, has become a Theme Park where failed politicians such as Blair, or failing Administrations, such as that of Bush, in its last throes, decide to win some temporary fame and respite from criticism through doing the only thing it apparently knows how to do: Work On The Peace Process Between Israel And The "Palestinians." Come one, come all -- let's all go to the Middle East, or shuttle back on forth, or invite everyone here to Annapolis, to "jump-start" the "peace process" yet again, and "get things back on track" and deal with those "four core issues” that Aaron Miller and everyone else in the know just knows, because you see otherwise they wouldn't be in the know, would they? Those are the only Core Issues that exist, even when those "core issues" are in fact mere epiphenomena, on the vast substratum that is Islam, Islam, Islam.

There is no need to "make peace" between Israel and its mortal enemies. The peace is kept, now, by the strength of the IDF, and the control Israel still has over invasion routes, over aquifers, and over a tiny bit of strategic depth -- scarcely visible, and nothing like what the Sinai was, but still something -- in the heights of Judea. There is "peace." It will last not because of treaties with Arab Muslims, but despite treaties, and only if no more of those idiotic surrender-"truce" treaties are signed, or even discussed.

The Lesser Jihad against Israel cannot be solved, any more than the Greater Jihad against the larger Infidel world can be solved. It can be contained, it can be managed, it can be reduced to much more manageable proportions. That is a different thing. The entire Infidel world, similarly, must come to realize it need not either appease Muslims within or without Infidel nation-states, but also need not invade them -- they need only inform themselves as to the nature and menace of Islam, and to work against not only terrorism, but against all the less obviously alarming, but far more effective instruments of Jihad, which include the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and what appears to be inexorable demographic conquest within the Bilad al-kufr, the Lands of the Infidels, especially in Western Europe.

The Arab Muslims will commit to nothing. And even if they were to commit, Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) has no power to get anyone to follow him. And even if he did have the power to convince even a few on the "West Bank" (known as Judea and Samaria to Jesus, and to every inhabitant of the Western world up to 1949, when Jordan renamed it) to follow him, in pretending to briefly adhere to whatever he pretended to commit the "Palestinian" Authority or nascent "Palestinian" state to, it could and would be breached at the first opportunity. It would not be done, possibly, with the same openness as Arafat, who just a few weeks after the signing of the Oslo Accords was telling an audience of Muslims in South Africa that he would do as Muhammad did with the Meccans in that "treaty" of Hudaibiyya. No, the current-account flaunters of that meek-mild-quiet-accountant aspect, those "technocrats" who, of course, are the perfect outward facade of the continuing and of course endless siege of Israel, whatever its size, have other ways to slowly undo whatever trivial commitments they may make.

It is Israel that always and everywhere has scrupulously, meticulously, fulfilled its commitments. It is Israel that is always being asked to give up, and does give, tangible assets -- land, oilfields, airbases, potentially the control of aquifers, historic sites, and so on -- and also gives up, allows to be forgotten or whittled away or attacked endlessly without any response, the legal, historic, and moral rights of the Jews to the Land of Israel. Those rights begin, but do not end, with the precise terms, and the exact intention, of the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine, and are further supported by the rights of a country that has won territory in a defensive war. Not to mention, of course, the in-gathering of Jews from all over the Middle East, where they had lived in various states of wretchedness, under Muslim rule, as dhimmis, ranging from the horrors of slavery in Yemen, to conditions made better by the existence of large non-Muslim communities and the pressure and presence of a European power, as in North Africa under the French, or in Iraq, even for a while after the British left, and in Egypt under the ancien regime, the regime of Farouk, and La Gazette de Caire, and the syces outside Shepheard's Hotel, and the Alliance Israelite, and the Yacoubian Building, of late-blooming cinematic fame.

Posted by Hugh at November 29, 2007 1:45 PM
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