America’s Israeli conundrum

The Palestinian authority applied for full recognition as a state through the UN. As anticipated, it has been opposed by both the United States and Israel.

As a country, Israel is one spoiled child. Literally born on the basis of a Biblical prophecy, the price the USA has paid for fostering such a child has been, shall we say, enormous.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is the strongest lobby in the US and should be a lesson for other lobbies as to how to operate a body and literally dictate the foreign policy of a country that is supposed to be the strongest in the world.

How do you survive in a geographical area where you are surrounded three sides by hostile countries, part of which now const this new country? Well not much is required when you are armed to the teeth and have powerful friends like the USA.

The Middle East by itself is a strange place. Linguistically and culturally, the area is very similar, and yet miles apart when it comes to any kind of unity. Nurtured by a thousand years of cultural innovations, its hegemony got wiped out by the advent of Western Imperialism, from which it never quite recovered. Ironically, in spite of their avowed enmity towards Israel, the entire region has at one point tried to cosy up the giant across the Atlantic.

Saudi Arabia's relationship with the US goes back to the founding of the Al-Saud dynasty and the establishment of Aramco. The rest of the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant has had strong ties to the UK and France, both ardent supporters of Israel. After the early '70s, when the OPEC countries were awash in Petrodollars after the first oil embargo, ironically in support of solidarity for the Palestinians, the US stuck by its ally, Israel.

And why shouldn't it? Most of the dollars flowed back into the West as investments and assets, the lots of the Palestinians never changed, and some of the dollars even ended up arming the oil-rich fiefdoms with Western arms, a win-win situation no doubt.

Jimmy Carter, America's most respected ex-president made human rights as one of the milestones of his administrations, yet somehow Palestinian human rights never registered to him as an issue. He fired his UN representative Andrew Young for meeting a delegation of Palestinians. Clinton finally broke the ice and got both sides talking, with Norwegian help. The world was much more hopeful with President Obama, but I am assuming that he had to succumb to the financial and political clout of AIPAC.

Israel has benefited immensely from this Western partnership that is more one sided. Had the 1967 border, as proposed by Obama been accepted as valid border between Israel and the proposed Palestinian state, the dynamics of the world politics would have started to shift dramatically. The angst of the Arabs and the greater Islamic world would have been subdued by finally having a permanent homeland for the Palestinians, and the radicalisation of the religion that have inspired and ignited by this issue would have been lessened.

Ironically, the 1967 border included the occupied territories, including the Sinai Peninsula, which was voluntarily returned to Egypt.

Here lies the conundrum. Moses came down the peaks of Sinai with the Ten Commandments. Biblically and historically it is very much part of the Jewish history and Zionist philosophy. Yet it was returned for peace, a territory that is bigger than the current state of Israel. Yet, the West Bank has been slowly encroached upon, based on a border that shifts based on housing developments in the occupied territory.

Israel is the only country in the world which has a border that keeps shifting for non-geological reasons based purely on human encroachment. Syria would have been happy to open an embassy in Israel in exchange of the Golan Heights but Israel knows that it has a huge military establishment to back it up, so such practical proposition never sees the light of day. King Hussain of Jordan, while still alive, politically relinquished all of Jordan's rights over the West Bank, leaving the territory in a limbo and all sorts. It became an abandoned child up for grabs.

Israel, whether we like it or not, is here to stay. Now the focus is to make sure that it is integrated among its Semitic brethren and behaves brotherly. There are smaller countries that have thrived. Think of Singapore, Luxembourg. The amount of territory up for grabs for Israel is based on the Biblical words and not on practicalities.

If it wants to hold on to the West Bank, it might as well annex it politically and give the Palestinians there Israeli citizenship. However, this idea will also be totally unacceptable since the ratio of the population in favour of the Jewish faith becomes lop-sided. The focus is on the land but not what it comes with.

As a Westernized somewhat secular outlook, Israel can have a positive influence in a somewhat conservative Middle East. It has a highly educated base, a multicultural population that encompasses Asknazims from Eastern, Central and western European countries, Shephardims from the Middle East, Africans from Ethiopia and South Asians from India. Yet, it has opted to be a political island. The few friends it has in the region, namely Turkey, after the debacle of the Gaza Flotilla, has asserted itself and decided that the arrogance of Israel is not worth the intimacy.

President Obama has rightfully said that peace can only be achieved
if two sides talk to each other. Given the potency of the UN and its subsequent failure to bring peace over the past six decades, we can only implore the US president to persuade his prodigal ward to get the dialogue going.

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MK Aaref is an architect. He studied architecture and urban planning at the University of Houston. Later, he specialised in privatisation during his MBA from Aston University, UK. He currently resides and practices in Dhaka.