Clausewitz wrote in On War,
that "war is a mere continuation of policy by other means," a virtual
political instrument. In the same way is politics itself a method of
warfare. Not war as an isolated event, rather war as a long strategic
vector for victory. Even then, the strategy adopted does not necessarily
entail violent warfare because the instrumentalities of politics can be
sufficient to overwhelm the enemy.
Habib Bourguiba
Habib
Bourguiba, president of Tunisia from 1957-87, fired the first political
shot for a staged approach to vanquish the Jewish state of Israel. Here
was an Arab personality proposing, in 1965, a peace plan based
initially on the United Nations and international legitimacy. Resolution
181 from 1947 would leave Israel with less territory than her post-'48
borders; and Resolution 194 from 1948 would inundate Israel with
hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arab refugees. If Israel would
reject these steps for conflict-resolution, then the Arab stance would
earn global vindication. Israel's political and legal legitimacy would
erode.
While the inception of the PLO in 1964 awakened a call for
revolutionary guerrilla warfare, Bourguiba offered a pacific solution
with a vision of Arabs and Israelis living in harmony. His was a
reasonable plan, eschewing demagoguery, and abandoning war. The Arab
world, led by President Nasser of Egypt, resounded with horror at the
mention of peace with Israel, denouncing Bourguiba for recommending that
"we [Arabs] should respect stages." Drawing upon his own personal and
national experience in the long and successful Tunisian struggle for
independence, and the expulsion of French colonialism, Bourguiba
concluded that the dissolution of Israel required time and patience.
After
the Six Day War in June 1967 with the Arab loss, Cecil Hourani, a
former adviser to President Bourguiba, developed the theme of
containing, Arabizing, and Orientalizing Israel as the optimal strategy.
A combination of foreign and domestic pressures would convince the Jews
to prefer a return to their status under Arab rule rather than pursue
the impossible dream of a secure and recognized Jewish state in
Palestine. In 1974, Boutros Ghali, Egyptian academic who was
subsequently appointed Minister of State for Foreign Affairs under
Sadat, considered Israel's defense of its sovereignty to be "a very
stiff attitude."
***
We
shall examine three cases of the strategy of stages in the context of
the prolonged Arab-Israeli conflict, highlighting the primary Arab
personalities who exhibited sophistication and creativity, with no small
dose of duplicity. The common thread is the realization that rational
analysis must replace emotional exhilaration, or deep despair, in
choosing politics over war at least in the initial stage of the
undertaking.
Anwar Sadat
Anwar Sadat, president of Egypt from 1970-81, chose diplomacy in 1977 after attacking Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
In
the 1970s, various intellectual, cultural, and political figures in
Egypt introduced the new thinking into the Israeli-Arab issue. Mohammad
Sa'id Ahmed began his book When the Guns Fall Silent with a
challenging statement: "The time has come to think about what we dared
not to think." He argued in favor of adopting peace with Israel as a
method based on the model of superpower détente for which the
culmination is not the resolution of conflict as such. The final goal,
Sa'id Ahmed wrote, is "the extinction of the Zionist enterprise with the
absorption of Zionism in the Arab expanse." Incrementalism and
struggle, international pressure and Israel's withering from within,
serve as the signposts for achieving a peace that would not signal the
end of the conflict—but the end of Israel.
Other
noteworthy Egyptian personalities who dangled the idea of peace with
normalization of relations with Israel included Naguib Mahfouz and Ali
Salam, but they really seemed to intend full acceptance of Israel. Rage,
boycott, and assault, burst forth against this betrayal of an Arab
consensus that negated the right of a Jewish state in the midst of the
Arab world. Sadat, however, had other thoughts in mind, while his
beguiling persona radiated with the aroma of political theatre.
Sadat
traveled to Israel in November 1977 and launched his so-called "peace
initiative" to chart a novel course in Middle East political history.
His strategy, when unraveled, encompassed a stratagem that could trap
Israel into submission.
Sadat
had intimated in private conversations with fellow-Arabs, that he would
sign a peace treaty—as he did in 1979—if that was the only way to
recover the Sinai peninsula. Moreover, the Camp David Peace Treaty
included a plan for Palestinian Arab autonomy in Judea, Samaria, and
Gaza [soi-disant West Bank and Gaza Strip], which would serve
as the political route toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The essential purpose of such a state is the platform provided for
irredentist disruption, invasion, and destabilization in Israel. Sadat
referred in his Knesset speech in Jerusalem to the need for Israel
withdrawing back to the June 4, 1967 lines, and to the need for a
resolution of the Palestinian Question. Presumably, the latter matter
required an additional Israeli capitulation to advance toward peace.
Sadat
skillfully placed Israel on a political vector of territorial
withdrawal. The Israel-Egyptian peace remained cold, no people-to-people
peace evolved, anti-Semitism was the popular narrative in Egyptian
society and culture. In the deal, Egypt got Sinai and, as Sadat bitingly
remarked of the Israeli Prime Minister: "Menachem [Begin] got a piece
of paper." Yet the deep significance of Sadat's initiative was the
underlying precedent of future withdrawals on other fronts. The clever
Egyptian president had said in a 1975 interview: "The task of our
generation is to return to the [pre-] 1967 borders; afterward the next
generation will carry the responsibility."
Yasir Arafat
Yasir
Arafat assumed the leadership of the multi-faction Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) established in 1964. Its covenant stated that
Palestine is an Arab land, Zionism is a foreign invader, and the Jews do
not qualify as a people. The only way to liberate Palestine was "armed
struggle" (Art. 9) against the racist, fascist, and Nazi-like state of
Israel.
In
1974, a decade later, the PLO formulated its "phased plan" to persevere
along the path of liberation, but as a staged process. It would begin
with the establishment of a "combatant national authority" over any
territory liberated from Israel, and then advance toward the founding of
a democratic Palestinian state over all of Palestine—in place of Israel.
The 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, while mentioning the
1947 Partition Plan with the ominous implication of Israel relinquishing
areas from its 1948 victory, seemed a sign of moderation and acceptance
of Israel. However, this very generous interpretation—in the year when a
militant and violent Palestinian Arab uprising struck Israel—lacked
validation.
Thereafter, the Oslo agreement in 1993 launched the
PLO-phased plan onto the international and political stage. Israel
recognized the PLO and Palestinian Arab rights, and agreed to interim
arrangements for Palestinian self-government in the 'West Bank' and the
Gaza Strip. Israel's military control on the ground morphed into
incremental territorial pullbacks in 1994, 1995, 1997, and 1998.
Despite
this, Arafat's overall response was incompatible with reconciliation:
he called for jihad, recalled the 628 Hudaybiyyah episode in early
Muslim history when Islam's prophet Mohammad violated his agreement with
the Meccans—foreshadowing Arafat violating his agreement with the
Israelis. His authorized murderous terrorist operations against the
Israeli civilian public. Prime Minister Rabin was lost in moral
confusion when he epitomized Israel's political drift from common sense
by labelling Israeli victims of terrorism "sacrifices for peace."
Arafat
dared to take the big idea of Palestine and lodge it, as Fouad Ajami
wrote, in the filth and misery of the Gaza Strip. He set up an
administration, formed a police force, and dreamt that the flag of
Palestine will fly on the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.
Palestinian personalities like Mahmud Darwish and Edward Said were
aghast at what was in their eyes Arafat's betrayal of the big idea;
after all, Israel was not collapsing nor withering, and Arafat was
grinning and cajoling with the enemy. They considered him a traitor for
what was in their eyes the surrender of Palestine. However, Arafat knew
better, playing to the Israeli and international audiences,
displaying a gusto for histrionics (kafiyyeh, scruffy beard and all): he
demanded, took, and asked for more. He designed a new political game
and set in motion the PLO's phased plan.
The social and economic
interaction between Israelis and Palestinians after 1967 offered a
political mechanism to undo the integrity of the Jewish state. With the
emergence of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, cooperation acquired an
official and institutional foundation. This provided Palestinian Arab
spokespersons with the idea that, in the end, one state would emerge for
the two peoples. The disappearance of Israel and the rise of a secular
democratic state including pre-'67 Israel and the post-'67 territories
would be cast as a triumph for equality, reconciliation, and justice.
Ziad
Abu Ziad, Faisal Al-Husseini, and Abu Iyad, were among Palestinian
figures who advocated the one-state solution. A shared sovereignty
arrangement according to George Abed, or a cantonal framework in one
state according to Emile Nahle, were some of the formulations that
Palestinians elucidated. Underlying the spirit of such proposals was the
partial and interim quality of the Oslo accords. Nabil Shaath, senior
PLO negotiator, openly declared that any agreement achieved was only
temporary and non-obligatory while pursuing the goal to emasculate
Israel's diminishing geo-strategic condition.
Meanwhile,
considering the bottleneck on the 'West Bank' political playing field,
whose basic feature was Israeli settlement and military rule, the PLO/PA
was relentless in demanding a two-state solution. This tactical move,
with its air of Palestinian moderation and concession, mobilized
international opposition to ongoing Israeli "occupation." In itself, a
Palestinian state in the 'West Bank' contiguous to Israel would provide
the PLO with its Ho Chi Minh trail on the road to conquering Tel Aviv.
Oslo,
in sum, was a strategy for ongoing war, in part violent and in part
diplomatic, rather than for achieving an authentic peace. A November
2021 confirmation of the PLO-Fatah position, in anticipation of the
104th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, appeared in a Palestinian
Authority newspaper that explicitly called for the need "to put an end
to the colonialist Zionist project [Israel]." Even though the
Palestinian Arabs deceived the Israelis, at other times they did not
flinch from telling the truth.
Mansour Abbas
Mansour
Abbas (not to be confused with Mahmoud Abbas/Abu Mazen president of the
Palestinian Authority), deputy head of the southern branch of the
Islamic Movement in Israel, led his Ra'am (United Arab List) party in
the March 2021 Israeli parliamentary elections to garner a commendable
four seats. He then became a partner and participant in the Bennett-led
coalition government and is playing an unexpected and critical role in
Israeli politics.
Abbas presented a pleasant demeanor, while yet
committed to what he called a "civilian jihad" for the benefit of the
Arab community in the country. The Israeli government had declared
illegal and banned the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in 2015,
for having provided funds to Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement)
which in its Charter (Art. 2) identifies as a wing of the Muslim
Brothers.
The contemporary Islamic Movement in Israel is one of
the many ideological offshoots in the world of the Muslim Brothers
founded in Egypt in 1928. Its doctrinaire patron demands militancy and
warfare to establish Islam as the "whole of life," in the words of
Bernard Lewis. Secrecy and insurrection were part of the Brothers' modus
operandi. However, the Israeli branch within the pre-'67 borders,
cognizant of the anomaly of non-Muslim dominancy over Muslims in the
Jewish state, chose to focus on seemingly benign and unobjectionable
issues: the re-Islamization of Arab identity through prayer, education,
and social activities, modulated by law-abiding behavior to bolster the
self-defined Palestinian citizenry.
Mansour Abbas related
that he was raised on the legacy of Sheikh Abdallah Nimr Darwish who
founded the Islamic Movement in Israel. A collection of Darwish's
writings and sermons, translated into Hebrew from the Arabic, appeared
in 2021 under the title Islam is the Solution. Those four words
constitute the quintessential theme that the founder of the Muslim
Brothers, Hasan al-Banna, formulated. It is the slogan of the Islamic
Movement, and recurs frequently when Darwish explained that Islam as a
religion of peace and justice is the only true guide and remedy for all
the ills of civilization. The Koranic revelation and the ensuing Sharia
law, it follows, will provide a framework for co-existence and harmony
between Muslims and non-Muslims (especially Jews and Christians),
without oppression, occupation, and terror. Darwish presents Islam as a
humanitarian religion and a bastion for tolerance and equality, ignoring
that the Koran (Ch. 9: verse 33) obligates Muslims to make the true
faith "triumphant over all religions." Indeed, the sheikh confidently
stated that the missionary/propaganda Islamic dawa assures that "the future belongs to this religion."
Mansour
Abbas took the sloganeering Darwish rhetoric to the forefront of a
public campaign in the spring of 2021. This, with Ra'am joining the
government coalition headed by Naphtali Bennett, leader of the rightist
Yamina Party, signaled a revolutionary development for the Arab presence
in Israeli politics. Abbas relegated to the margins of discussion the
conventional and controversial Arab themes of Palestinian statehood,
liberating Jerusalem, ending Israeli occupation, and calling for refugee
return. He brought the discussion down to the non-political
practicalities of local Arab government, personal security and gun
controls, essential services, and infrastructure. Darwish had instructed
his followers to respect the state and avoid any violence.
These
teachings from both the mentor and now voiced by the student were
designed to foster an environment of moderation and accommodation,
promote Jewish-Arab understanding, and advance integration of the Arab
minority within the Jewish-majority society in Israel. This was in stark
contrast to the shrill political language, spewing vitriolic attacks
against Israel and its army, typical of the alternative Joint Arab List
(JAL) with its snarling and confrontational Members of Knesset.
At
root, Mansour Abbas chose to adopt a political strategy that allowed,
to use a phrase from Fouad Ajami, "the conquered Palestinian citizens of
Israel from 1948 to jump on the wagon of the successful Zionist
enterprise." This did not indicate acceptance of Zionism, as a broad
Arab consensus never came to terms with the Jewish national revival and
its culmination in statehood. The Arab narrative sees Zionism and its
'48 victory as the cause of the Arab catastrophe (Nakba).
Contrary to MK Ahmad Tibi of the JAL, whose arrogance allowed him to
tell President Rivlin to his face in September 2019: "We [Arabs] are the
owners of this land," Abbas meticulously avoided imperious and
insulting language. For now, he ostensibly put the Palestinian Question
on freeze, leaving it for a later stage. In public, he chose pragmatism
over ideology.
Yet reticence has its limits. In his
opening Knesset address on June 13, 2021, with the launching of the new
government, Mansour Abbas referred to the "historic injustice that has
been our [Palestinian Arab] fate over the years because of the [Israeli]
policy of discrimination." For him, was not the very founding of Israel
in Palestine in 1948 the core injustice? On June 27, Abbas gave an
interview with Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper in which he directed
his present thoughts to "realizing our [Arab] civil, national, and
religious rights" in the Israel of 1949. Echoing his mentor's outlook,
Abbas expected civil equality for the Arab citizens, without submission
or inferiority, in peace and mutual security, with cooperation and
tolerance between the two [Jewish and Arab] peoples. The language and
tone were wrapped in a veil of secrecy around the long-term goal of the
Islamic Movement. Boualem Sansal, a noteworthy Algerian novelist, had
cautioned the public about Islam in France—perhaps also fitting for
Islam in Israel—that initially "the threat is invisible."
More
than seventy years following Jewish statehood, the exceptional advances
that Israel registered offered the Arab citizens opportunities to
participate in the benefits of a modern society. In return for Ra'am's
pivotal role in providing Bennett with a majority in the Knesset, the
2021-22 budget committed a whopping 35 billion shekels for development
in the Arab sector. Israel has never demanded that Arabs sacrifice their
multiple Muslim and Palestinian identities as a sign of allegiance to
the state, or as a condition for state funding. In short, integration
'yes', assimilation 'no'.
The Muslim Movement in Israel
declares its commitment to Israel as a formal and legalistic
affirmation, but a recent news report in October 2021 related that two
senior members of Ra'am ran a fund revealingly called "48 Aid" that
transferred money to a Hamas outfit. The movement's commitment to Islam
is indeed absolute. Democracy is not the solution—because Islam is the solution.
The green flags of Islam, symbolic of the Muslim Brethren and the
Islamic Movement, adorned the stage at a speech by MK Mansour Abbas to
his followers on April 3, after the dramatic achievement by Ra'am in the
March Israeli elections.
Abdallah Darwish quoted the Koran (ch.
16) that, with the help of Allah, Muslims must be patient. Abbas does
not boycott Israel nor publicly malign her. He just does not think she
has a right to exist as a Jewish state as defined in the 2018 Basic Law:
Israel the Nation-State of the Jewish People. Mansour Abbas has
intimated that some matters, like a Palestinian state, should be left
for later. Nonetheless, while his party and electoral agenda tackles
problems in local Arab life in Israel, dealing with roads and
transportation, electricity and housing, Abbas talked about political
matters with King Abdullah II when he responded to an invitation to
visit Amman in early November.
Deception & Delusion
The
cumulative policies of Sadat, Arafat, and Abbas, over the last decades
constitute a pattern, multiple links in a strategy of stages to
diminish, demoralize, and finally demolish the Jewish state.
The comprehensive Arab campaign revolves around three circles. Egypt represents the external circle,
to which we attribute the Sinai withdrawal, also pullbacks from south
Lebanon in the year 2000, and the transfer on the eastern frontier of
lands to Jordan in 2018. The Palestinians represent the internal circle
with withdrawals from parts of Gaza and the Jericho salient in 1994;
then from cities, villages and rural areas in Judea and Samaria in 1995,
Hebron in 1997, parts of Samaria in 1998; then the total pullback from
the Gaza Strip in 2005, including areas in northern Samaria. Arabs in
Israel proper represent the domestic circle, launching a
political flight from the Zionist bedrock of Israel's existence. Now the
ideological and national foundations of Israel are tottering with
concessions to the Islamic Movement and accepting its participation at
the heart of political affairs.
The domestic element draws the
circle to the source of things in the Arab Grand Strategy. It
constitutes the final phase, reaching the climax and pointing to the
finale. The Arabs look to the future, though Israel is strapped to the
present. Mansour Abbas would concur with Sheikh Abdallah Azzam, a
Palestinian who journeyed from Jordan to Afghanistan to preach jihad
against the Soviet invasion, who wrote that "Palestine is the foremost
Islamic problem." However, that problem can be resolved by politics and
not necessarily—or only—through warfare.
Through Nietzsche, we can
better understand how a democracy—like Israel's—experiences a loss of
will. An excess of tolerance and pluralism, with no hard sacred values,
dilutes the judgment and seeps the energy from people in leadership. No
matter how bizarre the demand, leaders in a democracy are sensitized to
say "yes" to all and every disaffected and disgruntled groups. The
combination of victimology and indoctrination fill the echo chambers,
and the media engage in a brainwashing assault on behalf of the alleged
underdog—the Arabs. Of a like mind with John Stuart Mill and Lord Acton,
the activists and propagandists list the benefits of freedom and
vitality that flourish in a country of many nationalities, lodged in a
common union.
The Israeli experience, still unfolding, carries an
alternative and ominous meaning. The fact that Arab citizens weigh in
heavily in demographic proportions of crime and violence against both
fellow-Arabs and Jews is a menacing sign. Poll findings revealing Arab
rejection of a Jewish-majority state gain scant public attention.
Alongside that, Arab employment in high-profile jobs, from professors to
pharmacists, free from any discriminatory hiring practice, is a
noticeable social reality. Active support from the Israeli Left combined
with the tacit support of the Israeli Right accelerate the emerging
peril to the integrity of the Jewish nation-state. Jews will
increasingly not feel safe and at home in their own country.
Shmuel
Trigano has written persuasively on the destructive potential of the
ideology of multi-culturalism, post-modernism without truths, minority
rights for all, and identity politics, as an immediate, present, and
future danger to the state of Israel. The mayor of the Arab town of
Taibe, who is close to Mansour Abbas, gave voice to what is obvious to
him and his Palestinian fellow-compatriots: "Taibe is part of
Palestine," adding, "You [Israel] cannot erase our identity."
Memory
is at the root of identity. It can also serve as an impetus for action.
It becomes unacceptable to forgive what is a scalding old grievance
that future generations must address. Recall the struggle for justice in
the story of the King of Amon in the Book of Judges, who after three hundred years
went to war against Israel for having conquered his lands long earlier.
The Arab strategy of stages against Israel is resolute and tireless. Is
it too harsh to characterize the present stage in the Arab strategy as
going for Israel's political jugular?
The success of a sly
deception depends not only on the skill of the deceiver but also on the
indiscretion of the deluded. Sadat fooled Begin who thought there would
be a warm peace with Egypt. Arafat fooled Rabin who thought there would
be peace with the Palestinians. Abbas is now fooling Bennett who thinks
it will be beneficial for Israel to conciliate and integrate the Arabs
in Israel.
The wheel turns and stops always with Israel's misunderstanding.
Dr. Mordechai Nisan
lectured in Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He has written extensively on political topics. Reposted from New English Review.
