by Mudar Zahran
We Arabs have wasted seven decades of our existence awaiting Israel's demise. It is time to think of the future, and whether Israel's "disappearance" should be our ultimate wish.
Since 1948, we Arabs
have been taught that all we need to do is get rid of the Jewish state,
and everything else will go well after that. Our dictators took full
advantage of this idea. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser locked up
and executed his opposition members using his famous excuse: "No voices
are to be allowed except for those for the war with Israel." Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein adopted the Palestinian flag and had it
printed, distributed and flown alongside his own flag, and even said,
"Palestine and Iraq share the same identical cause." In short, we Arabs
have put 70 years of our existence on hold while awaiting that
"glorious day" when we defeat Israel and "feed the Jews to the fish."
But that day did not
come, nor does it seem to be coming, as Jordanian opposition figure
Emad Tarifi once told me: "It seems the fish in the sea are not betting
on us feeding them Jews."
In addition, we Arabs
have given our dictators carte blanche to impoverish, terrorize, oppress
and destroy us all in the name of "the great Arab struggle to end the
Zionist entity." The outcome of this has been clear: While Israel made
10 new breakthroughs in cancer and cardiac treatments in the last two
years alone, we Arabs developed new execution methods. The latest is
death by drowning in a cage, as shown in an Islamic State group video
two weeks ago.
We Arabs have wasted
seven decades of our existence awaiting Israel's demise. It is time to
think of the future, and whether Israel's "disappearance" should be our
ultimate wish.
Being the son of two
Palestinian-Jordanian refugees, I find myself inclined to fear for the
future. Regardless of my stance toward Israel, I have to think: What
would happen if, one day, Israel were to disappear? While it does not
seem feasible, it is the day around which entire Arab political, social
and economic systems revolve.
It is not only Arabs
who want Israel gone. There are others who seek the same, for example
anti-Semites in the West. Just last week, neo-Nazis marched in London
with swastikas and the Palestinian flag. The organizer of the march
claimed it was a protest "by all of those who have suffered because of
Israel." There are groups calling for a boycott of Israel "for the sake
of the Palestinian people." There are countries whose entire foreign
policy seems to revolve around opposition to Israel. We Palestinians
might have believed that these groups and countries actually care about
us, but they take no interest in the fate of the 150,000 Palestinians
being starved to death in Syria's Yarmouk refugee camp, nor in an
estimated 5.8 million Palestinians in Jordan (as indicated by a U.S.
Embassy cable) who live as second-class citizens and are banned from
government jobs and any form of state benefits while paying full taxes.
If these Israel-haters got their wish to see Israel disappear, what would happen?
First, Israel is the
only reason Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons. Iran could buy the
technology to produce them, or could learn it quickly the way Pakistan
did. Why has Iran been slow in doing so? Because it learned a lesson
from the experience of Saddam's Osirak reactor, which Israeli jets
reduced to rubble in 1981.
Then, almost everyone,
including George H. W. Bush who was vice president of the United States
at that time, were furious with Israel's move. But 10 years later, when
the U.S. fought to liberate Kuwait, the situation would have been
totally different if Saddam had kept his nuclear program -- and the only
reason he did not was Israel.
Further, Iran already
controls at least a third of Iraq and its resources through a
pro-Iranian regime. If Israel were to disappear, Iran would extend its
influence into Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain the next day, as it would not
have to fear an Israeli reaction. Iran could then bring the world to
its knees by reducing oil production.
Iran is not the only
evil power in the Middle East: We also have Islamic State, which has now
spread across Iraq, Syria, Sinai and Libya, with clear ambitions to
enter Jordan. Islamic State has not entered Jordan yet, and this is not
because of any fear of the Jordanian army. After all, the Global
Firepower website ranks Jordan's army at the same level as the Iraqi
army, which Islamic State has defeated many times. Islamic State does
not dare enter Jordan for one reason only -- its fear that Israeli jets
would catch up with it 15 minutes later.
If Israel were to
disappear and be replaced by a Palestinian state, the Palestinians would
most likely end up with another Arab dictatorship that oppresses them
and reduces them to poverty. We have partially seen that with the
Palestinian Authority and the "liberated" areas it rules. I regularly
visit the West Bank and have interviewed scores of Palestinians there. I
can confirm that, as much as they hate Israel, they still openly yearn
for the days when it administered the West Bank. As one Palestinian
told me, "We prayed to God to give us mercy and rid us of Israel;
later, we found out that God had given us mercy when Israel was here."
To those Arabs,
Muslims, Westerners and others insisting that Israel must be erased from
face of the planet, I say: Don't bet on it, as Israel is becoming
stronger every day through its democracy and innovation, while Arab
countries are getting weaker through dictatorship and chaos. And be
careful what you wish for, because if you were to get it, you too would
most likely disappear, unless you yearn to be ruled by Iran or Islamic
State.
In short, if the day
were to come when Israel falls, Jordan, Egypt and many others would
fall, too, and Westerners would be begging Iran for oil.
We can hate Israel as much as we like, but we must realize that without it, we too would be gone.
Mudar Zahran is a Jordanian-Palestinian who resides in the U.K.
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=13113
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
No comments:
Post a Comment