by
Mordechai Kedar
What
do the following things have in common: the Muslim Brotherhood's
demonstration in Rabi'a al-Adawiya Square in Cairo, Hamas' deep
misgivings in Gaza, the declaration by the leaders of the Islamic
Movement in Jordan, and the demonstration held by the northern branch of
the Islamic Movement in Israel? They are all partners in the Muslim
Brotherhood's regional plan, backed by the American government and all
are concerned about the blow that this plan suffered three weeks ago in
Egypt, when the Muslim Brotherhood was humiliated and removed from
power.
The plan was revealed publicly on the first of
May, 2012, the day that Muhammad Mursi's election campaign began in
Egypt. On that day, Mursi appeared at a public election rally together
with one of the ideologues of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood movement,
Sheikh Safwat al-Higazi. The Sheikh declared in the clearest possible
way: "We see the dream of the Islamic Caliphate, the dream of the Land
of the Caliphate, realized, G-d willing, by Muhammad Mursi, and his
supporters and his brothers and his political party. We have seen the
great dream, that we all share, the United Arab States!!! The United
Arab States will return, G-d willing. The United Arab States will be
restored by this man and his supporters, G-d willing. The capital of the
caliphate, the capital of the United Arab States will be Jerusalem, G-d
willing. Its capital will not be Cairo, nor Mecca, nor Medina, only
Jerusalem, G-d willing, and our call will be 'Millions of martyrs are marching to Jerusalem'". And then this song was sung:
"O those who long to die a martyr's death,
You are all Hamas,
Banish the sleep from the eyes of all
the Jews
Forget about the whole world, forget the conferences
Take up your arms
Say your prayers and call to Allah..."
Thanks to MEMRI,
this piece is known throughout the world.
Here
I must provide a linguistic comment. Higazi says the name United Arab
States using the Arabic term "al-Wilayat al-Arabiyya al-muttahida", which
is exactly the same as the name for the United States, with the
additional word "Arabic" inserted in the middle. This similarity can be
explained in two ways: a) It alludes to the future strength of the
prospective Islamic state by creating a linguistic semblance between
this state and the United States; b) Someone in the United States gave
them the idea to establish an Arabic entity that would parallel the
United States. The American who gave them the idea used the term
"al-Wilayat al-muttahida" - the Arabic name for the United States - as a
model for what they should establish in the Middle East, and that is the
reason that the Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Safwat al-Higazi adopted this name. I don't know which
American gave them the idea, but I believe that he served, and still
serves in the State Department.
The words of Sheikh
Higazi were not only an election slogan intended to excite the masses,
but also served as the revelation of a practical program that has
supporters in the White House, in Washington, D.C. The plan was revealed
recently on the Internet site Elaph, a liberal Arabic news site
operating out of London. On the 12th of July, Elaph revealed the
Jordanian part of the Muslim Brotherhood's program to establish the
United Arab States. This plan is based on the assumption that the Muslim
Brotherhood will continue to take control of more states in the Middle
East: They have controlled Turkey since 2002, won the elections for the
Palestinian Authority parliament in 2006, and in 2007, took
control of the Gaza Strip (which is a state for all intents and
purposes). Since the
Middle of 2011, al-Nahda, which is the Tunisian branch of the Muslim
Brotherhood organization, has been the leading party in Tunisia. And
since the end of June 2012, the president of Egypt was from the Muslim
Brotherhood. In addition, since at the end of 2011, the Brotherhood was a
dominant
presence in the elected parliament, which was later dispersed by
court order. The Brotherhood is also the leading force in Morocco, Libya
and Kuwait, and if things go well for them, they will rule in Syria as
well. The Brotherhood is supported by the rich, powerful Emirate of
Qatar, with its jihadi al-Jazeera media channel that is capable- as we
have seen since December, 2010 - of toppling rulers in order to place
the Muslim Brotherhood in power.
The United States
State Department has been encouraging the Muslim Brotherhood in their
imperialistic process ever since President George. W. Bush's time, and
since January 2009, President Obama and the State Department have viewed
political Islamic imperialism to be in the American national interest.
The reason that the United States supports the Brotherhood is because
ever since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States
has been searching for a moderate sort of political Islam that the West
can live with, contrary to al-Qaeda, for example, and the Muslim
Brotherhood is very suitable - in the opinion of the State Department,
and now, in the opinion of the White House as well - to assume the role
of a legitimate ruling power in Islamic states that will not incite
hatred against the West in general and the United States in particular.
In
order to implement the Islamic plan, the Israelis will have to be
sedated first, so that they will not alert the world to the
American-Islamic political plan. That's why the American government
tried to reassure Israel when Mursi was elected: under the auspices of
the State Department, a delegation of members of the Israeli Knesset met
in Washington with members of the Egyptian parliament, among whom were
representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, with the goal of creating a
connection and dialogue between the two sides.
The Plan for North Sinai
For
the past two years, Syria has been consumed by a terrible civil war, in
which more than a hundred thousand men, women and children have been
killed to date. Four hundred thousand Palestinian refugees have been
living in Syria since 1948 and they share in the general suffering:
hundreds of them have been killed and wounded and many thousands of them have
fled to Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt and other countries. This is
very concerning to the Hamas movement - the Palestinian Muslim
Brotherhood - because if the situation continues, the Palestinians, who
have until now lived in Syria, will disappear as a group and their
distribution throughout the world would dissolve the Palestinian problem
and their "right of return" into Israel. This is the reason that Hamas
leaders conceived the idea together with Mursi: Egypt will transfer
North Sinai to the authority of Hamas, and the Palestinian refugees will
be transferred for a limited time to Sinai from Syria and from the
countries to which they fled recently as a result of the civil war.
The
Mursi government approved of transferring northern Sinai to Hamas in
order to settle Palestinian refugees from Syria there, because then,
many infrastructures would have to be developed - housing, water,
sewage, electricity, roads, communications, industry and education. All
of this would have American, Qatari and international funding, and Egypt
would benefit from the resulting opportunities for employment. The area
would be leased to the Palestinians, and the world would pay the rent
to Egypt. According to the plan, Hamas would be responsible for the
Palestinian refugees living in Sinai, mainly to assure that other
movements, especially Fatah, would not be able to set foot among these
Palestinians. The people of Gaza would be able to pass freely into north
Sinai, which would become a Palestinian Islamic state. Joining north
Sinai with Gaza would ease the Gaza residents' sense of siege, and would
open great economic opportunities because of the building and
development initiatives for North Sinai, causing the tunnels between
Gaza and Rafah to become superfluous. The United States seems to be
aware of this plan and to agree to it, and if the name of the United
States is connected with the plan, the United States will earn a lot of
credit for its generous support in rescuing the Palestinians while
simultaneously preserving their problematic situation, just as their
status as refugees has been preserved for the past 65 years with budgets
for UNRWA, a large part of which come from American tax payers.
The
White House, State Department and Muslim Brotherhood assume that Israel
would welcome the plan to settle the Palestinian refugees in Sinai
considering this plan to be a solution to their problem. So Israel would
not object to American funding of the repatriation of the 1948
refugees, their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren in north
Sinai. There would be enough "useful idiots" in Israel who would
encourage this plan because they would delude themselves into thinking
that this would mean the end the refugee problem, and those Israelis -
as usual - would ignore the fact that a concentration of Palestinian
refugees in Sinai must eventually lead to a new phase, which would be a
struggle, led by Hamas, to return to all of Palestine, thereby
eliminating Israel as the state of the Jewish people.
The Battle for Egypt
The
United States is not the only country that is working on the mission to
see the Muslim Brotherhood rule over the entire Middle East, and the
senior partner in the project is Europe. The undiplomatic behavior of
the Americans and the Europeans is not new: when President Obama visited
Cairo in 2009 to deliver his speech to the Islamic nation, he chose to
meet with representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, the host's sworn
enemy, which was the real reason that Mubarak was not present at Obama's
speech. Mubarak's excuse was the death of his grandson two weeks prior.
There
is a rumor in Egypt that in last year's elections, Ahmed Shafiq,
Mursi's competitor, actually won, but that American pressure on the
military government led to Mursi being declared the winner, because of
Obama's and the State Department's desire for Mursi and the Muslim
Brotherhood to rule in Egypt. The presence of eight Muslim Brotherhood people in the White House staff (see
here and
here) reveals Obama's clear bias in favor of
the Muslim Brotherhood, a bias that expressed itself in the American
government's disapproval of Mursi's dismissal from the presidency at the
beginning of July. A man named Ahmed Aliba served in the American
Embassy staff in Cairo. He was the liaison between Ambassador Patterson
and the Muslim Brotherhood, and it was he who coordinated the American
officials' meeting with representatives of the Brotherhood.
Mursi
was overthrown by the military in the beginning of July because of the
demonstrations against him, but also to thwart Mursi's plan to transfer
north Sinai to Hamas and to settle hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees
there. The overthrow of Mursi dismayed the leaders of Hamas in Gaza
because they had built their future and the future of their state on
this plan. Erdogan, the Turkish Islamist, was also infuriated.
The
American involvement in the promotion of Muslim Brotherhood matters
should come as no surprise to Israel: the American State Department
exerted similar pressures on Ariel Sharon, prime minister of Israel,
forcing him to allow the Hamas movement to participate in Palestinian
parliamentary elections in the beginning of 2006. The State Department
did not learn any lesson from Hamas subsequently winning a majority of
the seats, and it now applies similar pressures on King Abdullah. But
contrary to Ariel Sharon, Abdullah understands what the Muslim
Brotherhood is, so there is much less chance of him succumbing to the
State Department's pressures .
But the person who knows
the truth about the Muslim Brotherhood and tells it to their face is
Dahi Khalfan, the commander of the Dubai police. He recently described
the danger of the Muslim Brotherhood to the state of the Emirates as no
less threatening than the Iranian danger.
The Islamic "Alternative Homeland" in Jordan
The
toppling of Mursi and the Brotherhood was a shocking blow to the
leaders of the Brotherhood in Jordan as well, who, for the past two
years, have refused to participate in King Abdullah the Second's
initiative to incorporate reforms into the Jordanian government that
would grant greater representation in the parliament to the Islamic
parties and the residents in the refugee camps. King Abdullah openly
calls them "wolves in sheep's clothing" and "the Freemasons cult" (there
is no worse expression in Arabic that the king could have
used towards his citizens, M. K.) because they do not want to reform the
regime of the Hashemite monarchy; rather, they want to replace it and
turn it into a puppet after taking over the parliament and changing the
state into a "constitutional monarchy" with an Islamic constitution
written by the Brotherhood, of course. The king describes his battle
with the Brotherhood with the expression "the most important battle
confronting us in the entire region", even more than Iran. He also does
not hide his contempt for the American diplomats and officials who
promote the Muslim Brotherhood out of naivety, as if the regime of the
Brotherhood is a type of Islamic democracy. Now, with the downfall of
Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood of Jordan is left without reforms, without
Egyptian backing and in conflict with the king, who knows quite well
where they are headed.
During
the past two years, delegations of senior American and European
officials have come in an endless stream to Jordan in an attempt to
convince the king to change the Jordanian election law so that the
Muslim Brotherhood would agree to take part in elections and even
to achieve positive results in them. However, meetings with the king are
not enough for the Americans and Europeans: their ambassadors and
representatives meet continually with the leaders of the Muslim
Brotherhood, whether in capitals of the United States or in Jordan, and
the king is forced to swallow this insult.
The king's
suspicions of the Muslim Brotherhood are very well based: for several
years now, the slogan "the alternative homeland" has been part of the
public discourse in Jordan. The slogan refers to the desire to overthrow
the Hashemite monarchy, which Britain imported from the Hijaz 90 years
ago, and to return Jordan to its original residents, who are divided
generally into two main parts: a) a minority of desert dwelling
Bedouins, most of whom live in permanent settlements that they moved
into over the years while conserving their traditional culture and
language, and b) the majority, who are Palestinian farmers and city
dwellers, whose language and culture is different from that of the
Bedouins. The Bedouin population lives mainly south and east of Amman,
while the Palestinian population lives north of Amman for the most part.
The Jordanian term "Palestinian", does not refer to residents of the
part of the Land of Israel that is West of the Jordan River, but to
those indigenous residents of northwest Jordan who call themselves
"Palestinians", adopting the name from the British Mandate for
Palestine-Israel, since they do not want to be called Bedouins.
Additional
Palestinians should be added to this group, some of whom are refugees
from 1948 and some of whom moved from Israel and from Judea and Samaria to
Jordan, for various reasons over the years. All have Jordanian
citizenship, and therefore according to the rules of the United Nations'
High Commissioner for Refugees, they are not refugees, despite the fact
that UNWRA considers them to be.
The "Palestinian"
indigenous residents of Jordan are not interested in what happens West
of the Jordan Valley, and they silently tolerate the coalition of the Hashemite
Monarchy with the local Bedouins. The Palestinian refugees
live quietly, in general, and do not make political demands, because
they still remember Black September (September 1970), when - under the
leadership of Yassir Arafat - they tried to establish a Palestinian
terror state within the state of Jordan and King Hussein responded by
slaughtering thousands of them.
Now, in the wake of the
"Arab Spring", winds of change and revision are beginning to blow in
Jordan as well, and the largest and most organized body involved is the
Muslim Brotherhood, which has many supporters among all of the
Palestinian groups: the indigenous Jordanians, and the refugees and the
emigres from West of the Jordan River, who support the Brotherhood
mainly because they present a challenge to the Hashemite monarchy. For
some years now, the Palestinians have been talking about "the
alternative homeland", meaning that they hope to establish a Palestinian
state on the land that is now Jordan, whether by dividing the state
into a Bedouin state in the southeast and a Palestinian state in the
north of Jordan, or by taking over the whole state by means of elections
or by violence.
The Brotherhood in Jordan has been
attempting for some time to organize demonstrations and set up protest
tents in one of the town squares of Amman, but the kingdom's security
forces - composed mostly of Bedouins - do not allow them to do it. The
Brotherhood tends to boycott the elections for parliament because they
do not want to play the king's "pseudo-democratic" and
"pseudo-legitimate" game. It is a game because after all, no one can
legally remove the king from his post. He attempts to convince the
Brotherhood to participate in the elections by throwing them bones in
the form of government jobs.
Paradoxically, the Muslim
Brotherhood in Jordan and the Israeli Right have similar interests: both
sides want a Palestinian state, not the Hashemite monarchy, to be
established in Jordan, and therefore both call for overthrowing the
Hashemite monarchy and cancelling the peace agreement between Israel and
the King of Jordan that was signed in October 1994. The Israeli Right
objects to the monarchy's authority over the Temple Mount granted to it
by the peace agreement, and the Brotherhood sees the agreement as a
betrayal of the Palestinians, the Arabs and the Islamists, and an
insurance policy for the Hashemite family's regime in Jordan. That is
why King Abdullah has become the greatest supporter of the establishment
of a state of Palestine in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, so that he can
claim that Jordan is Jordan, Palestine is West of the Jordan River, and
anyone who wants to live in Palestine should emigrate to the area west
of the Jordan River.
The Muslim Brotherhood, most of
whom are residents of the northern part of Jordan, want to eliminate the
monarchy, and this places them in eternal conflict with the king. The
election of Mursi last year was very encouraging to them, because he
shares their political desires. They attempted to organize a
demonstration of 300,000 people in one of the squares of Amman to turn
it into the Jordanian version of "Tahrir Square", but the Jordanian
security forces discovered the plan and prevented it in the usual way.
The
king is aware of the idea of an "alternative homeland" and has said
many times that "Jordan will not be an alternative homeland for
anyone", and therefore it supports the establishment of a Palestinian
state outside of Jordan. The king also tries to calm the people by
assuring them that he was never subjected to pressure from any American
president, Bill Clinton, George Bush or Barack Obama, who wanted to
establish a Palestinian state at Jordan's expense.
Perhaps
the presidents of the United States did not pressure the king to
establish a Palestinian state in Jordan. However, in my opinion, there
is pressure to permit the Brotherhood to become part of the Jordanian
political system, mainly from the State Department, which has, for years
been attempting to promote the political project of the Muslim
Brotherhood in Jordan. In order to sedate the king, the State Department
works toward establishing a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria,
which would compromise the state of Israel's security, since this
Palestinian state will become another Muslim Brotherhood state, ruled by
Hamas, in the future. Thus the Islamic noose will close around Israel's
neck, thus the dream of Safwat Higazi to establish an Islamic Caliphate
state with Jerusalem as its capital is fulfilled, and all the Islamists
the world over will love America because it threw Israel under the
Muslim Brotherhood bus. How otherwise can the State Department's
objection to recognizing Jerusalem - the capital of the Jewish people
for 3000 years - as the capital of Israel, be explained, and the
American objection to the Jewish people's sovereignty over Judea and
Samaria as stipulated by the decision of the San Remo Conference in
1920?
In conclusion, it can be stated simply and
painfully: the State Department and the White House fear Islamic terror
more than anything else. Therefore, since September 11, 2001, they have
been obsessed by a desire to please the Muslims at any price. They think
that Muslim Brotherhood rule over most of the Muslim states is the
ideal solution, and the most suitable one to American interests, even if
the price is abandoning long-standing friends and allies. Mubarak,
Qadhaffi, Abdullah the Second and Israel are all part of the sacrifice
that the State Department and White House are willing to make on the
altar of Muslim Brotherhood rule over the entire Arab and Islamic world.
Will the elimination of Mursi be the blow that will send the
Islamist-American genie back into the bottle?
===============
Dr. Kedar is available for lectures
Dr. Mordechai Kedar (Mordechai.Kedar@biu.ac.il) is an Israeli scholar of Arabic and
Islam, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and the director of the Center for the
Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University,
Israel. He specializes in Islamic ideology and movements, the political
discourse of Arab countries, the Arabic mass media, and the Syrian domestic
arena.
Translated from Hebrew by Sally
Zahav with permission from the author.
Additional articles by Dr. Kedar
Source: The article is published in the framework of the Center
for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan
University, Israel. Also published in Makor Rishon, a Hebrew weekly newspaper.
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the author.
