Will Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Help Resolve Problems in the Middle East?

Many have come to the conclusion that in order to solve the problems in the Middle East, the US must first solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They believe that Islamic extremism is a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Some are naive enough to blame the problems of the Middle East on Israel’s policies. The thinking goes that instead of trying to stop Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the US should first try to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This thinking represents the leftist and regionalist camp. This thinking is incredibly naive. There are plenty of problems in the Middle East that are not related primarily to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In fact, sometimes hostile Middle Eastern dictators who deeply hate Israel fought against each other. Take the Iran-Iraq war for example. Sure, Saddam and Ayatollah Khomeini had different ideologies. But they both agreed that Israel had no right to exist. Both supported rejectionist terrorism against Israel. Saddam led the Arab opposition to the Camp David accords. Saddam backed rejectionist Palestinian terrorist groups like Abu Nidal. Iran founded Hezbollah as its terrorist proxy in Lebanon. Just as Saddam led the Arab rejectionist onslaught against Egypt for signing a peace agreement with Israel, Iran is the primary backer of rejectionist Palestinian terrorist groups. 

The Sunni and Shia extremists in Iraq are fighting each other, in order for control. Sure they both hate Israel. But that also has nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict. 

The problems that America is facing is not primarily caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict. Many events in the Middle East would’ve happened even if there was no Arab-Israeli conflict. Saudi Arabia would still build, fund and control mosques around the world that call for Jihad around the world. Khomeini would still have taken power in 1979 and imposed a radical Islamic system. The Iran-Iraq war would’ve happened. As I pointed out, both Saddam Hussein and the Khomeinist regime in Iran hated Israel. Both also hated the United States.Yet they were still bitter enemies with each other and fought an 8 year long war.

Osama Bin Ladin is not primarily concerned with the Arab-Israeli conflict when he attacked and declared war on the United States. Yes Bin Ladin obviously rejected Israel’s right to exist and worked with Palestinian terror groups such as Hamas. He was also concerned with other issues. He attacked America for being an infidel nation.

The Taliban, which had close relations with and had the same roots as Al Qaeda did not impose a brutal Islamist dictatorship in Afghanistan and destroy the Buddha statues because of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It had nothing to do with any “grievence” against Israel.

Even right now, the Arab states including Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are worried about the threat from Iran and feel more threatened by Iran’s nuclear weapons program than by Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is not simply a dispute over land. It’s not about the well-being of Palestinian refugees and not about establishing a Palestinian state. It’s about the rejection of Israel’s right to exist by anti-democratic forces in the region. The Arab-Israeli conflict is more of a result than a cause of Islamic extremism. The radical Islamic ideology of Hezbollah, Tehran, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda, the taliban and other Islamist forces are not caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict. Their not caused by any grievence against the Jewish state. Their ideology is actually what makes them try to squash any hope of peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

The time is not ripe for a solution between the Israelis and Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority has constantly violated the agreements they signed with Israel and never followed any peace plan. The Palestinian leadership, whether under Fatah or Hamas, still suppport terrorists and continue to promote hatred of Jews and rejection of Israel’s right to exist through mosques, the media and schools. Oslo ended in failiure. Despite Israel’s constant promotion of Oslo in public, the Palesitnian Authority was violating the agreements and incited for violent jihad against Israel. Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel were barbarically lynched in public without a trial in order to send chilling warnings.

Even if a Palestinian leadership that promoted the two-state solution were to arise, Tehran, Damascus and their proxies including Palestinian Islamic Jihad [PIJ] Hamas and Hezbollah would still do what they can to sabotage any hope of peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. After then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo accords with Israel, Iran was very upset and tried to assassinate him for signing a peace agreement with Israel. Yet it is also clear that Arafat only went a long with it for show. He did not truly recognize Israel’s right to exist, as he violated every part of the Oslo agreements. Even for pretending to have peace with Israel, Iran makes an assassination attempt on him. If Iran was going to assassinate Arafat for pretending to have peace with Israel, what would you think Tehran would do if the Palestinians got a leadership that’s fully committed to peace with Israel? Iran is developing nuclear weapons in order to help advance their Jihadist ambitions for the region and the rest of the world.

The radical Islamic ideology is a huge [if not the principle] obstacle for achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Peace with Israel is a huge contradiction to the radical Islamic ideology. That ideology states that all infidel powers and even Muslim powers, which is not ruled by Sharia, must fall and that the whole world must be an Islamic caliphate ruled by Sharia law. According to radical Islam, not only is Israel an infidel power, but it is also an infidel power in the lands of Islam. It is an infidel power right at the center of the Muslim world. That’s how radical Islamists see it. According to radical Islam, any land that is under Islamic rule must stay under that rule. What radical Islam considers to be the “lands of Islam” is not the same as what the west considers to be the “Muslim world.” According to radical Islam, the “lands of Islam” is not only the land that is under Islamic rule, but also the land that was under Islamic rule. According to the radical Islamic worldview, Spain is part of the lands of Islam. But according to the west, Spain is not part of the Muslim world.

 According to the radical Islamic worldview, land that is under Islamic rule are Dar al-Islam [House of peace] and land that is under non-Muslim rule are Dar al-Harb [House of war].

Arab states including Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are more interested in stopping the the threat from Iran than they are in normalizing relations with Israel. The Arab states and Israel agree that Iran must not have nuclear weapons.

The thinking goes that the problems in Iraq and Afghanistan are related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. So the thinking goes that if that conflict is solved, it would help solve problems in those countries. The west and the US would then supposedly have at least much of an easier time in the Middle East if the Arab-Israeli is solved. This thinking is wrong.

The Taliban imposed a radical Islamic dictatorship in the Swath valley and is close to Islambad. The prospect of a Taliban takeover of Pakistan is a real and dangerous threat. Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. The Taliban takeover of Pakistan is a real threat because then the Jihadist ideology, which makes MAD [Mutually Assured Destruction] not a real deterrent, gets nuclear weapons. Jihadists brag all the time that they value death while their enemies love life. They’re willing to sacrifise Muslim [including Palestinian] life in order to achieve their goals like destroying infidel powers. If the Taliban takes over, they would then attack the US with nuclear weapons. Al Qaeda could get a hold of nuclear weapons and use them, since the Taliban is allied to Al Qaeda. The Taliban taking over Pakistan is as big of a threat as Iran armed with nuclear weapons because either or, the world’s most dangerous weapons are in the hands of the world’s most dangerous ideology.

Solving the Arab-Israeli conflict is not going to solve the existential threat posed from the prospect of the Taliban taking over Pakistan.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is not the cause of the region’s problems. It wasn’t the cause of the Lebanese civil war, not of the civil war in Iraq and not for Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The conflict is a result of the dangerous situation in the Middle East. Solving the Arab-Israeli conflict should not be a top priority for Washington. Pressuring Israel to make premature withdrawals from the disputed territories will not be helpful to Washington. It won’t help to solve the problems from the region whether it’s the Iran threat, Iraq, Afghanistan, Islamic extremism or the prospect of nuclear weapons for radical Islamic forces. It won’t solve any of those problems. What would result from it is Israel making a suicidal move that makes the existential threat to Israel even bigger. What it results is in giving more control to rejectionist terrorist groups. It results in giving anti-Israel terrorists a base to continue the terrorist struggle on Israel.The result is that Israel will have less secure borders. That’s the result from it.

Time is not ripe for solving the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Palestinians must have a leadership that is fully committed to peace with Israel and actually follows the signed agreements instead of just giving cheap lipservice in favor of peace to the international community. It must be recognized that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the result of the circumstances of the region, not the cause of the region’s problems. Radical Islam must be dealt with. If the Palestinians have a leadership fully committed to peace, Iran, Syria and their proxies must be stopped from trying to sabotage the peace and from continuing the terrorist struggle against Israel. Solving the Arab-Israeli conflict should not be the top priority of the US. Instead, the US should be focused at stopping the existential threats. The US must work to not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon and not to allow the Taliban, Al Qaeda or any radical Islamic group to take over Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons. The US should support pro-democracy movements and not allow Islamists to come to power, whether democratically or undemocratically. The US should strengthen its allied relationship with Israel. Israel is an asset to America in the region. Israel gives America valuable intelligence information.

America shouldn’t be primarily focused on solving the Arab-Israeli conflict. If Israel did reach peace with the Palestinians, it would be great. But the situation needs to be examined from the viewpoint of reality, not a left-wing regionalist viewpoint that believes that solving the Arab-Israeli conflict would get rid of much [if not all] of the problems America faces in the Arab and Muslim world.