War, Peace and A Political Touch

The elections in Lebanon present Washington and its Arab allies with a real opportunity. But it won't last long.

By Christopher Dickey | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jun 9, 2009

« Return to Article

Discuss

Member Comments

  • Posted By: Alzahrani @ 06/15/2009 3:34:31 PM

    To Treat Others..
    I cannot agree with you more. It is undeniably true that the corrupt dictatorships in the Middle East are openly supported by the Western powers first among which is the USA administrations. I think trying to prove this is as difficult as proving 2+2=4. Why does the USA support those regimes? Two reasons, to ensure "stability" necessary for the flow of oil cheaply. Stability means no radicals would be able to take over power...but this strategy creates more radicals such as the Al-Qa'eda. What makes the USA foreign policies doubly wrong is that they are committed to supporting Israel "no matter what the Israelis do". This in turn creates more extremism. Oil will flow safely and more cheaply if there is a balanced USA foreign policies in the Middle East, in a democratic Middle East. Doing otherwise reveals either cynical USA politicians who don't believe in democracy or politicians unable to see the real interest of the USA, or able to see that but unable to protect the USA interests because of the pro-Israeli lobbyists.

  • Posted By: Treat others the way you want to be treated @ 06/11/2009 1:08:54 PM

    Trooper, thanks for mis-characterizing the article to pretend it said something that it did not.

    You say that "The gains in land Israel has made was paid for in blood", in other words after WWII the European zionists used terror and killing of innocent civilians to force Palestinians out of their homes, farms, and businesses. And now they cry about how the Palestinians will not just put their tail between their legs and go away and let Israeli's live in peace...what hypocricy!

    Here's a history clarification in case you were not aware: Palestinians had nothing to do with the holocaust...that was the Germans who terrorized the jews and other minorities. So if the European jews want a jewish country as their compensation for all their pain, that's fine...give them Germany, or a part of it. What does that have to do with the poor Palestinian farmers who were living a peaceful life before the well-trained, well-equipped, Europeans decided to kill their way into Palestine?

    • Posted By: Treat others the way you want to be treated @ 06/11/2009 2:27:56 PM

      cictizenstat, I just stated some simple facts. Crying :anti-semite" every time any one (including the president of the united states) criticizes the Israeli government is an attempt to shut down any discussion of facts. The dictatorial governments in the Middle East have benefited from Israel's oppression of the Palestinians whom they forced out to justify their own brutal treatment of their people (i.e., Israel is killing Palestinians and we oppose Israel, so if you are against the government, you must be an agent of Israel).

      So Obama's push to establish a Palestinian homeland is critical to supporting democratic movements across all Muslim countries.

    • Posted By: citizenstat @ 06/11/2009 1:14:51 PM

      Speaking of ignorant, visceral Israel bashers ...

  • Posted By: taniashaina @ 06/10/2009 2:24:15 PM

    If Christopher Dickey is Newsweek's Middle Eastern "expert," you will always be wrong. He is completely wrong on the Arab-Israel dispute. First, the Arabs don't want peace. They only want the annihilation of Israel. Secondly, the Arab-Israeli conflict is only one factor in the complicated Middle Eastern morass. The Arab-Israeli conflict pales in comparison to the Sunni-Shiite conflict or the Arab-Persian conflict. And there are many other conflicts, including: Radical Islam vs Arab nationalism, Oil rich nations vs oil poor nations, and racial divisions exemplified by the genocide of black Moslems by the Arab rulers in Sudan to name a few. The reason that many commentators dwell on the Arab-Israel conflict is that they would like to get rid of Israel. But sacrificing Israel on the altar of appeasement is not going to bring peace or stability to the Middle East.

    • Posted By: Trooper101st @ 06/11/2009 8:55:23 AM

      You hit the crux of the problem. Until Israel is recognized, and the arabs stop talking about "annihilation" there will be conflict. If someone wants you dead and you KNOW it, ur gonna strike first, or, at the very least, keep those enemies as far away as possible. Israel's defense is job # 1. When Israel was attacked, by a large arab force, the Israeli's whipped thier azz. Now the arabs want thier land back-poof! Just like that? No way.

      • Posted By: citizenstat @ 06/11/2009 1:07:17 PM

        I admire the 101st, but GO 82nd!! HOOAH!!

    • Posted By: concerned liberal @ 06/11/2009 10:38:17 AM

      Well said, correct!

  • Posted By: citizenstat @ 06/11/2009 1:05:18 PM

    Kudos to taniashaina, trooper101st, and bojack27! It's refreshing to see well-informed posts rather than the ignorant, visceral Israel-bashing that so often pepper these discussions.

  • Posted By: Trooper101st @ 06/11/2009 8:48:34 AM

    Israel must give land for peace. They will only do that when ME moslem gov.'s recognize thier right to exist. Only then will peace be a possibility. The gains in land Israel has made was paid for in blood. They will not just give it back without some kind of security agreement. That means no more Hamas rockets, and no more attacks from Hezbollah. Only then will there be some kind of peace.

  • Posted By: bojack27 @ 06/10/2009 3:45:12 PM

    A plethora of evidence exists demonstrating that Palestinians were encouraged to leave their homes to make way for the invading Arab armies.

    The Economist, a frequent critic of the Zionists, reported on October 2, 1948: ???Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit... It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.???

    Time???s report of the battle for Haifa (May 3, 1948) was similar: ???The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by orders of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city... By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.???

    Benny Morris, the historian who documented instances where Palestinians were expelled, also found that Arab leaders encouraged their brethren to leave. Starting in December 1947, he said, ???Arab officers ordered the complete evacuation of specific villages in certain areas, lest their inhabitants ???treacherously??? acquiesce in Israeli rule or hamper Arab military deployments.??? He concluded, ???There can be no exaggerating the importance of these early Arab-initiated evacuations in the demoralization, and eventual exodus, of the remaining rural and urban populations??? (Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 590.)

    The Arab National Committee in Jerusalem, following the March 8, 1948, instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, ordered women, children and the elderly in various parts of Jerusalem to leave their homes: ???Any opposition to this order... is an obstacle to the holy war... and will hamper the operations of the fighters in these districts.??? The Arab Higher Committee also ordered the evacuation of ???several dozen villages, as well as the removal of dependents from dozens more??? in April-July 1948. ???The invading Arab armies also occasionally ordered whole villages to depart, so as not to be in their way??? (Middle Eastern Studies, January 1986; See also Morris, pp. 263 & 590-592).

    • Posted By: bojack27 @ 06/10/2009 3:47:03 PM

      Morris also said that in early May units of the Arab Legion ordered the evacuation of all women and children from the town of Beisan. The Arab Liberation Army was also reported to have ordered the evacuation of another village south of Haifa. The departure of the women and children, Morris says, ???tended to sap the morale of the menfolk who were left behind to guard the homes and fields, contributing ultimately to the final evacuation of villages. Such two-tier evacuation ??? women and children first, the men following weeks later ??? occurred in Qumiya in the Jezreel Valley, among the Awarna bedouin in Haifa Bay and in various other places.???

      In his memoirs, Haled al Azm, the Syrian Prime Minister in 1948-49, also admitted the Arab role in persuading the refugees to leave:

      ???Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return??? (The Memoirs of Haled al Azm, Beirut, 1973, Part 1, pp. 386-387).

      Who gave such orders? Leaders like such as Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, who declared: ???We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down??? (Myron Kaufman, The Coming Destruction of Israel, NY: The American Library Inc., 1970, pp. 26-27).

      The Secretary of the Arab League Office in London, Edward Atiyah, wrote in his book, The Arabs: ???This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re¬enter and retake possession of their country??? (Edward Atiyah, The Arabs, London: Penguin Books, 1955, p. 183).

      ???The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two,??? Monsignor George Hakim, a Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Galilee told the Beirut newspaper, Sada al-Janub (August 16, 1948). ???Their leaders had promised them that the Arab Armies would crush the ???Zionist gangs??? very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile.???

      On April 3, 1949, the Near East Broadcasting Station ( Cyprus ) said: ???It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees??? flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem??? (Samuel Katz, Battleground-Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, NY: Bantam Books, 1985, p. 15).

      • Posted By: bojack27 @ 06/10/2009 3:49:28 PM

        ???The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies,??? according to the Jordanian newspaper Filastin, (February 19, 1949).

        One refugee quoted in the Jordan newspaper, Ad Difaa (September 6, 1954), said: ???The Arab government told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.???

        ???The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade,??? said Habib Issa in the New York Lebanese paper, Al Hoda (June 8, 1951). ???He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean... Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.???

        The Arabs??? fear was naturally exacerbated by stories of real and imagined Jewish atrocities following the attack on Deir Yassin. The native population lacked leaders who could calm them; their spokesmen, such as the Arab Higher Committee, were operating from the safety of neighboring states and did more to arouse their fears than to pacify them. Local military leaders were of little or no comfort. In one instance the commander of Arab troops in Safed went to Damascus. The following day, his troops withdrew from the town. When the residents realized they were defenseless, they fled in panic. ???As Palestinian military power was swiftly and dramatically crushed, and the Haganah demonstrated almost unchallenged superiority in successive battles,??? Benny Morris noted, ???Arab morale cracked, giving way to general, blind, panic, or a ???psychosis of flight,??? as one IDF intelligence report put it??? (King Abdallah, My Memoirs Completed, (London: Longman Group, Ltd., 1978), p. xvi; Morris, p. 591).



        • Posted By: bojack27 @ 06/10/2009 3:50:13 PM

          According to Dr. Walid al-Qamhawi, a former member of the Executive Committee of the PLO, ???it was collective fear, moral disintegration and chaos in every field that exiled the Arabs of Tiberias, Haifa and dozens of towns and villages??? (Joseph Schechtman, The Refugee in the World, NY: A.S. Barnes and Co., 1963, p. 186).

          As panic spread throughout Palestine, the early trickle of refugees became a flood, numbering more than 200,000 by the time the provisional government declared the independence of the State of Israel.

          Even Jordan???s King Abdullah, writing in his memoirs, blamed Palestinian leaders for the refugee problem:

          The tragedy of the Palestinians was that most of their leaders had paralyzed them with false and unsubstantiated promises that they were not alone; that 80 million Arabs and 400 million Muslims would instantly and miraculously come to their rescue (Yehoshofat Harkabi, Arab Attitudes To Israel, Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1972, p. 364).

          ???The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live.???
          ??? Palestinian Authority (then) Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) (Falastin a-Thaura, (March 1976)

  • Posted By: Marquette70 @ 06/10/2009 1:48:19 PM

    Control of the Army keeps these guys in power. Pay the Army more then the governments and you will have peace in the middle east.

Reply

Report Abuse

Enter comments if any for reporting abuse