Al-Aqsa Is Orphaned

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

News of Israeli violations against Al-Aqsa Mosque has not stopped since 1967. Arab statements against these violations continue, as do Arab complaints to the United Nations and various international organizations, and the Arabs’ insistence on what is called international legitimacy and international law has grown ever more polished and professional.

The process of Judaizing Jerusalem has continued at an escalating pace, as has the process of encroaching on Al-Aqsa Mosque with the aim of seizing it. All of this proceeds within full view and hearing of the Arab peoples, the Arab and Islamic regimes, and the various Arab and Islamic parties — nationalist, socialist, and religious alike — yet we see no action on the ground, no serious initiative to deter Israel and rescue the holy sites.

By now the Arab must surely have become certain that those who defend Al-Aqsa through condemnation and denunciation possess nothing beyond that, and he should expect nothing more than chatter in the air, meaningless and unheeded by Israel.

Israel’s Plans Are Declared

To the Arab following the news of the land occupied in 1967 and the state of the holy sites, it may seem that Israel is taking sudden steps that were never anticipated. Every time Israel violates the holy sites, the news is passed around as though Israel had adopted some new, undeclared policy, and as though the Arabs must pay close attention to fresh conspiracies. This is deception, because Israel has, since its founding, worked out plans regarding the Holy City and the religious sites, subject to periodic revision. Even before Israel’s establishment, the Zionist movement enlisted European urban-planning experts to draw up plans consistent with Jewish and Zionist political and religious visions.

Since 1967, Israel has been publishing its plans regarding the city of Jerusalem openly, hiding nothing in this regard, and its excavations and tunnels beneath Al-Aqsa Mosque have confirmed, again and again, intentions that gradually emerge before the world as practical policies working to change the reality of the Holy City and its holy sites. The problem of the Arabs and the Palestinians is that they do not read, and do not wish to read, so they always appear as though Israeli actions have taken them by surprise, and as though they will now take the necessary measures to stop Israel at its limits.

Israel’s political, cultural, and educational programs hide nothing either, given their focus on the sanctity of Jerusalem and on the centrality of the Islamic religious sites in current Jewish religious belief, and Israel never tires of repeating the slogan of the “eternal capital of Israel,” and that Israel has no heart unless Jerusalem is its capital.

It also constantly repeats that peace and love cannot prevail in the world until Solomon’s Temple is rebuilt, which, according to Jewish claims, is supposed to have stood on the very ground on which Al-Aqsa Mosque was built.

And whoever looks at Israeli cultural activities will see that Israel does not content itself with religious teachings about Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, but is always keen to organize field trips for its children and youth across the various parts of Mandatory Palestine, given how this engraves convictions into the minds of the coming generations.

The Palestinian Position

Palestinians are united in condemning and denouncing Israeli actions, and all Palestinian media outlets, across their various affiliations, devote extensive coverage to lambasting Israeli policies and present programs about the Judaizing policies Israel has carried out to date. Beyond that, the Palestinian position is not unified.

At the official Palestinian level, represented by the Palestinian Authority, Palestinians have been living, for more than twenty years now, through a phase of security coordination — a phase of cooperation with Israel and concern for its security through the activities of the Palestinian security services, the pursuit of Palestinians, the collection of resistance weapons, and the tracking of any money that might be smuggled in to support Palestinian resistance.

For this reason, Israel carries out its various violations with confidence in the Palestinian guard who pursues those engaged in resistance and prevents activities that might lead to a new intifada capable of affecting Israel’s standing globally. Yet the Palestinian Authority is never short of the traditional statements the Arab is used to hearing, such as: continued settlement construction is destroying the negotiating process; Israel’s policies are wrecking the peace process; Al-Aqsa Mosque is a red line; closing Al-Aqsa Mosque amounts to a declaration of war — and other such hollow phrases devoid of any practical substance.

How would the Palestinian Authority respond if someone asked whether Israel had crossed the red lines or not? Are there still any hopes that the negotiating process with Israel will lead to something good the Palestinians will reap? And if closing Al-Aqsa amounts to war, how exactly will the Palestinian Authority wage that war?

On the other hand, there is a Palestinian factional position that is barred from movement and activity, represented by the resistance factions, specifically Hamas and Islamic Jihad. These are factions that want to confront the Israelis, that possess the will for sacrifice and self-giving, and that are capable, should an open door present itself, of carrying out their activities with full courage and valor.

But the problem for these factions is that the Palestinian Authority stands watchfully against them, pursuing their members, their weapons, and their funds, expelling their members from their jobs, and depriving them and their children of their daily bread. For this reason, these factions have been unable to carry out organized acts of resistance over the preceding years, and their resistance has remained largely confined to individual acts carried out by devout mujahideen, driven by their religious commitments and their strong faith.

Individual action may affect the Israelis, but organized action is far more effective, and the Palestinian Authority ought to open the doors to resistance and lift its hand from the activities of Palestine’s young men and women, so that they can take up their role in defending the homeland and the holy sites.

At the popular Palestinian level, the people are agitated, feeling insulted and humiliated by the successive aggressive Israeli measures. The Palestinian people has the will to sacrifice, and remains capable of creating a historic moment, but its problem is that over the years of the Palestinian Authority it has been subjected to an assault on its national culture, and policies have been pursued that are designed to manufacture a culture of consumerism at the expense of national culture.

Moreover, the Western states concerned with the destruction of the Palestinian people, together with Israel and some Palestinians, have worked hard to manufacture private concerns for Palestinians, far removed from the general national concern, so that many people have become preoccupied with their daily bread, the search for money, and certain comforts of life. National concern has receded a great deal on the Palestinian scene, and the greatest evidence of this is the near-total absence of any reaction to Jerusalem in most Palestinian population centers following the martyrdom of the mujahid Mu’taz Hijazi.

Beyond this, the president of the Palestinian Authority constantly warns that he will not allow a new intifada to arise, and has confirmed that he worked to prevent an intifada from breaking out during the 2014 war on Gaza. This means that the Palestinian people in the West Bank is completely boxed in, barred from confronting Israeli challenges. As for the Palestinian people in Gaza, it suffers the bitterness of the siege and its inability to move beyond the Strip.

That leaves us with the Palestinian people in the land occupied in ‘48, who never withhold the sacrifices needed for Jerusalem, and who now constitute the faithful guardian of the Islamic holy sites. What is regrettable is that the freedom of movement of the Palestinian in the land occupied in ‘48 to defend his homeland and its holy sites is broader than his freedom of movement in the land occupied in ‘67, and broader than that of Palestinians in the Arab countries.

The Arab Countries

The Arab homeland is now living through a phase of Arab-Israeli alliance, even though some Arab intellectuals call it a phase of Arab complicity with Israel. My own assessment is that the complicity is old, and that relations between Israel and most Arab regimes have now developed into relations of alliance. There is Arab cooperation with Israel against Arab resistance in Gaza and southern Lebanon, there are Arab armies standing guard over Israel’s security and comfort, and there is a flood of intelligence information Arab intelligence services supply to Israel.

Netanyahu reveled, during his war on Gaza, in announcing this alliance to Israelis, an alliance he experienced as a genuine reality on the ground: the Arabs, particularly the Egyptian side, were keen during the 2014 war to fully strangle Gaza, in order to weaken its resistance and force it to submit to Israeli will.

The Arabs may go to the United Nations to complain about Israel, and they may speak of international law, but law is written by the strong and applied by the strong, while the weak carry very little weight before it. How many times have Arab regimes used the international arena to cover for their own impotence and their own unwillingness to confront Israel! For this reason, Al-Aqsa ought not to remain on tenterhooks waiting for Arab reinforcement, because it will not come.

The International Arena

If Al-Aqsa can hope for any good from anyone, it is from the Western states. The Western states, led by the United States, go along with Israel’s Judaizing policies, even though they sometimes condemn Israel’s actions or express reservations about them; they are states that provide every kind of support to Israel, are keen on its security, and work to drive the Arabs toward cooperation with it — but the Western states do not support a flagrant or reckless breach of the point of balance regarding the holy sites.

This point of balance is the point through which Israel can advance, gradually, toward control over the holy sites, smoothly and gently, without political shocks that might raise the level of tension in the region — meaning that the point of balance is not fixed but shifts slowly and gradually in Israel’s favor, much like the equilibrium point of supply and demand in a stable market.

Europeans and Americans usually pressure Israel so that its policies do not provoke the Arab and Islamic peoples, because this could accumulate popular resentment against their own regimes and threaten their future, which would in turn reflect negatively on Western interests.

The interests of the Western powers are deeply rooted in the Arab and Islamic political regimes and in the Palestinian Authority, and these regimes must not be exposed to danger if Western interests in the region are to remain stable. This is why Israel bowed to enormous Western pressure on October 30, 2014, to reopen the doors of Al-Aqsa Mosque — and it did reopen them. This means, then, that the interests of the influential Western states may serve Al-Aqsa, and may, for now, prevent its demolition or seizure.

As for the future, Israel will continue with its policies of Judaizing the West Bank and Jerusalem and seizing Al-Aqsa Mosque, and under the conditions now prevailing — Palestinian, Arab, and Islamic — it will succeed, as it has succeeded over the preceding years. But Israel is now also colliding with resistance forces that are growing stronger with time. This resistance could gain great momentum should the current Egyptian regime change its policies, or disappear from the Egyptian political scene.

Whatever happens, the future belongs to resistance, and if Palestinian resistance suffers under siege and strangulation, Lebanese resistance is in a reassuring military position, and remains capable of deterring Israel.

In any case, this small dwarf called Israel cannot remain master over this Arab giant forever. History has its own course, and the likes of Israel dominate for a passing phase, only to soon come crashing down.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الأقصى يتيم” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.