The Policy of Grinding Water and the Fall 2007 Conference

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

America never tires of dispatching envoys, presenting initiatives, convening conferences, exchanging visits, and issuing statements, all in order to establish peace in the Arab-Islamic region — or so it claims. Between one initiative and the next there is another initiative, and after every conference there is another conference; no sooner does one American official turn his back than another appears on the horizon, eyes fixed on the region. Nor do the Europeans lag far behind; they take their share of visits, statements, and insistence on the necessity of peace, never forgetting to keep their pockets stuffed with cash — sometimes to dangle, sometimes to dispense as aid.

The international conference planned for next autumn is merely the latest fashion in the search for a solution, and like every activity before it, it will end in optimistic statements reassuring everyone that peace is near. Officials will inevitably declare that the atmosphere of the conference was constructive and purposeful, and that the various topics were discussed calmly, deeply, and with the utmost sense of responsibility. Ms. Rice will appear before us with her broad smile to say that the United States takes upon itself the achievement of peace and the rout of every force of darkness that sees no benefit for itself in light and freedom.

Grinding Water

The series of conferences and resolutions is long, yet under the table we find nothing to suggest that the conference-goers have so much as rolled up their trouser legs to dabble in the mud. Instead, in the conference halls we find ample evidence of the hours of idle chatter the assembled have spent. What is under way — these continuous, diligent activities — is nothing so much as grinding water. There is spray flying about, but we see no flour of any kind. The days turn, the wheels spin, but the load is false, and the flour remains out of reach. Forty years have passed since the occupation of 1967, and the very same scene repeats and renews itself in different shapes and colors, yet remains, at its core, one and the same.

It is clear that America and Israel are entertaining themselves, distracting the Arabs — and the Palestinians in particular — with dazzling promises that carry nothing but their own glitter. The two of them are cooking hard stones, while the Arabs sit at a distance waiting for the delicious dish; and the wait grows long. They deceive the Arabs into believing that a solution looms on the horizon, while the real solution lies in the magic of the passing days, which leads to boredom and forgetting, and to preoccupation with internal worries that leave no room to address the challenges others impose.

If the nanny finds that the pacifier quiets the child, she will not find herself under any pressure to feed him. As long as the Arabs remain content with American activities and promises, America finds itself under no pressure, in no hurry; and as long as the same thing keeps repeating, and the Arabs retain their appetite for swallowing it, America will keep offering the same bait. And if America is achieving success by grinding water, it would be political folly to try another method. The Arabs do not rebel, do not complain; they take part in arranging the conferences and sometimes even encourage holding them, eager as they are to manufacture illusion for themselves and their peoples.

The Arab Ceiling

America and Israel see the ceiling of Arab demands sinking with time, and what is demanded by the Arabs today will not be what is demanded a year from now, or the day after tomorrow. In 1967 the Arabs issued the three noes, but they did not have the patience to hold that line before accepting Security Council Resolution 242, which calls for mutual recognition among the states of the region. They insisted on no direct negotiation with Israel, yet they went, in their Arab robes, to Madrid in 1991; they said they would never recognize Israel, and then found themselves racing to recognize it. If the Arab record is one of failing to stand firm, of failing to insist on a position and defend it, of accepting today what was rejected yesterday, then why should America and Israel offer them anything at all?

The Palestinians are no better off than the Arabs; indeed, they lead the process of erosion and the lowering of the ceiling of demands. There has been a continuous decline in the Palestinian ceiling, to the point that the Palestinians have placed their daily bread in the hands of their enemies. The Palestinian leadership has gone so far as to deploy security apparatuses to hunt down those it calls “terrorists,” and to take pride in the Authority’s achievements in dismantling resistance cells and seizing explosives-manufacturing sites. Meetings with Israeli leaders have become continuous, and normalization activities have become commonplace at every cultural, social, political, and economic level. If the Palestinian ceiling has been able to sink this far, it remains capable of sinking further still.

It is clear that betting on time pays off handsomely for the Israelis and Americans, and that, historically, further such bets yield positive results. It has become entirely evident to the Israelis that what the Palestinians reject today, they will accept tomorrow, and that it is sound tactics to keep raising new ideas continuously, only to walk them back once the Palestinians have accepted them. I have observed something of this kind being practiced quite openly in the Zionist prisons. Detainees would carry out a hunger strike in protest of some particular matter, or in order to achieve certain demands. The Zionists would then punish the detainees by depriving them of certain privileges, such as the backgammon board or dominoes. At that point, attention would shift away from the principal cause that had prompted the strike, and become fixed instead on recovering the newly lost privileges. How many times did I warn against falling into such traps — yet it seems the political mentality of the Palestinian people has been arranged in precisely this failing manner.

If the situation continues to be one of retreat after retreat, then reliance on time becomes a fundamental pillar of American and Israeli policy; and if grinding water keeps the Arabs and Palestinians distracted, giving them a pretext before their own peoples to keep chasing after initiatives and conferences, then there is plenty of water to grind.

The Experience of the Experienced

[…] the Arabs — Palestinians in particular — repeat the experience of failed experiments, and invent for themselves the pretexts and justifications that dress up their conduct before their own peoples. The Arabs received many promises of solutions to numerous problems, the Palestinian cause chief among them, yet no solution ever materialized; if anything, the problems only grew more complicated. Before and during the 1991 Gulf War, the Americans told the Arabs that they would work to resolve the Palestinian cause radically once the war was over, and called for the Madrid Conference. The result was that the Arabs abandoned their collective approach and went to the conference in separate delegations, and accepted what they had rejected since 1948; and the great tragedy was that Bilad al-Sham went with two delegations, and a third split into two parts.

The American president, after the Iraq campaign of 2003, rushed to put forward initiatives toward establishing a Palestinian state by 2005. The years passed, and more will pass, and the Palestinian dreams will remain circling their scenes within the White House. Even now, there are still Palestinians who believe that America will establish a state for them, just as they once believed the butcher Sharon when he declared himself in favor of establishing a Palestinian state.

We love to be bitten from the same hole again and again, and each time we love to convince ourselves that the snake has simply vanished into thin air. We do not dig up the hole, we do not bring the tools to finish off the biting creature, we do not even bother to seal it so that no more harm comes to us from it. We fall into the same error, or the same sin, time after time, and we refuse to learn. Nor do the peoples seem any better than their rulers; they still insist that empty prayers and supplications will spur the angels into taking divine action against the enemies. Many of us think that what befalls us is a form of divine punishment, and many think we are powerless to lift this punishment, that we have no will of our own so long as it is God’s will that fights the battles.

Can an enemy possibly fear an adversary skilled in nothing but deceiving peoples and manufacturing illusions to fool himself and fool others? If Israel and America are entirely reassured of the impotence of the Arab mind and the absence of will, and of the insistence on continuing to repeat failed experiments, then there is nothing to push them to change their policy toward the Arabs and Muslims. It is true that the conferences fail, but there is no harm in holding them, so long as they buy Israel time, and grant the Arabs a fresh pretext to spread despair among their peoples.

An Incapable Leadership

Israel and America want reassurance that the Palestinian leadership enjoying their trust is strong enough to guarantee the implementation of the agreements, especially those relating to security matters. Israel has repeatedly expressed, through a number of its leaders, its lack of trust in the president of the Palestinian Authority, on the grounds that he is weak and incapable of taking decisive decisions. Consequently, there is no strong political justification for Israel to hand a security file to Abbas, who will hesitate a great deal before striking at the resistance factions. Furthermore, the Palestinian security apparatuses, which are supposed to combat what is called terrorism, have proven remarkably weak before Hamas in Gaza, with their leaderships deciding to flee before the battle even began. Israel and America spent vast sums arming, training, and equipping the security apparatuses, believing they were building an army capable of implementing the agreements with Israel, but the surprise ran contrary to their expectations.

Israel and America are now concerned with searching for a new Palestinian leadership possessing the qualities of leadership and capable of implementing what is required of it, and they are not prepared to try the already-tried, as the Arabs do. They need time to be guided to such a leadership, and there is no harm in amusing themselves with conferences until that is achieved. I do not think they will succeed, but they will try, and they will keep searching.

The Greater Concern

The Palestinian cause has receded in the eyes of America and Israel before the standing triangle of resistance [mumana’a] that troubles them a great deal. The great problem now facing the two states lies, first, in Iran, and second, in Syria and Hezbollah, and they must gain control over this new challenge before they take a single step toward resolving any problem in the Arab-Islamic region. The Palestinians do not pose a great concern compared with the armament of this triangle, which already spoils the two states’ projects and challenges their dominance over the region.

It is important for the two states to carry out sedative activities in order to justify the Arab regimes standing with them in any armed conflict that may arise in the region. The process of putting forward initiatives and holding conferences helps escalate illusion among the Arab peoples, and raises the degree of belief that America is serious about establishing a Palestinian state — and in this lies an excuse for the Arab regimes, should they decide to support Israel and America, even covertly, against the triangle of resistance. Most Arab regimes are ready to go along with measures that contain Iran and strike at Hezbollah’s military strength, because they feel the Iranian threat to the stability of Arab rule, and they are fully aware that America and Israel are, directly or indirectly, an ally, since both stand for stability and for the preservation of the Arab ruling regimes.

Expected Results

The conference will not arrive at clear, detailed, radical solutions to the outstanding issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict, but the conference-goers, should they meet, are expected to chew over previous decisions, which can be summarized as follows:

The conference-goers will affirm their love of peace and their determination to continue their efforts until the desired goal is achieved; they will attack terrorism and terrorists; and they will call on Hamas to reverse what it has done and abandon the terrorism it practices. They are also expected to affirm their commitment to establishing a Palestinian state without giving it any clear definition, and to affirm their financial support for the Palestinian Authority under Abbas’s leadership.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “سياسة طحن الماء ومؤتمر الخريف/2007” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.