The Collapse of Israel's Arab Depth

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

How much suffering I used to find in my arguments with academics, intellectuals, students, and ordinary people over the support Israel receives from many Arab regimes at various levels, and how often I felt I was talking to myself, because a feeling would grow in me that the listener thought I was exaggerating, straying from logic and scientific method.

There are those who see that Israel receives support from Arab regimes, and they have a vague idea of it, but many did not see what I was seeing, and the regimes’ media outlets manufactured veils and illusions that blinded both sight and insight.

One of my graduate students was frank with me once, telling me that my description, in the classroom several years earlier, of the collapse of Arab regimes had caused great astonishment among the students, most of whom thought the professor was indulging in wishful thinking.

The relationship between Arab regimes and the Zionist entity is revealed as these regimes collapse, just as the Shah of Iran’s relationship with this entity was revealed after his fall.

Many media outlets spoke of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s intimate relationship with Israel, and we will see in the future a flood of documents about the Mubarak regime’s relationship with it — a regime that functioned as a strategic center for American national security in the region, and as the foremost defender of Israel’s security and military interests. And we will read about the Jordanian regime’s role in striking at the ranks of the resistance and conspiring against Arab national interests, and so on.

The Strategic Dimensions of Israel’s Strength

Israel’s military and security strength rests on a number of strategic factors:

First: self-reliance. Jews, in terms of Jewish doctrine, do not trust anyone, even one who appears to be an ally at some stage. Jews consider themselves the sole people of the Lord, with no other people belonging to this Lord, according to the text of the Torah in their hands, which states: “You are my only people.” The rest of the nations and peoples are impure — mere slaves in human form, created by the Lord for only two reasons: to punish the Children of Israel with when the Children of Israel are in disobedience to the Lord, and to be delighted in through victory over these slaves when the Lord’s people are in obedience to Him. The Lord permits dealing with other peoples only through killing, expulsion, or enslavement, because they are filthy peoples who always work to seduce the Jews and lead them away from the Lord’s great commandments.

Along the same pattern, Israel trusts only itself, and its security doctrine holds that it must develop whatever weapons and equipment it needs so that it does not fall under the mercy of any arms manufacturer. For this reason, Israel worked to develop the atomic bomb and various types of missile and electronic equipment, in order to achieve independence in arming its land, sea, air, space, and air-defense forces.

Israel did not stop developing the Lavi fighter jet until the United States offered it every kind of guarantee regarding supplying it with the latest of what the American arsenal held in warplanes. There is no doubt Israel has achieved enormous accomplishments in this field, and it has the scientists, laboratories, and will that enable it to continue developing, especially in the fields of electronic weaponry.

Second: developing its economy so that it does not remain the party in the lower hand, begging here and there. Its economy has developed to the point that it has excelled in several fields, including electronics manufacturing, genetic engineering, and jewelry. It is true that Israel receives financial assistance from the United States and from Jewish associations, but this comes as an added bonus, not because it is economically incapable.

Third: armament and economic development require a foundation of knowledge and science, and Israel is always careful to pursue scientific research, and to contribute to global knowledge, not merely to benefit from this knowledge.

Fourth: Western support, especially American support for it, in all fields — security, political, military, diplomatic, economic, financial, scientific, and so on. Israel has enjoyed, and continues to enjoy, Western support to the point that it has become known as a piece of the Western world represented by Western Europe and the United States, or as though it were the pampered stepdaughter that they rush to rescue and stand with in good times and bad.

Fifth: Arab strategic depth, which is considered the most important of these dimensions for Israel, and the most dangerous for Palestinians and Arabs. Arab regimes have provided, over tens of years, the appropriate atmosphere for Arabs to remain weak before Israel, and to be dealt defeat after defeat at the hands of the Zionist military, so that the Arab public would ultimately arrive at the conclusion that there is no hope in fighting Israel, and that Arabs and Palestinians must surrender to its will, accept it, and content themselves with whatever good or harm it offers them.

It is possible for any state that possesses the will to develop a great deal in order to confront the enemy, but for it to guarantee its enemy’s cooperation with it — this is something history has never known. Manufacturing weapons, developing the economy, being careful about scientific methodology and scientific development, and insisting on self-building are not impossible tasks beyond nations’ capabilities, but what is truly miraculous is to manufacture an enemy that works as a broker against its own people, in your favor.

The Development of Israel’s Arab Depth

Israel’s Arab depth was born gradually over time, beginning with Prince Faisal bin Hussein’s signing of a document granting Jews the right to immigrate to Palestine, and with Prince Abdullah bin Hussein, who began receiving the leaders of the Zionist movement immigrating to Palestine and facilitating their work of purchasing land on both the East and West Banks.

It seems the prince was pleased with the gifts the Zionist movement lavished upon him, without comparing the price of the gifts to the price of the homeland. This development continued with the emergence of Palestinian leaderships that worked with the British Mandate or came to terms with it, curbing the revolution and the revolutionaries, and relying essentially on Britain to stop Zionist immigration and the leaking of Palestinian land to Jews. Most of these Palestinian leaderships sold land to Jews, and the documents speaking of this role continue to emerge gradually to this day.

The official Arab role was revealed in its true nature in the war of 1948, when the regimes conspired against their own armies and emerged from the war defeated. The armies of Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan achieved great accomplishments in the first round of the war, and controlled substantial parts of the land the United Nations had allocated to the Jewish state under the 1948 partition.

But the war stopped suddenly, and the regimes accepted the temporary truce, which allowed them to change the Arab field military commanders and replace them with officers carrying new military orders, and allowed the Western states to provide further military support to Israel.

And when the war broke out again, we found the Iraqi army evacuating its military positions in the Haifa and Tulkarm areas to take new positions in the Jenin area, the Jordanian army evacuating the Lydda, Ramla, and West Jerusalem areas, and the Egyptian army falling under siege because of the defective weapons Egypt’s king had sent it. Palestine was lost and Israel was established thanks to the treachery of the Arab regimes.

Abdel Nasser then emerged, erecting a fragile dam before the Arab regimes dealing with Israel, and his 1967 defeat served as an exit for the regimes from the ordeal of strict secrecy in cooperating with Israel. With Abdel Nasser’s death, Freemasonry became active, unchecked, in most Arab countries, American influence in the Arab-Islamic region increased, and political, diplomatic, and normalization defeats followed one after another.

The 1973 war was a temporary victory, or an illusory turning point, for the Arabs, because Sadat opened the doors wide to accepting Israel and cooperating with it. The chain unraveled under Sadat, and Israel began witnessing its golden age in its secret and non-secret relations with Arab regimes, including the PLO, which drew Palestinians into labyrinths of diplomacy, internal conflicts, and shifting alliances with Arab regimes.

Matters reached the point of open security cooperation with Israel, and the best evidence of this is the cooperation of regimes with Israel against Hezbollah and against Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority’s security cooperation with Israel.

The Formation of Israel’s Arab Depth

Israel’s Arab depth formed for a single reason: that most Arab regimes are not derived from the people and do not express the people’s will, and do not themselves possess free will. A number of Arab regimes are essentially tribes installed by Western colonialism and enabled on Arab land to serve its interests, and are nothing more than an administration taking orders from the West.

Another number of them cannot pay salaries at the end of the month without Western financial assistance, and another number cannot survive without Western security and military protection. Here I mention the following Arab fiefdoms: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Yemen, Morocco, the Comoros Republic, Kuwait, Djibouti, the Palestinian Authority, and formerly Tunisia and Egypt.

What remains from among these fiefdoms are the following: Syria, which stands firm and semi-besieged because of its positions; Sudan and Somalia, which are being torn apart; Libya, whose own leader is enough of a burden for it; Iraq and Mauritania, preoccupied with internal concerns. As for Lebanon, it stands firm without being free of internal divisions.

If most Arab regimes owe their existence and continuation to Western colonialism, then they can do nothing but carry out the orders Westerners hand down to them, and if any of them dares to rebel, it faces the stick of replacement or death.

America removed Habib Bourguiba once his role had ended, and brought in Ben Ali, and killed King Faisal bin Abdulaziz. As for Britain, it removed King Talal of Jordan under the pretext of madness, and brought in his son Hussein to sit atop Jordan’s fiefdom for decades.

Western colonialism has no objection to these regimes speaking of patriotism, delivering speeches against Israel, and offering financial and economic aid to their Palestinian brethren — but only to the degree that does not harm Israel, and does not negatively affect Israel’s intelligence and security activities in Arab countries.

There is no objection to summit conferences condemning Israel, as long as the Arab regimes carry out the function of defenders of Israeli security. Israeli intelligence has previously passed information to regimes about potential military coups, saving regimes from collapse. Israel has also previously defended Jordan militarily when the Syrian army entered northern Jordan during the September 1970 war.

Regime Security or Nation Security?

Since most Arab regimes exist thanks to the foreigner who is fundamentally hostile to the Arab nation, and who guards its fragmentation and plunders its wealth, there is a sharp separation between the security of the regime and the security of the nation. The security of Arab ruling regimes lies in exposing the security of the nation to danger, and the regime knows it will be overthrown if it does not do so.

It is guarded not by its own people, but by Israel and Western colonialism, and its security and interests are tied to these enemies. Its security is put at risk if it actually shows hostility toward Israel, or if it feels protective jealousy over Arab wealth, or if it pushes hard toward Arab unity, or if it wages a war that does not serve Israeli and American interests.

There is a contradiction between the security of the regime and the security of the nation, because the security of the nation requires military and security preparedness, employing money for genuine economic and scientific development, and self-reliance in food and technology, and so on. All these factors, considered pillars of the nation’s security, are not permitted, neither by Israel nor by the West, and the Arab ruler must insist on his people’s and nation’s weakness, assured that the shoes of its enemies remain upon its neck.

For this reason, the Arab ruler mobilizes his security apparatuses and tools of repression against his own people, not against his people’s enemies. The Arab cannot sleep, terrified of the corrupt police and intelligence services that are supposed to provide him with security and protection.

A Crumbling Arab Depth

Some Arab parties have managed to stand firm across the years against Western policy in the region, refusing to be a tool in Israel’s hand. Syria stands at the head of the list, and so do some resistance factions such as Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, and some elements of the Fatah movement and the General Command.

But the more important thing is that the Arab peoples have remained proud, refusing subjugation, normalization, and being ridden — they still insist on freedom and independence, and on walking the path of dignity and pride. Many leaders and regimes have worked to humble the peoples and subjugate them, but they refused, raising their great heads in Tunisia to topple a tyrant who brokered his own people, followed by the great Egyptian people, who restored breath to the chest of the Arab nation. And good is coming, God willing.

Israel’s Predicament

Israel will continue accumulating strength, but that Arab weakness which protected it, and which it wagered on, has waned, or its path to waning is not long. Israel has faced fierce Arab resistance in Lebanon and Palestinian Gaza, and appeared confused and floundering — so what will it do if Arab treachery is on its way to shrinking and disappearing? The era of Arab weakness has passed, and with it Israel’s strategic Arab depth has collapsed.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “انهيار العمق العربي لإسرائيل” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.