Where Is Jerusalem in the Arab Fiery Roar?

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

About three months have now passed since Trump’s decision regarding Jerusalem, and some media figures and politicians thought fire would blaze beneath Trump, that no one would be able to stop the Arab-Islamic roar. I wrote, at the time, an article titled “The Orphaned Jerusalem,” in which I explained why Jerusalem would remain orphaned — the article was entirely academic, inspired by our experiences with Arab governments and Palestinian leaderships, but important websites and media outlets refused to publish it, on the grounds that the moment called for incitement, not discouragement. These media outlets naively busied themselves inciting an intifada to be ignited in the territory occupied in ‘67, but lost my article and wronged me, and failed to move the masses. Mass intifadas have their own particular environment, and do not move by political decision or media incitement. Resistance ignites by political decision, but mass movement has its own particular conditions and environment, difficult for anyone to predict.

The article’s opening read: “Let us not be fooled by the scale of condemnations and denunciations of the American president’s decision to recognize the city of Jerusalem as the Zionist entity’s capital — these are seasonal words repeated in our ears with every calamity that befalls the Arab homeland and touches Arab national causes. It is a wave more akin to a summer cloud, quickly dispersing. Such are our experiences with Arab rulers and the various party and organizational leaderships. We excel at lining up rhetorical words, but do not excel at translating them onto the ground. In the coming days we will hear more tearful talk about Jerusalem and its people, but we will see no flour ground from it, or we may see only the barest trace.”

I knew, from experience, that some young men would be stirred with enthusiasm and would engage in confrontations against the occupation — heroes, people of belonging and strong resolve — but they and their families would pay a heavy price without anyone paying attention to them. Some would be killed, some of their homes demolished, their relatives arrested, and they would be pursued by Zionist and Arab security apparatuses. Some financial assistance might reach them to rebuild their home, and it is quite likely this money would be seized and confiscated by the Zionists and Arabs. This is why caution is always necessary, so we do not entangle people in futile acts. Incitement is necessary amid a sweeping revolution, in order to mobilize people’s energies and raise the level of collective action and mutual cooperation among them, but conditions of calm and submission do not permit us to cast people’s sons into the furnace, only to boast of them afterward at meaningless festivals.

Now, after these months, where has Jerusalem ended up? It exists only on Fridays, at certain contact points in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Gaza remains more active than the West Bank because of the activity of the resistance factions in the Strip. The Palestinian public’s movement found no political nourishment, neither from the illegitimate Palestinian Authority leadership, nor from the Arab and Islamic states. All the predictions of Western-funded research centers and media figures who thought they were doing good were disappointed. The Palestinian leadership offered no support to the Palestinian street, and contributed to curbing the movement, especially after the martyrdom of Ahmad Jarrar.

This leadership still repeats its adherence to the so-called “peace process,” which never truly was. There were talks that never rose to the level of negotiations, and the result was a calamity upon the heads of the Palestinian people. This leadership has also been unable to remove the United States from its role in searching for a solution to the ongoing conflict, and never will be able to, because it has tied itself and the fate of the Palestinian people to Zionist and American will. Abbas tries to craft an international framework for searching for a solution, especially the two-state solution, and it seems he did not know there is already an international framework — the international Quartet, made up of Russia, America, the European Union, and the United Nations. America has entirely dominated this framework, and will dominate any other framework formed, for the reason that no state can replace the United States, which has monopolized the process of searching for a solution for decades, and because the Zionist entity will not accept any mediator other than the United States.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “أين القدس في الزمجرة النارية العربية؟” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.