We and the Americans

The United States disrupted the meetings of the United Nations General Assembly in 1947 in order to gain time to pressure more countries to vote for a resolution to partition Palestine. It succeeded on November 29, 1947, after Cuba bowed to the will of American money. That resolution condemned the Palestinian to become a displaced person in exile, a number in a queue begging for food supplies, a tent pierced by winter rain from above and below, easy prey for aircraft bombs and artillery fire, and a prisoner shackled in the detention centers of Israel and the Arab rulers. America, together with the Western chorus, applauded the tears streaming from the eyes of Palestinian children, the blood pouring from the bodies of Palestinian men, and the suffering of the widows and bereaved mothers who stood firm like great, towering mountains.

America then went even further in providing every form of aid and support to Israel, while resisting all Arab and Islamic movements toward liberation in order to preserve rulers who turn their backs on the nation, debase it, and squander its energies.

America gave France the role of supporting Israel and preparing it to swallow more Arab land. Thus came 1967. The United States, together with Britain and France, took on the task of consolidating Israel and forcing the Arabs to recognize it. The Security Council issued Resolution 242, which made no mention of Palestine, either directly or indirectly. The word Palestinians did not even appear in the text of the resolution, which merely referred to resolving the problem of refugees who could have been “Jewish refugees.” In Resolution 242, the United States affirmed that the occupation of land by force was impermissible, yet it did not hesitate for a moment to provide Israel with money and weapons, the implicit meaning of which became that Arabs must not occupy land that Israel had occupied by force. This American interpretation was confirmed in 1973, when America deployed its tanks on the battlefield in support of Israel against our valiant Egyptian army.

As for the Palestinian resistance, to America it was nothing more than a group of killers and criminals who practiced terrorism. It spared no effort to eliminate or contain it. Despite the fierce resistance of our fighters, who wrote great epics and displayed great heroism, it insisted that there was no Palestinian people with a right to self-determination. It merely acknowledged that the people of Palestine, or the Palestinians, suffered from the bitterness of life and that some of their humanitarian problems had to be resolved. At the same time, it led a global campaign against what it called Palestinian terrorism, until the keffiyeh in Western countries became a symbol of violence and aggression and the Palestinian fighter a source of crime and bloodshed. It encouraged Israel to pursue the fedayeen, making the camps targets of savage American air bombardment; it struck cities in Jordan and Lebanon and persecuted Palestinians wherever they went and wherever they were found.

But America did not sever its relations, despite this barbaric and savage face, with all Palestinians. Rather, it tried to maintain some strong connections that would serve as alternatives to the sons of the bathhouse worker, blacksmith, shoemaker, and kebab seller who had become fedayeen leading the people toward liberation and freedom. It maintained ties with the traditionally influential figures who had always been friends of the ruling authority in the country, so that they could speak on behalf of the Palestinian people when the time was right. Its consulate in Jerusalem became active, as did its envoys and organizations in establishing relations with a number of Palestinians, focusing particularly on members of traditionally influential families, wealthy merchants, and intellectuals, especially those working at universities. It succeeded with some of them, making them a negotiating asset for the future.

As for the Palestine Liberation Organization, in addition to its direct attack, the United States worked in two directions: penetrating its ranks and recruiting agents for the Central Intelligence Agency, and strengthening the influence of those who became known as America’s Arabs within its ranks. Through the first direction, it succeeded in learning the organization’s thinking and plans, thereby compromising its operations and creating an atmosphere of frustration. Through the second, it succeeded in harvesting the fruits of that frustration to steer Palestinian policy toward accepting American proposals. Some Palestinian leaders were not innocent of enabling America in its efforts.

American efforts bore fruit in the second half of the 1970s, which witnessed a cautious courtship between the organization and the United States. Through it, the organization expressed its willingness to recognize Israel in exchange for the right to self-determination. During this period, the organization also witnessed the office revolution. The number of PLO offices in different countries increased, and a new class emerged in the Palestinian revolution: white-collar employees in formal suits. These people tended to increase the weight of political approaches to resolving the Palestinian issue at the expense of armed struggle and clandestine organization.

Because the office-holders were trying to emulate the diplomatic missions of states, they created an unconvincing impression of the Palestinian revolution. This impression caused the Palestinians considerable losses at the popular level, especially in the Arab and Islamic countries. Gradually, in these countries the PLO became more of an official body than a revolutionary movement engaging with the masses, and a number of activists in revolutionary movements around the world began criticizing the Palestinians and their leaders.

Debasement spread across the Palestinian scene, as I mentioned earlier. The United States told us that the American solution was the price for leaving Beirut safely. Philip Habib was believed, and the fighters who had provided the psychological foundation for steadfastness dispersed. We waited for pressure on Israel, but it never came. Yet the Egyptian president told us that the United States was sincere in its intentions and that, for it to be able to pressure Israel, terrorism had to be renounced. Arafat renounced terrorism and went beyond everything our martyrs had believed in, but the state he spoke of so often did not come. Diplomatic efforts intensified, and the dispute within the Palestinian arena deepened.

The internal front was shaken, alliances and counter-alliances emerged, and insults, accusations, and mutual accusations intensified. Unions split, federations fractured, financial corruption increased, and factionalism spread. The bleeding did not stop until the intifada erupted.

The United States acknowledged that the intifada was peaceful and expressed the extent of the injustice inflicted upon the Palestinian people, but it did not act as this acknowledgment required. It sent Israel newly manufactured tear-gas grenades, whose production dates we saw on the empty casings, and supplied it with advice on suppressing popular rebellion and demonstrations, along with the necessary techniques. The United States continued to support Israel economically, enabling it to build more settlements, expand some of them, and confiscate land, and it continued its support with weapons and equipment. Faced with the demolition of homes and the killing, arrest, and wounding of thousands, America could do no more than express some pain and sorrow.

America did not withhold advice from Israel on how to strike at and eliminate the intifada. It repeatedly told it that severe repression produced counterproductive results and that it was necessary to adopt more sophisticated methods with a psychological impact capable of reducing the intensity of the intifada.

In short, America does not want the establishment of a Palestinian state, nor does it support seeing a Palestinian identity leading the people toward independence. It only wants Israel to withdraw from some of the Arab territories occupied in 1967, provided that these territories are not under Arab sovereignty but under Arab administration with Israeli security oversight. The Arabs are not prepared to accept this proposal without Palestinian approval. Arab rulers do not want to be accused of treason as happened after 1948; rather, they want the accusation directed at the Palestinians. That is why they insist that the Palestinians sign whatever is given to them by America and Israel. But how? Through American enticement of the PLO. It began with a small concession, and then the concessions grew. With every concession, the organization lost part of its base, whether through splits, withdrawals, purges, and so on. Fighters began to withdraw, were killed, or were removed from their positions, and were replaced by people with no history of struggle. Corruption spread through the organization until it became worse than Arab institutions in terms of stealing and squandering money and administrative and moral corruption. This made it easier for non-combatant elements to expand their influence within it. Now the traditionally influential elements have become the strongest within it. These new leaders were, for the most part, supporters of the United States and were known inside and outside the country for their close relations with consuls and their insistence on pushing Palestinians toward the United States and cooperating with it to find a solution to the issue. It should be noted that these leaders had never believed in the Palestinian struggle or participated in it; they were an extension of the leadership of Haj Amin al-Husseini.

America will continue to blackmail the PLO until it collapses in substance while remaining only in form. When it becomes merely a shell, it will have fallen completely into the hands of the families that surrendered Palestine without a signature in 1948 and that will surrender it with a signature this time, with the approval of parties with a national history. This is precisely what Baker, the American secretary of state, meant when he said that his country preferred dealing with established families. He knows that family-based interests played a fundamental role in the establishment of the State of Israel through their excessive concern for their economic interests and social positions. The West and Israel have rewarded these families and worked to keep them at the forefront. This is what America is doing now by draining the PLO through fruitless negotiations revolving around trivial matters. It is betting on time to push the Palestinian people toward greater despair and frustration, making them easy prey for the conspiracies of internal forces that support American policy.

America’s Interests

America does not hesitate to demonstrate its strategic alliance with Israel and its absolute bias in its favor time and again. The Arabs can do nothing but cry out in muted voices while loudly announcing their hopes for a new American phase in its dealings with the Palestinian issue and the Middle East issue. Although some United States officials have expressed anger at Israel’s reactions to certain formal matters in attempts to seek “peace” in the region, this anger appears to have been, and remains, temporary, theatrical, or limited. For example, while President Bush was speaking about peace, he was pushing very carefully for the migration of the Falasha from Ethiopia to Israel. Hardly had their transfer ended when America appeared once again with news of its support for Israel with additional fighter aircraft, according to the American explanation, to support stability in the region. America brought us this news at the same time that the American president announced his desire to see the Middle East free of strategic weapons. The Arabs expressed their anger in the media at these actions, but continued along their path. During the era of so-called peace, America directed military and economic support to Israel, and President Clinton supplied Israel with technologically advanced aircraft at a time when the media reported that the president had grown frustrated with Israeli policy that was freezing the peace process. Yet the Arabs and Palestinians did not discuss the significance of this armament, as though they accepted that peace could only be achieved when Israel was strong.

I am not concerned with hurling insults or abuse at the United States. America, like other countries, acts according to firmly established foundations and principles that arise from its assessment of its supreme interests. It does not act impulsively, randomly, or according to moods, nor does it act simply according to the dictates of the Zionist lobby. There is no doubt that Zionists have considerable influence in the United States, but they are not the only group with significant influence. There are many groups, companies, and sectional interests that exercise influence in order to steer American domestic or foreign policy in their favor. American policy is ultimately the product of the interaction of different interests, including those of the ruling class, which implicitly recognizes that individual or group interests are not achieved by destroying the United States, but by entrenching and preserving their interests.

In other words, the United States is not merely a pawn in the hands of the Zionist movement, nor is it politically immature or economically unsophisticated. The United States has scientists and experts in every field, and they constantly study and research in order to achieve further progress. This applies to the social and political fields just as it does to other scientific fields. America knows what it wants and knows its interests, which are defined by its aspirations, hopes, and other considerations. Like other countries, it is easy for its politicians and experts to consider modifying their policies in any field if they feel that their interests have come under threat or that some danger threatens them. If we apply this to the Arab region, there is no longer any room to doubt that United States interests in the region are secure and not under threat. In practical terms, there is no contradiction between America’s support for Israel and its good relations with the vast majority of Arab regimes, foremost among them the oil-producing regimes. America exploits Arab wealth and controls the Arabs’ political will while at the same time not hesitating to provide Israel with every kind of support. This situation will continue as long as the Arab world remains as it is, and it will change only if the United States feels that its support for Israel conflicts with its influence or its policy in the Arab world.

Simply put, the Arab world cannot move a single hair on the body of the United States, which treats all Arabs and Muslims with utter contempt and disdain. It violates everything held sacred in the Arab world and tramples the dignity of the nation with ease and without the slightest hesitation, as if saying: “Is there anyone who objects?”

This was a fact that was not absent from broad sectors of the Arab world, nor from the minds of a number of intellectuals. Writings on the subject occupied extensive space over many years. Yet in the end, these people were described as hysterical, narrow-minded, and closed-minded, and some were described as terrorists. According to their critics, they were not open to the world and harmed the Arabs because they did not believe in dialogue, and they were foolish because they clung to inflexible positions devoid of rationality and wisdom.

As a result of the repeated defeats suffered by the Arabs, there were reappraisals on the Arab scene that led to the conclusion that new political battles had to be fought, characterized by openness toward the West, especially the United States, beginning dialogue with it, and making intensive efforts to explain Arab issues, foremost among them the Palestinian issue. According to the proponents of this policy, it would also be characterized by wise thinking, reason, deliberation, rejection of terrorism, and adherence to international legitimacy as represented by the United Nations.

This group explained that the secret of the Western world’s bias toward Israel lay in Zionist propaganda that portrayed Arabs in a disgusting manner. If the Arabs wished to win Western public opinion, they would have to conduct continuous propaganda and awareness campaigns among Western audiences, perhaps persuading their peoples that Arabs were peaceful like other nations and that they had just causes distorted by Zionist propaganda. Indeed, this view was heeded, and the Arabs began to focus on reaching ordinary Western people in order to change their traditional perceptions of the Arab, his customs, and his actions.

But this thinking proved ineffective with the passage of time. The West did not change as we wanted, nor did we change in a way that contradicted the West’s opinions of us. In the eyes of the West, we remained a nation of backward, defeated people who possessed plenty of money to lavish on the pleasures of life, while the West remained in our eyes that octopus biased toward Israel that would not accept our love for it and our attempts to draw closer to it.

We gave the West all kinds of concessions, provided it with facilities, handed over our wealth, fought its wars, and crushed Iraq alongside it, yet it did not move an inch from its positions and still demanded more from us.

Our experience damaged the idea of dialogue and the attempt to establish contact with enemies. Dialogue in itself is necessary and important, but in reality it loses its meaning if conducted without the foundations that make dialogue possible. We did not conduct propaganda in America and the West generally under normal circumstances, and our dialogue with them was not normal. Rather, the dialogue arose from a feeling of helplessness and inability, and so did our propaganda. We presented the West with an image of a defeated nation and tried to improve our situation through this ugly image. Mutual respect did not exist in the first place, nor did the desire for mutual understanding. The result was the failure of dialogue and the failure of all our well-intentioned efforts with the United States to pressure Israel to provide some measure of dignity to the Arab nation. The damage was not limited to the idea of dialogue; it was also a humiliating injury to the Arab nation as a whole. The proponents of this approach exhausted the nation’s moral energies, leading to weakness, submission, and abandonment of fundamental issues in favor of material comfort and private concerns. Arabs were no longer expected to prepare themselves psychologically or materially to confront their enemies; instead, they were promised that all their problems would be solved through easy, simple, and ingenious methods. Yet the problems became more complicated, and the individual lost himself amid the crowd of frustrations and the continual setbacks to his hopes, refusing to avenge himself or move a finger for the sake of his dignity. Beirut was struck while the Arab people slept deeply, and their sleep continued through the bombing of Tripoli and Baghdad and, between each station, through pain and sorrow.

The Palestinian leadership did not hesitate for long to follow the rationalist trend in the Arab nation. It joined the procession and surpassed the entire nation in making concessions, finally achieving one of its wishes: sitting with an official from the U.S. State Department in Tunis. It promised the people that the state was within reach, only for the goal to prove very far away. The people returned to licking their wounds, while frustration drained their energies and moral cohesion.

After this, it must be said that the rationalist approach needs a great deal of rationality. There are facts that this approach overlooked, and continues to overlook, as it pursues its old-new efforts. They are:

1- Israel is an integral part of the Western world and part of the system that the United States is working to establish in cooperation with the Western countries. Israel emerged from the Western mindset and derives the foundations of its existence and continuity from the West and the United States. It is of the West and for the West and cannot be separated from the West. It is the true expression of Western will in the Middle East and the spearhead of Western culture in the region.

Israel does not need much propaganda to obtain Western bias because the West is already biased toward it, its existence, and the growth of its strength and power. Counter-propaganda cannot erase the effect of something deeply rooted and entrenched, especially when that propaganda comes from people who are unwanted and not viewed with respect.

For this reason, America has no qualms about declaring that it opposes the occupation of land by force while simultaneously supplying Israel with weapons. It has no qualms about crushing Iraq while declaring at the same time that it will not pressure Israel, nor about expressing its desire to strip the Middle East of strategic weapons while simultaneously sending additional aircraft to Israel to strengthen stability in the region.

2- Arab propaganda cannot withstand the behavior of many Arabs in the West, especially the behavior of those who possess money, both from oil-producing states and from other states. Arab regimes remain unable and unwilling to organize their internal and moral affairs in a manner proportionate to their rhetorical aspirations. Consequently, beautiful words are lost amid ugly deeds.

3- America is concerned with its interests like every other country in the world, while the Arabs are eager to preserve their friendship with America even under the darkest circumstances created for them by Israel. So what would compel America to change its policy?

4- International legitimacy is the legitimacy that created Israel, expelled the Palestinian people, destroyed Iraqi factories, and killed Lebanese children. This is the prevailing legitimacy; there is no alternative to it, and there is no hope that those who established it will abandon it. International legitimacy is the legitimacy of power, which can appear anywhere and at any time. The holder of power and influence imposes whatever he wishes until he faces a real challenge that gives rise to a new legitimacy. So how can we ask those who displaced our people to retreat from what they did? There is nothing wrong with making the request. We should ask, if the proponents of rationality wish it, but in the end we will receive nothing but more humiliation.

Since that is the case, we can follow one of two paths:

1- We can continue along the path of reason and wisdom and continue the process of concessions until we reach the point acceptable to our enemy, and finally call it peace. It is clear that our enemies demand something new with every new political stage and every new concession we make. In short, they want absolute surrender, after which they can decide what humanitarian assistance to give us and how to provide it.

2- We can return to ourselves and build and accumulate the foundations of strength. We should build ourselves in a way that compels both friend and enemy to respect us. Then the United States, the Western states, and Western public opinion will hear us. Someone may say that this is a long road requiring much effort and time, and that it is better to take a shorter path in the hope that it will bear fruit. It is true that this is a long road, but the alternative is surrender to hostile powers and the collapse of the nation. We may choose between the difficult path that places the nation at the forefront and the easy path that places it beneath people’s feet.