The New Middle East: Be careful what you wish for, you might actually get it.
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By Hesham Tillawi,PhD
tillawi@currentissues.tv
www.currentissues.tv
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"What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the growing -- the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East not going back to the old one." Condoleezza Rice in a Press Conference on July 21, 2006.
Madam Secretary, one question please: Will your country claim the newborn if it happens to be the wrong color?
I remember reading about the new Middle East in a document written back in 1996 called A Clean Break:A New Strategy for Securing the Real (ACB) . It was authored by a group of policy advisors to Israel. Subsequently, nearly all members ascended to influential policy making positions within US government, media, and academic circles and were instrumental in taking the US to war against Iraq under false pretenses. Many of the ACB policies, such as toppling the government of Iraq, are now in full implementation and present new challenges to the global community. The ACB contained six pages of policy recommendations for then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The authors of this policy paper included Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser amongst others, who became known as the Neo-conservatives or Neocons for short.
The paper was an outline of what Israel should do to subjugate not just the Palestinians but also everyone else around it. It was written: "Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq � an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right." They also did not like the " Land for Peace" deal that Israel signed with the its neighbors including the Palestinians and suggested Israel should pursue a different formula based on "Peace for Peace". This means that they would create a situation on the ground that is so big, using Israel's military might in order to change the "Land for Peace" formula into a plea to "just please give us peace and take our piece", or so they thought. Therefore, they would be creating a "New Middle East" once they neutralized Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria by following the new formula for peace. They wrote about : "Efforts to salvage Israel's socialist institutions which include pursuing supranational over national sovereignty and pursuing a peace process that embraces the slogan, "New Middle East"
Aha, so this is where I heard what Rice murmured on July 12 2006. It was actually written 10 years before !!!
I believe we are watching these very painful birth pangs. I just don't think Israel and America will like, or even claim the baby, once it's delivered. Israel's attack on Lebanon has accomplished something the Lebanese have been trying to do for over a 100 years..... Unity. For 19 years, the Lebanese fought each other in one of the bloodiest conflicts witnessed in the 20th Century. The Phalanges Kataeb Party fought the people who have now belonged to the Hizbullah and Amal movements for years.
Last night, the Secretary General Karim Bakradoni of the Phalanges Party said that he supports the Government of Lebanon and the Lebanese Resistance, which is a term used solely to describe Hizbullah. We are witnessing a new Middle East, because the Phalanges is the same Party that lined itself up with the Israelis back in 1982 and was rewarded by Israel's making its Chief, the late Bashire Jumayel, the President of Lebanon. Things are different now. Hizbullah represents close to 35 percent of the population in Lebanon and is represented in all aspects of the government; the military, civil and social organizations in Lebanon. Before it�s all over, and no matter who wins this war, Hizbullah has already won, even if it looses. Its policies will end up making the next Lebanese government�s policy. This is something similar to what happened in Palestine with Hamas. Would the United States like to raise this baby? I think not.
This will strengthen relations between Syria and Lebanon to levels never seen before and, of course, will spill over to other countries in the Middle East who will put pressure on their governments to take a harder position towards Israel and the United States in particular, and the West in general. We will then see new alliances made with regional and continental powers other than the US. We already see a total sympathy with Hizbullah all over the Arab and Muslim worlds. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood offered to send 10,000 highly trained and equipped fighters to help Hizbullah in Lebanon. If the United States is having a hard time in Iraq, wait till you see Lebanon.
The United States somehow missed its bidding again when it bid on leaders such as the Arab leader who called Olmert, in the first days of fighting, and asked him to fight until Hizbullah is destroyed: Or like the Foreign Minister of an Arab country with no official relations with Israel, at least not public, cut his vacation in Tel-Aviv short because of the war and was forced three weeks later to send a private Jet to pick up his family, who was still vacationing in Tel-Aviv, because Hizbullah threatened to attack Tel-Aviv.
You want a new Middle East? You will get a New Middle East. You will have a Middle East, which sees Israel and the US as the enemy, an enemy to despise and fight, one that will one day be united in its struggle against the new invaders, and colonizers. This time around, Sykes-Picot will not be around to decide on whom rules the pieces. This time around, they will be faced with a New Middle East just like they wanted.
In Kuwait, people took to the streets; the same people who took to the streets in 1992 celebrating the liberation of their country by waving American flags and pictures of George Bush the father. However, today they were burning the American flag and chanting "death to Israel and America."
America has lost dearly in the Arab and Muslim worlds due to its policies in the Middle East that are biased towards Israel. American interests are being threatened due to this blind support for a state that cannot survive without state terrorism.
Just be careful what you wish for, you might actually get it.
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