With Israel unleashed, there can be no peace in the Middle East
In the 20th century, the United States sponsored two peace agreements between Israel and Arab states, and it was close to securing a third, decisive one with Syria. These agreements came after decades of successive wars: The 1956 Tripartite Aggression, the 1967 Naksa, the Octobe
In the 20th century, the United States sponsored two peace agreements between Israel and Arab states, and it was close to securing a third, decisive one with Syria.
These agreements came after decades of successive wars: The 1956 Tripartite Aggression, the 1967 Naksa, the October 1973 war, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1978, and its invasion of Beirut in 1982.
Yet in recent years, the US has abandoned pushing Israel down that path of genuine peace. Instead, it has helped Israel fight its way into hegemony over the entire region.
The result is that now that Washington needs to strike a peace deal in the region and maintain it, it cannot – because it cannot rein in the Israeli aggression it has long fanned.
Israel’s forefathers were haunted by the anxiety of pursuing a settler-colonial project within a geographic space largely populated by Arabs and dominated by Islam. As a result, they developed two paths to deal with this existential anxiety.
The first was the doctrine of force and military brutality, which was best formulated by Zeev Jabotinsky, the founder of the Irgun terrorist organisation in Palestine, in a 1923 essay titled The Iron Wall. “Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach,” he wrote in Russian.
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was also a proponent of the idea that Israel must change the Middle East by force, to secure itself.
Several decades later, Benjamin Netanyahu, then leader of the Likud party, wrote in his 1993 book,, A Place Among the Nations, that Israel needs to change the Middle East in ways that suit its security. He argued that if Israel could not preserve overwhelming military superiority, it would not survive. As prime minister, he has stuck to this doctrine, which has sown death, destruction and instability across the region.
