August 11, 2006
Quantum Note
The New Middle East—II
Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal
Impotent rage, helpless Arab bystanders watching death and destruction on their kith and kin on their big screens, callous and inhuman diplomatic games at the UN. That is all. That is all there is to the grotesque holocaust of a new kind being enacted in broad daylight, in full view of the entire world. Once more, might has been proven to have its own right and its own insane illogic; once again, the sheer barbarity of technological superiority has been shown to carry with it its own dictates which render all other considerations obsolete, inoperative.
No one can stop this massacre, no one can save little babes and mothers from this carnage; no one can secure passage for the fleeing old and sick. The whole world can watch the little plastic shrouds of seven-year-old Hashem, of twelve-year-old Hussein al-Mohamed, both of Qana, that is, until recently of Qana, for now they are no more of this world—their lives were shattered with precision guided bombs into pieces and now they have passed into a realm beyond fear, beyond the barbarity of made-in-USA missiles. They and 54 other residents of Qana who have been quickly forgotten by the world media after similar carnages in other villages and valleys across Lebanon proved, once more (as if more proof was necessary), that all that matters is the brute force of war planes, missiles, precision guided bombs.
The delaying tactics of the government of the United States at the UN keep working. They are designed to allow Israel as much time as it needs to execute its brutally preplanned strategy—a strategy no doubt developed in Washington DC—to carve out a new Middle East from the rubble of an old Middle East. The plan is to change ground realities, yet one more time, so that the sheer logic of a fait accompali can then dictate terms of “peace”. And the entire world is just watching the ugly show as if that corner of the Middle East where the Jewish State was carved out of an ancient land through the reconfiguration of the Middle East shortly after World War II is on a different planet.
A new Middle East, we are told, is necessary, because the old is not working. The Middle East, however, cannot be built without first destroying the old one which was already built on the ruins of an older Middle East carved out of the ancient lands of Islam by treachery, betrayals, and, of course, by brute force. The story left behind in the previous column (see Quantum Note, July 28, 2006) can be picked up from anywhere, for all strands of this most bizarre tale of folly lead to the same players, the same agenda. The British occupation of two-thirds of Lebanon in July 1941 is thus as good a start as any. This was followed by a treacherous process leading to the declaration of Lebanese independence on November 22, 1943. But what an independence it was! Under a “national pact”, confessional representation was maintained, the Christians were coerced into renouncing French protection and Muslims gave up their dream of a “Greater Syria”; the two perfidious sons of Hussein were finally able to reap the fruit of their double-crossing.
The French, however, were quickly losing ground. An uprising against its army in Syria in May 1945 provided Britain the perfect excuse to interfere. It secured truce in Syria, but only on the condition that its own army would replace the French. Within a year, the French were also forced to quit Lebanon; the last of its soldiers departed in August 1946. Now the overweening Brits were free to partition the remainder of Palestine The process was duly sanctioned by the United Nations on November 29, 1947, when it voted to establish a Jewish and an Arab state in the remainder of Palestine, with Jerusalem a neutral international city.
Almost from the beginning, the State of Israel was adopted by the Western world as its surrogate in the Middle East. But the nature of this adoption was to drastically change with the arrival of the United States on the scene. There is something really bizarre in the way the United States made its entry into the Middle East. There can be many points of departure for narrating this tale, but none is as dramatic (and fateful) as the historic meeting between the president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abdul Aziz Ibn al-Saud, abroad an American destroyer, the USS Murphy, over the waters of Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake on February 14, 1945. On that day, in five intense hours, Roosevelt and Ibn Saud established a relationship which would affect the course of events in the Middle East for decades to come.
Ibn Saud’s family, let us recall, was forced into exile in Kuwait following the conquest of his family’s small land holdings by the Rashidis. His father received a stipend from the Turkish government (60 Turkish pounds a month) and Ibn Saud and his brothers and half brothers led raids into Arabia, collecting whatever booty they could in the form of stolen camels. On the night of January 15–16,1902, he, together with a party of some sixty raiders which included seven relatives and some slaves, recaptured Riyadh. Within two years, Ibn Saud had captured almost half of Najd from the Rashidis, and by 1912 he had formed a regular army. Then came the first World War and the Brits who played a double role between Ibn Saud and his rival Sherif Hussein ibn Ali, the leader of Hijaz, In December 1915, the British entered into a treaty with Ibn Saud, making him a British protectorate in exchange for a promise to attack Ibn Rashid, who was an ally of the Ottomans. A steady supply of weapons and cash (£5,000 Sterling per month) started to flow from Britain into the hands of Ibn Saud. The British subsidies would continue until 1924, with considerable increase over time. The real turning point in the fortunes of Ibn Saud was to occur in 1925, when he captured Makkah from Sherif Hussein ibn Ali. On 10 January 1926, Ibn Saud was proclaimed King of the Hejaz in the Haram. This was also the beginning of the making of the now-old Middle East.
(To be continued)
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