Do Arabs Really Want to Mortgage Their Future to the Palestinians?
As published in Newsmax
So you think the Arab world wants to give the Palestinians a state?
In September, the 22-member Arab League rejected the Palestinian request to condemn the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for its peace deal with Israel, confirming the political reality that, in the Mideast today, Palestinians are no longer the central concern.
Palestinian terrorism, their willingness to take military action against their Arab brothers and their alliance with Iran and Syria have fostered a belief among states like Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia that an independent Palestinian state would threaten the region.
With the Arab Spring, the Syrian civil war, ISIS and, most importantly, the hegemonic threat from Shiite Iran, Sunni Arabs are increasingly focused on security, stability and improving the lives of their people.
Peace and normalization with Israel are now top priorities.
The Palestinian cause is no longer useful to deflect attention from pressing domestic issues and shortcomings. Instead, Arab attitudes and policies are being shaped by long-held animosity and contempt for the corrupt Palestinian leadership whose ingratitude, rejectionism, deceit and terrorism have never been forgotten or forgiven.
There is nothing more insulting in the Arab world than being cheated, double-crossed, fooled or taken advantage of. Islam forbids such behavior. "Whoever bears arms against us is not one of us, and whoever cheats us is not one of us," according to Muhammad.
After the 1948 war against Israel, King Hussein welcomed Palestinian Arabs to Jordan and aligned with the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) armed struggle to "liberate" Israel.
The PLO used Jordan as a base for terror attacks against Israel and ultimately ran a state-within-a-state. Despite signing an agreement to respect Jordanian sovereignty, Palestinian militias imposed brutal and arbitrary discipline in the autonomous zones they controlled.
In 1970, war broke out between the Jordanian military and Palestinian commandos, costing thousands of lives on both sides.
Palestinian terror leader Yasser Arafat and his fighters fled to Lebanon where they destabilized the Lebanese government and again caused military conflict.
The Arab world remembers.
They view the Palestinian betrayal of Jordan and Lebanon as a warning that their "brothers" can’t be trusted.
In 1990, Arafat supported Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the 400,000 Palestinians there assisted in the plunder of their host country.
Kuwait had accorded this minority a high level of social, economic and political freedom, enriching Arafat and his cronies with the proceeds from an excise tax on Palestinian earnings and $65 million in annual aid to the PLO.
In return, Arafat provided vital intelligence to the invaders and lobbied against an Arab League resolution calling for action to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi control.
After its liberation, Kuwait expelled tens of thousands of Palestinians. Former Kuwaiti Minister of Information Sami Al-Nesf said during a Sept. 12, 2020 interview, "We all remember how the Gulf states [supported] the Palestinian cause. . . . But in 1990, we discovered the bitter truth that those whom we have supported . . . turned against us."
Palestinian Arabs have received billions of euros and dollars from the international community. The U.N. provides free food, education and medical care to the refugees in camps in the region.
Refugees have been known to sell the food to the locals to make a profit.
Exempt from municipal taxes, some rent their homes for higher returns than the locals receive, which causes resentment.
Several refugee camps in Lebanon were turned into high-class neighborhoods with high-rise apartment buildings. Someone profited. Local Lebanese feel cheated.
The Saudis, including Crown Prince bin-Salman, are concerned that an independent Palestinian state allied with their adversaries, Iran, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Turkey, might attempt to topple the House of Saud.
Reflecting the general mistrust of the Palestinians, two new Saudi TV drama series, "Haroun’s Mother" and "Exit 7," cast Israel as a friend and the Palestinians as the "real enemy for insulting" Saudi Arabia "day and night."
In a recent interview about Palestinian shortcomings, Saudi Prince Bandar said, "Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves."
The recent peace accords between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain do not mention the issue of a Palestinian state and offer only a generic reference to "a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that meets the legitimate needs and aspirations of both peoples."
This is a stark departure from previous agreements.
Following the peace accords signing ceremony, Bahraini activist Loay Alshareef remarked, "The Jewish people are not foreign colonialists in the Land of Israel. They are part of this land, and they are part of our region."
Imagine that!
Today, under the widely disseminated Arabic #Palestine is not my cause, Arabs accuse Palestinian Arabs of being untrustworthy and ungrateful.
An illustration showing a Palestinian mother feeding her baby using a bottle labeled, "Hatred and Treachery" sends a clear message.
On Sept. 22, the Palestinians, in a public rupture, resigned the chairmanship of the Arab League Council in protest over the League’s unwillingness to censure the UAE.
More than 70 years after the creation of the "Palestinian problem," the Arab world is fed up, finally realizing that there is no solution that will satisfy the naysaying Palestinians whose corrupt leaders claim victimhood while enriching themselves to the tune of billions in Swiss bank accounts.
If they really wanted a state, they could have had one in 1947, 2000, 2001, 2008 --- or even now.
Years ago, Morocco’s King Hassan observed, "The PLO is a cancer in the Arab body."
Many in the Arab world are simply unwilling to mortgage their futures and very survival to the Palestinians.
Knowing that those leopards will never change their spots, they’re casting their lot with the Lion of Judah instead.
