Israel appears to be emerging fromArab purgatory
As someone who majored in political science during college, one of the most unexpected happenings in the world during my lifetime has been the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent reunification of Germany.
I’m not sure who had that in their crystal ball, but I’m not one of them.
(And you wonder, for instance, how that has affected the status of Austria. Soviet forces occupied a portion of that country for 10 years following World War II, and their departure in 1955 required an agreement that Austria would always pledge to remain neutral and to never merge with Germany.)
Now, another unexpected geopolitical happening — that the state of Israel, the Jewish homeland, may be emerging from Arab purgatory. That’s certainly a good thing.
There is no reason for anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism — it’s just two sides of the coin of an irrational dislike of Jews. You don’t see protest marches in this country against anti-Semitism … it’s as if that’s a longstanding prejudice that’s met with a shrug or the offensive stereotype that Jews are well off and can “deal with it.”
The darker side of that attitude, of course, is that the Jews are part of some sort of international conspiracy to undermine world order. That’s just utter rubbish.
That the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have joined Mideast neighbors Egypt, Jordan and Turkey in recognizing Israel is a major step forward. They are tiny countries, but experts point out that they would not have done so without a positive signal from Saudi Arabia.
It’s a case of “realpolitik” — Saudi Arabia may be softening its rejection of Israel in order to help offset the strength of Iran in the region. Israel, meanwhile, has halted its annexations of land that may become the state of Palestine in order to be recognized by Bahrain and the UAE.
That’s the win–win nature of diplomacy, because if you want Arab nations to recognize the state of Israel as the free land of Jews, then you should probably also support the creation of the state of Palestine — the long-awaited two-state solution.
There has long been speculation that the late Yasser Arafat, the head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, regretted not agreeing to the twostate solution worked out in 2000.
Now, perhaps there is a light at the end of that endless tunnel, because you’d think that a twostate solution would help solve some of the ongoing disorder in the Middle East. It reminds me of an optimistic proverb from a movie — “The ox is slow, but the earth is patient.”
Would Palestine use its platform as a nation state to try to work toward the elimination of Israel, another attitude long baked into the Arab worldview? That’s where the United States comes in, as an ongoing guarantor of Israeli security.
Interestingly, what was the first nation in the world to recognize the fledgling state of Israel? That was the Soviet Union, in May of 1948. Yes, there is a definite irony there.