Light at the End of Revolution

The protesters in the Arab world are proving to Obama that the troubles in the Middle East are not to be pinned on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but rather on corrupt and murderous regimes.

The concussions overtaking the Arab world are barely beginning, and their future is in the vaguest uncertainty. In respect to the “revolutions” that have already begun — no one can know how they will play out, and surely, how they will end and when; there are also question marks concerning possible coups in other countries. Everything is in the laps of the gods. But from the Israeli perspective, at least two positive points are already remarkable.

The first one is publicity — political. Since the rise of the Obama administration, its key concept regarding the Middle East was this: All the woes of the Arab world could be accredited to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians; the U.S.’s supreme interest in the Middle East is to bring this conflict to its solution and end.

Until then, Washington would be unable to lead the moderate Arab camp to cope properly with Iran. Thus, construction in some East Jerusalem neighborhood turns at that moment into the most important item that American diplomacy has to deal with.

Behind this notion was the underlying assumption that the most obnoxious thing for the rulers of the Arab countries and for their peoples is the Palestinian problem. In this assumption, there was a sort of turning-a-blind-eye on the fundamental problems of the Arab world by finding a silly alibi. This way the United States avoided really dealing with Iran and consolidating an effective pro-Western Arab front.

Or Democracy, or Stability, or Israel

However, the tumult in the Arab world publicly revealed the folly of this approach, just as it exposed to the sunlight many other facts that the United States and the West (and naturally, quite a few on our side) preferred to ignore: for example, that Mubarak is a tyrant who stole the Egyptian people’s money; that there is a dictatorship in Egypt; that Libya is ruled by a crazy killer who knows how to use his money to buy governments of countries and academic institutions in Europe.

I have neither seen, nor heard, nor read of one cry of the mobs of demonstrators in the Arab world in the name of a solution for the poor Palestinians’ problem. And let there be no misunderstanding: The masses in Arab countries hate the state of Israel — perceived as the spearhead of Western culture — but they care about the Palestinians and their problems about as much as a garlic’s peel.

In an atmosphere of uncertainty and turmoil, there is a dilemma for the United States and the West: democracy or stability — that is, tyranny creating stability. There are Arab countries that might change to Middle Eastern-style democracies — such as Iraq, for instance. Nonetheless, it is clear they won’t be stable: Egypt could probably be a para-democracy, but unstable; Saudi Arabia may be stable at the moment, yet not democratic — and so on for all the Arab countries.

The only prominent exception is Israel: also democratic, also stable, also strong and also the most loyal ally of the United States.

Why Would We Negotiate with Syria Now?

If there were voices heard in Washington in recent years that Israel had become a strategic burden, reality came and proved the complete opposite: Israel is the only trustworthy and loyal strategic asset the United States has in the oil-saturated Middle East. This is therefore an opportunity to upgrade further the security relations between the countries.

Do these light spots mean that at the political level of agreements, we should be sitting idly? Of course not. Every smart plan and initiative for arrangement with the Palestinians will only be welcomed. But at this stage everything should be done out of maintaining security interests.

Currently, we are like someone standing on a cliff, when night comes and the surroundings are in darkness. One who is wise will wait for the rays of dawn. One who lacks patience and gambles will go down in the dark. In my opinion, those who are calling at this very moment for negotiations with Syria (code name for giving up in advance on the Golan Heights) belong to the second group.