Israeli officials and military analysts are happy that the conflict in Iraq has closely resembled their 1967 Six Day War so far, more than the 1982 Lebanon fiasco. Unlike Ariel Sharon’s 4-month struggle against PLO forces holed up in Beirut, no long siege of Baghdad will apparently be necessary to root out pockets of Ba’athist regime fighters.
Still, it remains to be seen how much time it will take to bring lasting stability to Iraq after 25 years of Saddam’s brutal rule. And jihad-crazed suicide terrorists just might succeed in prodding weary coalition forces to abandon their positions before such stability can be established.
Many Israeli analysts are highly skeptical that the United States will succeed in helping to install a stable, pro-Western government in fractious Iraq. They recall Israel’s own U.S.-backed attempt to help moderate parties form such a government in Lebanon, as hostilities calmed down there in 1983. The attempts were literally blown to smithereens by Syrian and Iranian-backed Shiite terrorists, who car bombed a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in October, slaughtering 241 American servicemen inside.
Sadly, the autocratic and extremist regimes that ruled Damascus and Tehran that year are still riding quite high today. If they were able to successfully use terrorism to thwart Western-backed attempts to form a moderate regime in relatively progressive Lebanon, it is reasonable to assume they will do everything they can at present to prevent a truly democratic government from emerging in Iraq – which is located smack dab between them – or to topple it after it comes to power.
Of course, the heinous regimes in Syria and Iran will be very mindful that George Bush has said he will brook no additional significant terrorism in the world after 9-11. But they also know that, unlike Iraq, they possess serious air and ground forces that have not been gutted by U.N. sanctions and weapons inspectors over the past decade. With his professional armed forces already overstretched around the globe, they might just be willing to gamble that the tough U.S. commander in chief will blink first.
The truth is that no regional Arab country is happy with the president’s pledge to sponsor American-style participatory democracy in the mainly Muslim Middle East. The Saudis, Kuwaitis and other Gulf autocracies were thrilled to have U.S. and British forces, not to mention some well-trained Aussies, crush the threatening Iraqi strongman. But they will be less than enthused if the Westerners stick around to promote representative democracy all over the region. Ditto for the murky regimes in Yemen, Sudan, Syria, Libya, etc. Even Hosni Mubarak will twitch in fear if Bush pushes too hard for free elections in Iraq, with the hopes that entrenched regional governments like his own will take note and follow suit.
All this to say, it is just a tad too early to publish headlines like the Jerusalem Post did the day after Saddam’s statue was toppled in the center of Baghdad: “The old Middle East comes crashing down.” One crumbling dictatorship in the explosive Middle East hardly signals the broad revolution that the optimistic headline implies.
In fact, there is every reason to suspect that the victorious allied powers are preparing to replace one tyrannical regime in this tense region with another one – the state of Palestine. Yasser Arafat may have garnered a Nobel peace prize in a premature Western effort to bolster the doomed Oslo “land for peace” process, but he is nevertheless a dictator at heart, as much as his friend Saddam ever was.
Israeli officials realize this, as does President Bush and British leader Tony Blair. So why not topple the terrorist sponsoring Palestinian “president” and promote free and open elections in his fractured Palestinian Authority? No, we can’t do that here, even though Arafat followed Saddam’s example by setting up at least eight brutish Palestinian Authority security forces to help him rule his people via fear and intimidation.
Instead, an Arafat handpicked “prime minister” has just been installed by Palestinian legislators who have not faced voters in nearly eight years, while Yasser himself is ceremoniously “kicked upstairs” out of the way.
But the veteran PLO chairman is hardly out of the picture. Nor will his mafia-style power be actually curbed while he is allowed to remain anywhere near the seat of Palestinian power.
If Israel is forced to accept the Bush-Blair-backed “Road Map for Peace” under these conditions in the coming days, it will be a significant and misguided giant step backward for the troubled region. The allied victors will in effect be toppling Saddam from his vaulted pedestal, only to lift his long-time Palestinian comrade onto a nearby tower of power. Give the Palestinians a sovereign state while the Old Man is holding onto the suddenly “symbolic” position of president, and you hand another dictator a throne.
Many argue that incoming Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas will be able to somehow sit on his longtime superior. Don’t bet on it. Nor is there a whit of evidence to suggest that Abbas will be any more successful in crushing the radical Palestinian groups in his camp than his mentor was, even if Arafat disappears. Indeed, if the venerated symbol of the Palestinian struggle could not control the frenzied jihad killers, there is every reason to assume that the colorless Abbas will also fail to do so – if he even seriously tries at all.
So the new Middle East has not yet arrived, nor is it even looming distantly on the dusty horizon. The only thing that seems to be appearing fairly soon is another autocratic Arab state – supported, ironically, by the Western beacons of freedom that toppled Saddam.
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