Focus on Iran Overlooks Actual Palestinian History

By Raanan Geberer

Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Israeli Prime Minister David Netanyahu recently said, more or less, that Arab states should not be so hung up on the Israeli-Palestinian problem because they face a greater threat from Iran than from Israel. He also maintained that some Arab leaders are secretly hoping for a strong Israel to act as a counterweight to Iran.

I’m not saying that Iran isn’t a threat — Iran’s rulers are clearly extremists who enjoy taunting and enraging the West. The country’s rockets and missiles are a serious danger not only to Israel but to the world at large.

But by painting Israel’s Islamist enemies, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as mere puppets of Iran and supposing that Iran could pull the plug on these groups in a minute if it wanted to, Netanyahu is merely falling into an old error that has plagued the Zionist movement from its beginning.

That error is one that says that the Palestinian Arabs are mere pawns in someone else’s game and are incapable of forming an agenda of their own.

Back during the British Mandate, Zionist books, magazines and pamphlets (such as the old ones my parents still had in our home when I was growing up) intimated that there were only two reasons the Palestinian Arabs opposed Zionist settlement of the land. The first, they claimed, was that greedy Arab landowners felt that Arab peasants, influenced by the European Zionists’ progressive democratic ideas and their introduction of modern medicine and farming methods, might rebel against the landowners and want more of a say in their own affairs.

The second, they said, was that the British wanted to keep the Jews and Arabs fighting with each other so that they, the Brits, could always come out on top and defend their oil interests. The British, said the Zionist advocates, actually preferred to deal with the Arabs because they were more easily manipulated. The invasion of the new state of Israel by the British-trained Jordanian army under Glubb Pasha was viewed as an attempt by Downing Street to re-enter Palestine via the “back door.”

These arguments did have some truth to them. For example, the British did pursue a dishonest game of “divide and conquer” — in Africa, in India, in Ireland, and, yes, in Palestine. The problem was that this wasn’t the whole truth! If it were, the Jewish-Arab (or in those days, Israeli-Jordanian and Israeli-Egyptian) hostilities would have faded away shortly after the British exited the scene.

Fast-forward about 30 years, when American conservative intellectuals and pundits such as Norman Podhoretz and not-yet-president Ronald Reagan loudly said, over and over again, that Israel was the only reliable ally the U.S. had in the Mideast. These people pointed to the fact that Israel, unlike the Arab states, had a democratic internal structure and had a shared European heritage with us.

This whole way of thinking was basically based on the Cold War with the Soviet Union and its satellites. These conservative thinkers pointed to radical Middle East regimes such as Syria, Iraq and Libya as fertile breeding grounds for Soviet influence. Even moderate Arab states like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were portrayed by them as unstable regimes that could be toppled by radical revolutionary forces any second. Thus, Israel was seen merely as a strategic asset in the Cold War. The actual aspirations of Palestinian Arabs were totally ignored.

Once again, there was some truth in these arguments. Yes, the Soviets did want to “keep the pot boiling” in the Middle East (for example, the Soviets opposed the Israeli-Egyptian accords reached at Camp David) so the Arab states would be drawn even closer to the Soviet Union. But once again, this wasn’t the whole truth. If it were, the Arab-Israeli conflict would have disappeared shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

If Israel and its supporters have dismissed the Palestinian Arabs and their aspirations, saying that they are merely puppets of outside forces, they are doing themselves a disservice. I myself often disagree with the Palestinians’ agenda, especially when they claim that there are no real links between the Jewish people and their ancient holy land, or when they say that the Israelis are merely “Europeans.” But even so, the Palestinians have many legitimate grievances against Israel. To negotiate with them as equals, not as if they were spoiled, cantankerous children, is the first step toward a reconciliation between the two peoples.