For many Arab countries, averting the mortal dangers posed by ISIS and a nuclear Iran has become more important than backing the Palestinian cause.
Moshe Arens – The Arab world’s anti-Israeli front is crumbling
Moshe Arens Blog
What is generally referred to as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has, in effect, been over the years, a three-dimensional conflict involving, in addition to the Palestinians, also the Arab world and the Muslim world. Hostility to Israel has been the one unifying factor in the Arab and Muslim world, which overcame disagreements on other matters between the constituent members. Since the founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, the Palestinian issue has served as the linchpin around which hostility to Israel has been built and unity maintained.
Israel’s existence was endangered three times — in 1948, 1967, and 1973 — by the combined attacks of Arab armies, which enjoyed the support of the entire Muslim world. Although the Israel Defense Forces brilliant victory in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 has served as a deterrent against further attempts by Arab armies to attack Israel, the continued hostility of the Arab and Muslim world toward Israel has been demonstrated by their support for terrorist activities against Israel and their backing of anti-Israeli motions at international forums like the United Nations.
But there is a change in the wind as far as the Arab world is concerned. For some Arab rulers greater enemies than Israel have appeared in recent years. Iran, reaching out for nuclear weapons, Al-Qaida, the Islamic State (also known as ISIS and ISIL), Hamas, and assorted Arab terrorist groups, are aiming for the jugular of the ruling classes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt. They are a mortal danger to them, the kind of danger that Israel never constituted. Averting this danger is far more important to them than backing the Palestinian cause. From this new perspective, in the eyes of these Arab rulers Israel is beginning to look not like an enemy, but rather like a potential ally.
An Iranian nuclear bomb scares the wits out of them. They see little future for themselves in a Middle East dominated by an Iran with nuclear weapons in its arsenal. Most threatened is the Saudi ruling class who are likely to be the first in line to be toppled as Iranian influence grows. They surely must have quietly applauded Benjamin Netanyahu as he appeared in front of both Houses of the U.S. Congress in March to make the case against a nuclear armed Iran. The Israeli opposition may have criticized him, but the Saudis were surely on his side.
In the meantime, armed Islamic State terrorist gangs are knocking on Jordan’s door in the north. It is not hard to guess whose head is going to be severed first if they succeed in reaching Amman. Is it any wonder that King Abdullah II looks to Jerusalem for help if worse comes to worst. Although he repeats almost daily his support for the establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria, he knows full well that it would only be a matter of time until such a state would be taken over by Islamic State terrorists, or Hamas, and he would find enemies knocking at his door in the West as well. The establishment of such a Palestinian state on his western border is something he is not likely to welcome.
In Egypt, beset by Islamic terrorists in Sinai and in the streets of Cairo, ruler Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi has declared all out war against them. At this time that seems to take precedence over all else, including his support for the Palestinian cause. Israel’s agreement to allow Egyptian army units to enter into eastern Sinai, a deviation of the provisions of the Israel-Egyptian peace treaty of 1979, is a clear indication of the commonality of interests between Egypt, the largest Arab country, and Israel.
The Arab anti-Israel front which existed for over 60 years is in the process of disintegrating. The rulers of major Arab countries are finding shared interests with the State of Israel. Support for the establishment of a Palestinian state may continue to exist in Washington, Brussels, and at the UN, and among the Israeli opposition, but it is losing support in much of the Arab world. Israel has enemies in the Middle East but it is also gaining friends in the Middle East. These friends may prefer to meet their Israeli counterparts in back alleys, but you can be sure that these meetings are taking place with increasing frequency.
Moshe Arens entered the political arena in 1973, when he was elected to the Knesset on the Likud party list. He has since served as Foreign Minister, in the Shamir government, and three times as Defense Minister, in the governments of Begin, Shamir, and Netanyahu. He also served as Israeli Ambassador to the United States. The author of two books, Arens currently writes a column for Haaretz Newspaper and serves as Chairman of the Board of Governors of Ariel University in Samaria.
Arens was born in Kaunas, Lithuania on December 27, 1925. In 1927 his family moved to Riga, Latvia, and then in September 1939 to the U.S., settling in New York City. After graduating George Washington High School in 1943, Arens began studying mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His studies were disrupted in August 1944, however, when he enlisted in the U.S. army. He served in the Engineers Corps and was discharged in two years later with the rank of Sergeant First Class. He returned to MIT, receiving a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering in September 1947.
Upon graduation, Arens was elected national leader of the Brith Trumpeldor (Betar) Zionist youth movement, which was affiliated with the Revisionists’ Irgun Zvai Leumi. After a one-year term of office, he immigrated to Israel. Soon after that, he traveled to North Africa as an Irgun emissary, and then returned to Israel to join a group of North American Betar members who settled in Mevo Betar, a border settlement in the Judean hills.
In 1951 Arens went back to the U.S., where he earned an M.Sc., specializing in jet propulsion, from the California Institute of Technology. He worked as a jet engine development engineer at the Curtiss-Wright Corporation in New Jersey until 1957, when he returned to Israel and joined the aeronautical engineering department at the Technion in Haifa. While an associate professor, Arens was offered a position as Vice-President of Engineering at the Israel Aircraft Industries. There he managed aircraft and missile development projects, for which he was awarded the Israel Defense Prize in 1971. That same year, he established Cybernetics, a high-tech consulting company.
Arens was elected to the Knesset in 1973 and served as a member of the Finance Committee. With the Likud victory in 1977, he became chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. In 1982 he left the Knesset to serve as Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., but returned a year later, when he was appointed Defense Minister by Menachem Begin. In 1988, he became Foreign Minister under Yitzhak Shamir, then returned to the defense portfolio in 1990. He was appointed Defense Minister a third time by Benjamin Netanyahu, in 1999.
Since leaving politics Arens has been Chairman of Teuza, a venture capital firm. He is a columnist for Haaretz, and Chairman of the Board of Governors of Ariel University in Samaria. He is the author of two books: Broken Covenant, published in 1995 by Simon and Schuster and by Yediot Sfarim in Hebrew, and Flags Over the Warsaw Ghetto, published in 2011 by Gefen Publishing House; it has also been published in Hebrew and Polish.
Moshe Arens – The Arab world’s anti-Israeli front is crumbling
