October, 2002

The Muslims, the United States and Israel

Dr. Osama Al-Ghazali Harb

The confrontation between the Muslims -not Islam- and the West, and specifically the United States, has worsened since the events of 11 September 2001, and two main hypotheses have surfaced to explain this: one based on the contradiction in culture and civilisation between Islam and the West, and the other centred on political factors. The cultural interpretation is backed up in Samuel Huntington’s writings, in the words and actions of Osama bin Laden and in Zionist and Israeli pressure. According to the political interpretation, the US policy towards the Islamic world in general, and the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular, is the main reason for much of what is happening. Many observers in the Arab and Islamic world, as well as in the West, support this view. They fully realise the reality of the situation in the Arab and Islamic world and they are not restricted by personal bias, interests or ideologies.

I, without any reservation, support this second explanation, and believe that the presence of major cultural differences between the Islamic world and the West in general does not, in itself, explain the strong feelings of hostility in the Islamic world towards the West. This cultural difference is accompanied by definite political factors and influences.

From the end of the 11th century to the late 13th century, the Crusades gave rise to the first friction between Islam and the Christian West. This was followed by the rise of the Ottoman empire, which was by 1529 besiging Vienna. Europeans counterattacked, conquering Andalusia and retaking Iberia, challenging Ottoman power through their maritime excellence. With the Ottoman empire weakened, individual European powers divided it into smaller units, which they colonised. From Indonesia to Gibraltar, from Central Asia to sub-Saharan Africa, with the exception of Afghanistan and the Arab peninsula, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Russia each carved out their own colonies. From the beginning of the 20th century, the Arabs and Muslims came to view the West as dominating colonial powers which they resented.

In brief, the cultural and religious conflict between Islam and the West is not enough in itself to produce strong feelings of hostility between Muslims -and the Arabs in particular- and the Western world. This conflict is linked with other political influences and factors, such as Muslim unity under one empire that seeks invasion and expansion -such as the Ottoman empire-, and the Western powers’ colonisation of Islamic countries and the accompanying economic and technological gap -as at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries- and the Zionist project in Palestine, crystallised in the emergence of the Israeli state in the middle of the century, played an important role, the influence of which surpassed that of other factors.

The Arabs were in no doubt about the role played by the European colonialist nations – which had dominated their countries since the beginning of the 20th century – in the foundation of the Israeli state. For while these nations desired the establishment of separate entities in the region, which later became the states of the Arab Mashriq, they perceived that the state most worthy of support in Palestine was a Jewish and not an Arab state.

The British foreign minister Lord Balfour’s declaration in November 1917, in which he stated that the British government viewed favourably the establishment of a national homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, was the real beginning of the establishment of Israel. In the view of the Arabs, however, who considered it an ominous promise, it was a token of a European conspiracy aiming at the establishment of an alien state in their midst, like a dagger in their hearts.

At the same time as arrangements were being made for the establishment of an Israeli state, the Arab countries were totally absorbed in their struggle for independence before and then after the second world war. Amid their struggle, these countries saw their support for the Palestinian people as an expression of solidarity against two allying foes, colonialism and Zionism, and as an indication of the persistence of Arab nationalism.

Apart from this, the eruption of the Arab-Israeli conflict during the Cold War era included it in the context of confrontation between the East and the West. Although the Soviet Union and some of the countries of Eastern Europe were primary supporters of the establishment of Israel, the prerequisites of international competition shifted the East-West polarisation to the Arab-Israeli conflict. This shift helped crystallise the harsh stance taken by the Arab leftist forces against Israel together with the nationalist forces.

It is not strange then that the most important moments in the contemporary history of the Arab world have been related to developments in the Arab-Israeli conflict more than any other factor. The Arab world changed drastically in 1948, 1967 and 1973, especially for those countries directly bordering Israel. These years witnessed the Arab-Israeli wars, with all the accompanying psychological and emotional mobilisation, as well as enormous human and material losses.

The Jewish and Zionist powers focused their activities to secure support for Israel from the United States, just as they had previously done from Britain. Yet Britain’s traditional skill in balancing its support for the Jewish state in Palestine with the establishment of good relations with the Arab ruling elite -represented in its support for the establishment of the Arab League- was not matched by the attitude of successive US administrations, with some few exceptions.

Over almost 50 years of the Arab-Israeli conflict -including the developments of the peace process that started in 1979-, the high levels of Arab political and emotional mobilisation against Israel have only been countered with similar levels of unwavering US bias towards Israel, and the general and provocative overlooking not only of Arab governments’ demands, but also, more importantly, of the emotional feelings -of political and religious origins- of ordinary Arab people across the region.

The researcher in US policy towards the Middle East can easily perceive that the US focus has been centred on support of Israel all the way, regardless of its being right or wrong, more than on the promotion of the peace process between Israel and its neighbours. The United States has played a vital role that cannot be denied in bringing about the agreements of Camp David and the Egyptian-Israeli treaty, as well as the agreements convened with Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. Yet it did not show any real interest in introducing comprehensive projects for a real and all-encompassing peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours in a way that reflects its weight and capabilities.

In this context, the destructive impact of US policies in the Middle East – and in particular the unwavering and flagrant bias towards Israel – on the Arabs’ vision -both Muslims and Christians- of the United States is only to be expected. So why can’t the numerous US research centres and opinion-poll institutes figure out this close relationship between US policy, on one hand, and the negative attitudes of Arab public opinion against the United States, on the other? The vast majority of the ordinary citizens of the Arab world have no background in the cultural contradiction between them and the Americans and have only slight knowledge about US hegemony over the world and their countries. However, they know only too well a very simple fact; that the United States usually supports Israel against the Palestinians and the Arabs.

We can thus conclude that reaching a comprehensive, fair and final settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict is among the most important elements that will contribute to removing the feelings of hatred and enmity against the West, and the United States in particular. Such a settlement would also remove the legitimacy from the terrorist organisations that threaten everyone, in the Muslim world and the West.