{Originally posted to the Gatestone Institute website}
The critical question of why the Middle East seems unable to achieve peace has just been rigorously considered again, this time by Michael Calvo, an international lawyer, in an important new book, The Middle East and World War III: Why No Peace? It is worth being read by all political leaders, academics, journalists, students and anyone who wants to understand why there is no peace and what may happen.
The book analyzes why the Israeli-Palestinian/Arab/Muslim conflict has not been resolved, in spite of the Oslo Accords and many years of active involvement by the European Union, individual European states, the U.S., Russia and the United Nations.
The long-term Palestinian use of terror, for instance, looked at chronologically:
“to achieve Palestinian political goals, to influence Israeli politics, to favor a given Israeli candidate for the post of Prime Minister, to compel the Israeli government to conceal more land, to prevent a final peace settlement by maintaining a state of conflict that could eventually lead to total war, to erode Israeli and American resolve and to demonstrate to Arab population that peace is not an option and that the existence of the Jews on their land cannot be recognized”.
Some of the attacks occurred just when foreign representatives landed in Israel, “to prevent the revival of the peace talks.” Mr. Jason Greenblatt should take that into consideration.
There is, according to Calvo, also a psychological and religious preparation for armed conflict with Israel, the manipulation of the media and of minds, the practical preparation of the armed conflict and its planned outbreak, as well as its control by the Palestinian leadership. The terrorists are elevated to heroes and role models. Palestinian policeman, armed individuals, adolescents and adults, sometimes a father or even a mother of young children, are ready to kill Jews by any means and even to blow themselves to pieces for their cause to reach paradise. But they were not born jihadists. They were, and are still, being incited to become jihadists.
The terrorists simply “did what the Palestinian Authority ordered them to do,” said Mahmoud Abbas.
| (Image source: Palestinian Media Watch) |
Muhammad Dahlan has said that, “Forty percent of the Martyrs in this Intifada belonged to the Palestinian security forces… and the Palestinian Authority has hidden Hamas members against Israeli counter-actions”.
In the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip and the role played by Hamas’s terrorism to increase the pressure on Israel: “Abbas has an ally in Hamas to multiply jihads”.
According to a legal analysis under International Criminal Law and the Rome Statute, to “deliberately attack and kill civilians constitute a crime against humanity.” It is also a crime of genocide, “since the intention is to deliberately destroy, in whole or in part, a religious group, since only Jews were targeted, including Jews visiting of studying in Israel.” If there is an international criminal responsibility, there is also a lack of prosecution.
The internationalization of the conflict is made clear — especially the role played by Arab and Muslim countries, including Jordan and Egypt which signed a peace treaty with Israel — to prepare the world to accept the destruction of the Jewish State.
The legal propaganda in war against Israel is analyzed. It covers many fields and how to answer. Are the territories of Judea Samaria (West Bank) occupied, disputed or liberated? To whom do they legally belong?
The jihadist aim, as convincingly described in the book, is to isolate Israel politically; to influence political leaders, public opinion, international institutions and international organizations so that on the day their planned offensive begins, no one will be there to support Israel and the Jews. The Palestinian Authority (PA), the PLO and the Arab/Muslim states will be unhampered to do what Hitler was unable to do in historic Palestine — make it Judenrein (free of Jews).
The propaganda war, to achieve this aim, warns Calvo, consists largely of: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), Israel apartheid weeks, the delegitimization, demonization and dehumanization of Israeli Jews; and the actions before UNESCO, the World Health Organization, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the UN General Assembly and Security Council.
The strategy to destroy Israel is implemented through both governments and non-governmental organizations, funded mainly by the European Union and its member states, primarily Norway and Switzerland. It includes a malignant alliance of anti-Semitic individuals, anti-Jewish Christian churches, questionable Catholic societies, radical Leftists and radical Muslims of all countries. This alliance has one aim: to discredit, damage, demonize and eventually destroy Israel.
This conflict has been considered a territorial conflict by all states and dealt with as such, even by Israel: everyone had reasonable hope that a compromise over land would bring peace. The author’s wider perspective, however, leads to the provocative conclusion that because of misguided ideology and theology, there is and will, for the medium term, be no peace in the Middle East.
At the moment, Arabs and Muslims are in a jihadist religious conflict, a theological/metaphysical conflict with Israel’s Jews, however much the West may refuse to see it. Understanding the problem must begin at its roots.
Leading experts and Pope Francis have said that the world has already entered World War III, but no world leader other than Israel’s has dared to share their analysis. Are they afraid?
If one looks at ISIS and the world through Palestinian/Arab/Muslim eyes, Jews in Israel and abroad are not their only enemies to be destroyed, he stresses. The same jihadist war is also underway against the Americans and all “infidels”: Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Hindus, Buddhists, and in a general manner all those who do not believe in the “religion of truth”, namely Islam; and against those Muslims who compromise with such so-called infidels.
The Palestinian leaders, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabis, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood, most of the Muslim states, the Iranian mullahs and government, all from whichever Islamic persuasion, share the same jihadist ideology, encapsulated in one sentence, the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood:
“Allah is our goal, the prophet is our ideal, the Qur’an is our constitution, jihad is our way, and death for the sake of Allah is our aspiration”.
This ideology is used to justify killing Jews and infidels whoever they are and wherever they are found, from New York to Mumbai, Paris, Boston, San Bernardino, Orlando, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Moscow, Berlin, Manchester and London; and as far away as China, Buenos Aires, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and the Philippines.
The dilemma of confronting Iran and its proxies, such as Hezbollah, is compounded by what may yet happen in Lebanon and Russia’s role in all this. Whatever happens, America, Europe, Israel, the Muslim states, Russia, India, China, and all other states will still face World War III from within.
Of the familiar collusion between Iran and North Korea regarding their nuclear programs, Calvo concludes: “Their endgame plan to intimidate and paralyze America is simple.” The distance from Pyongyang to Los Angeles is the same as between Tehran and New York.
Unless a forthright strategy against radical Islamic terrorism, whether by Sunni or Shia, whether from the “fertile crescent” or from the Iranian Empire, is engaged by all states and primarily by the United States, the author lays bare, World War III will soon get even worse; a war with devastating, perhaps nuclear, consequences.