Everything You Always Wanted To Know About the Middle East Conflict but Were Never Told

This collection of observations was compiled to help Jews and Arabs understand why the Middle East conflict continues to fester. The intention is to promote the realization that these two peoples are not each other’s worst enemy; a third player, the Foreign Elite (FE), is why the Middle East remains unstable.

A truly objective analysis of this subject, without the baggage Jews and Arabs have been fed via their national leaderships, reveals that the Middle East conflict would have ended decades ago had foreigners not kept it alive. The continuation of the conflict serves their interests- i.e., oil supplies, recycling petrodollars, or multi-billion dollar weapons sales. The Palestinian-Israeli “situation” is thus merely a fig leaf for the FE, allowing their other agendas can be pursued undetected.

We need to devise a solution based on the actual cause for the continuation of the conflict, and not accept solutions presented via the mainstream media.

The hatred between the two peoples doesn’t come from the hearts of Middle Eastern Arabs and Jews; it is created and stoked from abroad. Arabs and Jews must see through the propaganda and understand that this conflict is being created for them. Every time it looks like it is coming to an end, foreigners breathe new life into it by insisting that they have a “new peace initiative” which they claim will bring peace. It never does.

The FE’s intervention in the affairs of the Middle East has been a tragedy for the Arab peoples - socially, economically, and politically. Arabs and Jews of the Middle East need to admit that they are both victims of the foreigners. By working together, they can remove the cancer of foreign intervention that keeps the conflict alive.

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Chapter One

The core and essence of the Middle East conflict

For more than 75 years, western diplomats have been coming up with “peace initiatives” to solve the Arab – Israeli conflict. Yet they always fail. Why?

What keeps the Middle East conflict going? If we are going to devise a solution, we must first understand why the conflict continues to exist. To do this, we have to view the situation from the top down, rather than from the bottom up.

This is completely opposite to the way most Jews and Arabs have been conditioned to look at “the situation.” Jews focus on the damage Arab/Palestinians cause, and believe that damage to be the cause of the conflict, when it is really only a result of it. They view the conflict and its origins from the bottom up. Arabs/Palestinians concentrate on the damage Israel causes and believe this to be the cause of the conflict, when it is really only a result of it. They too relate to the situation from the bottom up.

To understand what really causes the Middle East conflict to continue, one must look at the issue from the top down.

To get a more accurate picture of what lies behind the continued existence of the conflict, let’s acknowledge these five factors which serve to perpetuate – rather than solve – the problem:

1) The vested interests of the Foreign Elite (FE): There is a “third entity” in the conflict in addition to the Israelis and the Arabs: the foreigners (in order of importance, the US, Britain, China, France, Germany). Without them, there would be no Middle East conflict because it is the foreign influence that keeps the “situation” from being resolved. Unfortunately, both Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews believe they are each other’s worst enemy – without considering the third element – the foreigners – that is the enemy of both. The thing that Arabs and Jews have most in common is this common enemy, yet the leaders on both sides (not being legitimate or independent) tell their people that the other side is their number one enemy. Hence the conflict continues.

2) Control of Middle East oil: The foreigners interfere in the Arab-Israeli conflict in order to exploit and control the vast petroleum resources in the region. If there were no oil, there would be no petrodollars to recycle; the foreigners would have no reason to dominate the region.

3) Weapons sales: If there was a worldwide ban on arms sales to the Middle East, there would be no more “radical Arab dictators” with modern arms. If the foreigners stopped selling advanced weaponry to nations of the Middle East, the conflict would end.

4) The mainstream media: If the mainstream media in the West stopped reporting on the “search for peace in the Middle East,” peace would soon be found. By keeping the region’s “unstable” image alive, the media, as the sole source of information by which people can formulate their perceptions, provide an excuse for the foreigners to interfere, and at the same time serve to convince everyone that these western nations want peace, despite the fact that they have been “seeking” it for over 50 years, in vain. The media never question the intentions or agendas of the FE. The media thus provide the glue which keeps the conflict going. Without the mainstream media constantly reporting on the conflict, there would be peace, as everyone would forget that the Middle East is “unstable” and thus in need of “stabilizing” via new “peace initiatives.”

5) Corrupt national leadership of both sides: It isn’t peace between Arabs and Jews that interests the FE, but rather the continuation of the conflict. The way they do that is by corrupting/controlling the national leaders of both sides. The reason why legitimate, popular leaders are not at the helms of countries in the Middle East is because the FE will topple any leader who doesn’t cater to their desires before the needs of their own people. If Middle East leaders are selected and deemed popular by their own people, the FE will demonize them as “radicals/extremists,” “terrorist leaders” or “enemies of peace,” and thus de-legitimize them in the world arena. How can genuine co-existence take hold if the leaders of both sides are more interested in pleasing their foreign masters than their own peoples?

Unless these five basic factors are understood, the true causes that extend the conflict will never be understood. Instead, each side will go on blaming the other – seeking to take the high moral ground and convince their own people and those from abroad that they are right, and the other side is wrong. This will lead only to more death and destruction.

The technique is called “divide and rule,” and it has been a favorite of the FE for decades.

Why Is There A Middle East Conflict?

Let's deconstruct the conflict and look at all its parameters:

1) The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is how the pro-Arab camp refers to it. It claims Israel is oppressing the Palestinians and that, as a result, the entire Middle East remains unstable, and will continue to be unstable unless the Palestinians have their own state.

2) The Arab-Israeli conflict is how Israel defines the situation. Until the Oslo process began, Israel claimed the conflict existed because: “The Arabs don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist.” Now Israel says the conflict continues because the Palestinian leaders “support terrorism.”

These conclusions are fed to the Arab and Israelis peoples so as to enable them each to take the high moral ground and focus their hatred on each other. And this in turn directs their attention away from their number one enemy: the foreigners.

By having the Arabs believe Israel is at fault for “oppressing” the Palestinians, while having Israelis believe the conflict exists because the Arabs fail to recognize the Jewish state or seek its destruction (i.e. support terrorism) the foreign interests succeed in hiding the bigger picture: what the foreigners are doing when it comes to controlling the Arab nations’ only natural resource, and how they are selling massive amount of weapons to the oil-producing regimes.

To keep up this fraud, the foreign elements must control the national leaders of both peoples, and ensure that the mainstream media don’t stray too far from the cover stories: “Israel is acting immorally against the Palestinians” or “Palestinian leaders support terrorism.”

Creating either a viable Palestinian state or peace between Arabs and Jews is not the goal of the foreigners. Whether stated publicly or not, their intention is to extend the Middle East conflict, not resolve it. Unless this basic truth is understood by Arabs and Jews, the foreign elements, via the mainstream media, will continue to manipulate the perception of both sides as to why the conflict continues.

Taking the high moral ground in the Middle East conflict

The only way the foreigners can sustain the conflict is to have each side blame the other for its continuation. In this way neither side can discover the real causes, which are the oil and arms deals made between the rich oil states and the foreign powers. One aspect of the conflict serves as convenient camouflage for the other.

To keep this fraud in place, the “moral argument” is employed to have the world focus on the “morality” of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In this way, everyone is forced to take a side. The pro-Arab side claims Israel is morally flawed, while the pro-Israel side claims the Arabs are morally flawed.

Thus any public discussion is structured in such a way that the peoples in the region and those abroad are forced to believe one side’s claim or the other. The pro-Israel version is that the Arabs want to destroy Israel and are employing terrorism to reach this goal. The pro-Arab side claims Israel’s actions against the Palestinians are immoral because they violate the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and their human rights and dignity. In short, the parameters of the debate consist of choosing sides. No other option is given. No other participant in the conflict is presented.

In spite of all the vested foreign interests at work in the region, namely oil and arms, the entire discussion of the conflict centers on one of these two positions: either you are pro-Israel or pro-Arab.

This moralizing is the way the foreigners control the debate so that the actual causes are never allowed to surface. Israel’s national leaders can moralize about how inhumane Arab suicide bombers are; Palestinian leaders can moralize about how horrible Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is. The US State Department can moralize about Israel’s human rights record. The Jews in America are morally aligned with Israel; the countries of the Third World identify with the Arabs. The Europeans are perceived to be anti-Israel. The Christian fundamentalists in the US support Israel for moral reasons. The Israeli Left takes the high moral ground when it publicly condemns its own government for its treatment of the Palestinians. The Israeli Right waves a finger at Yasser Arafat and proclaims: “Arafat is not doing enough to stop terrorism.” The Palestinians claim Sharon is not serious about peace.

“The Palestinians must learn they will never achieve anything through violence,” says one group. “The Palestinians deserve their own state,” declares another

Yet with all this “morality” flying around, nobody ever points a finger at the foreign countries or accuses them of acting immorally by selling arms to Middle East dictators and exploiting the natural resources of the region.

Instead, people around the globe are told what to believe regarding the reason for the continuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict, as if their opinions and feelings are actually relevant to what is happening on the ground.

This long-distance exercise in morality is what the media focus on when nothing much is happening in the region, to point out how important “peace in the Middle East” is for everyone. Yet the only thing about such stories that can be believed is that the continuation of the conflict is important to the media.

Why the Middle East conflict never gets solved

Everyone in the world is morally bound up with the Arab Israeli conflict. Yet can it be possible that the entire conflict is based on the lack of morality of one side or the other? Can all that has happened in the region over the past half century be the result of one people not behaving nicely toward the other? What other regional conflicts are defined in this way? What other regional conflicts continue for more than a half a century, look like they are finally being solved, and then come roaring back in the way the Middle East conflict has?

Let’s think for a moment, and ask: Do regional wars and conflicts continue for seven decades because one side isn’t acting nicely toward the other? Is the conflict’s existence merely due to the actions of each or both sides – the 5 million Jews and the 4 million Arabs – who simply don’t like each other?

Can that really be the answer?

That is certainly the way the mainstream press and the academic world present it. Oil and arms sales are never part of the explanation. How could so many newspapers and TV stations miss out on this side of the region’s affairs and focus solely on “new peace initiatives”?

One could argue, with justification, that the Israelis are not acting nicely toward the Palestinians – that they oppress them, restrict their movements, blow up their houses, etc. But that alone still doesn’t account for the continuation of the conflict. The Israelis are right when they argue that the Palestinian Authority is corrupt and the Palestinian leadership hasn’t done enough to crack down on terrorism, but that too doesn’t explain why this 75-year-old conflict is still with us.

And while it may even be true that the Arabs don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist, Israel doesn’t stop existing because of that. The refusal of the Arabs to recognize Israel’s existence is not the reason why the Middle East still festers.

So why has this conflict been going on for nearly a century?

Not only does the Middle East conflict continue to exist, it actually gets worse decade after decade. What other regional conflict actually looks like it is being solved, and then, 10 years later, returns to a state much worse than before?

What is special about the Middle East?

One unique thing about the Middle East conflict is that it is institutionalized.

Think of the annual budgets for all the organizations whose sole purpose is to do “Middle East moralizing.” How much does it cost to fund all the activist organizations, the lobby groups, the news publications, the charities, the think tanks which exist solely to cast blame on either the Israeli or Arab side?

The Middle East conflict is a “cottage industry” in the US and Europe. It isn’t that way with other regional conflicts. Why is it that way with this one?

The pro-Israel camp has its lobbies, organizations, think tanks, magazines, support groups, Internet user groups, etc. which put out one simple message: “The Arabs are wrong; we’re right. We are more morally upstanding than them.” The pro-Arab camp has its lobbies, organizations, think tanks, magazines, support groups, and Internet user groups which put out one simple message: “The Israelis are wrong; we’re right. We are more morally upstanding than them.”

Both sides are basically saying the same thing to the other side: “you’re morally deficient, you’re not acting nicely, and it is because of you that we don’t have a solution.”

What is incredible is that each side is right, and for the most part, each side’s argument is valid. Each side does do terrible things to the other, and both are morally deficient. Yet that still doesn’t account for the continued existence of the conflict.

Consider. The Arabs say: “The media in America is controlled by the Zionists and our side never gets a proper hearing,” while the pro-Israel camp says, “The media is anti-Israel.” Both claims have a basis of truth, yet they cancel each other out. The same is also true when the Palestinians claim that Israel is “denying the Palestinians a state.” The Israeli version is “The Arabs don’t recognize the Jewish state.” Two completely balanced arguments serve to keep the claims of both sides in perfect symmetry.

The media are responsible for promoting this “morality” aspect. If a politician in the US or Europe says: “I am disturbed by Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians,” that becomes a media item, even though the statement had nothing to do with what happens on the ground.

Thousands of kilometers away, in Europe and the US, the Middle East conflict has a life of its own. The obsession that the mainstream media have about anything and everything to do with the Middle East proves that the mainstream media are responsible for sustaining it. The conflict would have faded away long ago, if it weren’t for this media attention.

This is important because, before we can look for a solution to the Middle East conflict, we need to determine why it exists in the first place.

Why should we support the establishment of a Palestinian state as a way to bring peace to the region if the lack of such a state is not the reason for the conflict? While it may be desirable to the Arabs to have a viable Palestinian state, and while the Palestinians certainly deserve their own national territory, we must ask ourselves: “Does the conflict exist just because the Palestinians don’t have their own state?”

Perhaps all those on the pro-Arab side should think about what would happen if a Palestinian state is created, yet doesn’t lead to prosperity and stability? The mere existence of a Palestinian state will not solve the regional conflict. Thus perhaps the absence of a Palestinian state is not the reason why peace does not exist today.

If the foreigners were truly interested in peace, and believed the creation of a Palestinian state would serve that goal, they would have forced Israel to accept it decades ago. They didn’t, and not because Israel controls the US political process, as some Arab intellectuals believe, but because they don’t want peace in the Middle East. That is why Arafat was allowed to funnel most of the $4 billion in foreign aid the Palestinian Authority received from 1993-2000 into 17 different security forces, rather than using the money for socio-economic development.

Compared to other regional conflicts caused by wrongs committed by one side on the other, the continued existence of the Middle East situation makes no sense. By now it should have either been resolved or have petered out.

Why does this problem never get solved?

Chapter Two

Israel is not the number one enemy of the Arabs

While Israel may be perceived as a threat to the Arab world, the actual threat comes from the foreigners who for decades have been corrupting Arab leaders and exploiting their nations’ natural resources. The foreigners are the reason the Palestinians has had such a miserable 50 years. Sometimes the foreigners keep Arabs and Palestinians oppressed via Israel, sometimes they do it on their own; the end result is the same – the Arabs get screwed.

It is foolish to blame Israel for the continued existence of the conflict. Israel had no reason to want to enflame the conflict with the first intifada, or the second one. The last thing Israel wants is for the whole world to be talking about how Israel must create a state for the Palestinians. Thus Israel has no reason to ignite the conflict.

Israel doesn’t keep the Arab-Israeli conflict simmering, and thus can’t be blamed for the instability in the Middle East. While what Israel may do to the Palestinians is wrong and harmful, it is not the reason the conflict continues.

So by blaming Sharon or the Likud party, the Arabs are playing right into the hands of the foreigners. The foreigners want all Arabs to focus their anger at Israel so they won’t catch on as to how the foreigners are controlling their nations’ resources and corrupting their leaders. The Middle East conflict began long before Sharon, the Likud or the West Bank settlements came into the picture. By having the Arabs focus on Israel as the culprit, nobody will look at the foreigners and realize the truth.

If Arabs want to know who their number one enemy is, they have to go right back to the beginning, when the foreigners first started to colonize the Middle East. While the formation of Israel was part of that colonizing effort, the Jews weren’t the ones who put the deal together. The Jewish people have also been used and exploited by the foreigners, but in different ways.

If the role of the foreigners in the Middle East was exposed, the Arabs could then choose between one of the other two sides: Israel or the foreigners.

Before making that decision, all Arabs, and especially the Palestinians, should remember that from 1948-1967, Israel was responsible for huge rises in the standard of living of the Israeli Arabs, just as it was with the West Bankers and Gazans from 1967-1992. Despite all the wrongs Israel may have committed against the Palestinians, then and now, the fact remains that the Israelis were the only non-Arab population interested in raising their standard of living and quality of life.

The foreigners – with all of their aid, peace plans, initiatives, road maps and UN refugee agencies – were never able to do that. For 50 years the Palestinian refugee problem remained unsolved because the foreign powers did not want it solved. Certainly Israel would have been in favor of putting the refugees in permanent homes, and would have done so if they had been permitted to. The foreigners didn’t let Israel do that, and instead had the UN administer the needs of the refugees so that the refugee problem would remain unsolved – all in order to keep the conflict alive.

So who is the true friend of the Arabs of Palestine, and who portrays themselves as such but keep the tragedy going, year in, year out? With which religion do Arabs have more in common, Judaism or Christianity? Who is better equipped to help the Palestinians develop their economy, Israelis or the foreigners?

To solve the conflict, both Arabs and Jews must realize that they are not each other’s number one enemy, and that a third element is the reason the regional conflict continues. If we want to solve this seemingly never-ending human tragedy we must first understand where it comes from, and why it is still here. Then we can prescribe a remedy.

To get that ball rolling, the Arabs must see that Israel isn’t responsible for creating the tension and hostility in the Middle East. It isn’t Israel which is keeping radical Arab leaders in business; Israel isn’t that powerful. The foreigners are bigger and stronger than Israel. If they wanted Israel to stop all settlement activity and withdraw to the 1967 border, they would have long ago forced Israel to do that. The existence of the settlements is the foreigners’ guarantee that there will always be a reason to shake a finger at Israel.

The foreigners never get tough with Israel because solving the conflict is not their end goal. If the western countries boycotted Israel economically, broke off diplomatic relations, and cut off foreign assistance, the Israeli national leadership would do anything the foreigners demanded. This doesn't happen because the foreigners want the conflict to continue.

When Arabs accept the argument that “we hate America because of America’s support for Israel,” they are serving the foreign agenda. Arabs should hate America for what America has done to them directly – for corrupting Arab leaders, for keeping the Arab masses socially and economically backwards, for exploiting the Middle East’s natural resources, and for wasting the Arab nations’ financial resources on arms instead of regional economic development.

Jews and Arabs must realize that despite what foreign leaders say in public, the last thing they desire is peace in the Middle East. Since the first intervention by the British in the first decade of the 20^th century, the primary cause of strife is the foreign elements and their desire to control the region’s natural resources.

The Arabs are not a threat to the State of Israel

For the entire history of the Arab-Israeli conflict the Israeli public has been told two lies: that the Arabs in general – and the Palestinians in particular – are a threat to the continued existence of the Jewish state, and that the reason there is no peace in the region is because the Arabs don’t “recognize” Israel.

Why would any country call its own existence into question by insisting that its neighbors acknowledge that it exists?

What it really means is that if an Arab country does acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, it can expect something in return. So if Israeli diplomatic strategists had been smart, decades ago they would have announced that, the Israeli government doesn't acknowledge the existence of any Arab country. Then, if an Arab country decided to acknowledge Israel's existence, and asked what Israel would give it in return, Israel could say, “Israel will acknowledge your country’s existence.” Instead, Israeli leaders called their own nation’s legitimacy into question by asking the Arabs to grant it legitimacy.

Israel is, therefore Israel is, and no recognition from any country – Arab or otherwise – is needed to confirm that fact. It matters not at all if Tunisia, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Libya, Syria or Iraq fails to acknowledge Israel’s existence. In the past half century, not only has Israel survived without her existence being acknowledged by the majority of the Arab world, it has flourished.

The claim that the Arabs threaten Israel’s existence is also wrong. Even if the Arab world wanted to destroy Israel, this doesn’t mean it can. Israel has the seventh largest military infrastructure in the world, and is technologically light years ahead of the Arab world. Despite Israel’s clear military superiority, its national leadership keeps the Israeli public focused on the “Arab threat” so that the Israelis will continue to believe they are embroiled in a conflict with the whole Arab world.

To dispel the notion that the Arabs are a threat to Israel, take a close look at any Arab country. They are usually overpopulated, undereducated, economically undeveloped, and led by a dictatorship. No Arab country is able to produce its own weapons. No Arab country possesses any significant technological abilities, or has any real political or economic influence in the world.

So why should Israelis be afraid of Arab nations?

The only reason why Arab dictators are feared by the Israeli public is because the world’s media present these dictators as “radicals” and “disturbers of regional peace” when in fact their nations are helpless, powerless, poor and weak.

Why should Israel fear that Arab dictators like Saddam Hussein could destroy or seriously harm the Jewish state when we know that all the weapons and military technology Iraq has acquired is from companies in the US, Britain, France, and Germany? If Israelis were to fear for their security, they should point a finger at these countries and accuse them of trying to destroy Israel by supplying military technology and weapons to “unstable” Arab dictators.

But that isn’t what the Israeli national leadership tells its citizenry. It tells them “Arabs want to destroy Israel” rather than direct their collective anger at the western countries that approved these weapons sales. By doing so, it keeps the Israeli public convinced that the Arabs are the reason why the conflict continues.

Another falsehood presented by Israel’s leaders – particularly those on the Right – is that if a Palestinian state were created it would promote terrorism and those terrorists would threaten the security of Israel. While terrorism is a problem for Israel, it doesn’t pose a threat to her existence.

And while the Palestinian Authority definitely promoted terrorism right from the start of the Oslo Accords, the terrorism never came anywhere near destroying the Jewish state.

Since the early 1980s, Israel’s leaders have been warning that Iran is “five years away from attaining nuclear weapons.” Twenty years later, on June 5, 2003, Israel’s foreign minister declared that “Iran would have Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) by 2006.”

Why do Israeli national leaders try to scare the Israeli public into thinking the Arabs are a much bigger threat than they really are?

Oslo and beyond

One of the enigmas about the Oslo Accords is why the Israeli government agreed to allow the Palestinian Authority to maintain armed security forces, and why Israel even armed those security personnel with Israeli weapons? We were told that the Palestinian Authority needed those weapons to keep radical Palestinian groups in check. Yet from the very beginning, when Hamas began its suicide bombing in l994, the Palestinian Authority never cracked down on the organization. While the Israelis complained to all who would listen that this was happening, no foreign entity ever criticized Arafat for not stopping the rise of Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel’s leaders at the time knew full well that the result was going to be a terrorist state, yet they agreed to this because that is what the foreigners wanted from Oslo – to strengthen the Palestinian side and weaken the Israeli side so the conflict could continue. The goal of Oslo’s planners was never peace and stability; it was further bloodshed. That is why Oslo and Hamas came on the scene at the same time.

As for the reasons why the second intifada broke out, the mainstream press told us Arafat “was pissed because at Camp David in August 2000 Barak and Clinton didn’t give him enough honor and respect” and thus Arafat was “posturing.” The mainstream media also gave us another version – that because Sharon dared walk around on the Temple Mount, this “enflamed” the Palestinians.

That it could have been arranged (and thus didn’t have to happen) never enters into the debate. Nobody asks whether Arafat thought he could really win a war against Israel. No western leader criticized Arafat for reneging on an international agreement which he signed with Israel never to return to war. Instead, the Middle East conflict was once again ignited, serving the foreigners while causing more death and destruction for the people who live in the region.

Sharon plays his part by remarking after every Hamas suicide bombing attack that Arafat is to blame, even though we are told the PA can’t control Hamas. Then Bush throws the “moral card” out there and accuses Arafat of not doing enough to stop terrorism, so we are led to believe that Arafat is being morally irresponsible by initiating terrorism against Israel.

Presto. The Middle East conflict has been recharged. Israel’s high moral ground is that “Arafat is behind the terrorism” and the Arabs’ “high moral ground” is that Israel is “oppressing the Palestinians.” Both claims are true, yet neither is the reason why the conflict continues. Such a scenario – whether by design or not – keeps the “you’re wrong. No, you’re wrong” structure of the conflict in place.

Like most things that happen between Israelis and Arabs, anything the Israelis do will be held up by the Arab side as proof that “Israel isn’t serious about peace” (i.e. they are morally flawed), and by the same token, anything the Palestinians/Arabs do is held up by Israel as proof that “you see, the Arabs are not serious about peace” (i.e. they are morally deficient). This is the basic configuration of the conflict. Each side blames the other while the real culprits remain in the shadows.

Back in the early 1990s the only way to keep the Palestinian-Israeli conflict alive was to re-energize Arafat – arm his henchmen, and provide the PLO with a base of operations close to Israel. So if the Palestinian Authority supports terrorism it is with the complete knowledge and consent of Israel’s leaders. Blaming Arafat merely serves the goal of the foreigners, which is to keep the conflict from dying out and to give the Israeli public an enemy to blame.

Therefore it really makes no sense for Israelis to continue to blame the Palestinians for the conflict not being solved, as neither Arafat nor anyone else in the Palestinian Authority has any real political or economic power. They aren’t pulling any of the world’s strings, so why concentrate on whether Arafat does or does not really want to put an end to terrorism? Whatever Arafat or any other Palestinian leader does or doesn’t do will not have any impact on whether the conflict remains alive. The Palestinians/Arabs don’t have the power required to keep the Middle East conflict alive. Only foreign elements do.

The continued attempt to brainwash the Israeli public into thinking that the Arabs are a threat to Israel's security and survival is one reason why the conflict continues. If you want to have a conflict, you have to convince both sides that the other is to blame, always and forever. This is the way the Arabs and Jews have been pitted against each other.

Instead of rational explanations for why Middle East leaders do what they do, we are handed “morally-inspired” rationale. For instance, President Bush declared that Arafat had to be made “irrelevant” because, according to the US leader, he “disappointed him by not doing enough to stop terrorism.” Having taken the high moral ground, Bush then began yet another Middle East peace initiative with the Roadmap. Once again, the mainstream media failed to present the picture as anything other than a moral crusade of the President to put his weight behind the peace process.

The public was told that the American plan envisioned a Palestinian state being created by 2005 (18 months from then) without any media source presenting the alternative view that such a plan was unreasonable and unlikely to take place. Instead of presenting the public with quality information and analyses, the media served the foreign interests and the Middle East conflict kept right on rolling.

The need to corrupt Israel’s leaders

Israelis don’t hate Arabs/Palestinians any more than Arab peoples hate Israelis. It is the national leaders of both sides who tell their people to hate their neighbors. If tomorrow both peoples woke up and found their national leaders had all suffered heart attacks and died, peaceful relations would prevail.

In exchange for doing their part in keeping the Israeli public focused on not trusting the Arabs, Israeli national leaders like Sharon and Peres are kept in power, given enormous clout and reverence abroad and, if need be, plenty of money to get re-elected (after every Israeli election the winning candidate always faces a financial scandal, yet the investigations are always dropped by the Attorney General for “lack of evidence”). The two aging leaders, Sharon and Peres, keep Israeli society fixated on the Left versus Right argument as to how Israel should negotiate with the Palestinians. Peres is presented as a liberal, seeking to compromise with the Arabs, while Sharon is supposedly a staunch right-wing nationalist whose only concern is Israel’s security. The fact that both have been corrupted by foreign elements never makes it onto the pages of Haaretz, Maariv or Yediot.

If you are a leftist in Israel, you are scolded by the Right for “worrying too much what the goyim think” and being naïve about Arab intentions. If you are on the Right, you are told by the Left that “Israel must compromise for peace.” Hence the structure of the Middle East conflict allows for discussion only within these two borders. Both sides believe the Americans are the key, and the Left urges the US president to pressure Israel, while the Right is only interested in having the president “better understand Israel’s position.” Both Left and Right use the same words to describe the other’s view: “shortsighted,” “naïve” or “afraid to admit they are wrong.” Meanwhile, despite the fact that Sharon and Peres are at opposite sides of the ideological spectrum, they have no problem sitting in the same government as partners and smile every Sunday at the weekly cabinet meeting.

This exercise in creating erroneous public perceptions allows the Israeli public to focus on two simple ideologies. What this does is keep them ignorant of all other facets of the Arab-Israeli conflict – including how the foreigners interfere and corrupt both sides’ leaders.

The reason why the Israeli public has such a low opinion of Israel’s political system is because they can see that their leaders are not going to bat for the Israeli citizenry, but serving foreign interests. Like most Arab leaders, Israeli leaders are not legitimate, as they are not popular with their own people. That is why Shimon Peres is hated in his own country, yet abroad is regarded as a great elderly statesman, and why Sharon must rely on his past glory as an Israeli military hero in order to establish his credentials with the Israeli public and Jews in the Diaspora.

If you are a foreigner you don’t use money to corrupt Israeli leaders; you merely promise them that you will help them stay in power. Thus corrupt Israeli leaders such as Sharon and Peres – who would be shamed into resigning from public life if they were politicians in most other western countries – continue to control the destiny of the Jewish state. While Israelis may believe Israel to be democratic, with its leaders carrying out the will of its people, that is nothing more than a perception planted and nurtured by the Israeli media. The fact is that Israeli figures such as Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, Bibi Netanyahu, Yossi Beilin, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, etc. are much bigger heroes outside Israel than inside.

Israeli statesmen may present an image to their own people and their own party of always being concerned about Israel’s national interests, but in the end, they always wind up pushing the plan the foreigners come up with. That is why Sharon, supposedly a right-wing nationalist, went against the wishes of his entire Likud party in 2002 and went on record as supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Israeli national leaders like Sharon and Peres stick around for 40 years because they are supported by powerful elements outside the region (which is also Arafat’s secret for longevity). If left on their own, disgraced Israeli leaders like Sharon and Peres would have retired decades ago. Foreigners keep them in power, in return for them doing the foreigners’ dirty work by keeping the Israeli public focused on “confronting the Arabs.”

In short, they are useful puppets and help keep the Middle East conflict alive. Peace will never come to the region as long as legitimate and popular leaders from both the Arab and Israeli populations are kept from leading their own people.

Chapter Three

Looking at the Middle East conflict through Arab eyes

It is ironic that in the entire history of the Middle East conflict, it has always been the claim of the pro-Israel camp that “the Arabs view their history as one long conspiracy against them,” when in fact such a view is completely accurate.

Unlike Israelis, Arab intellectuals aren’t swayed by the propaganda of their own leaders. They know their leaders serve foreign interests.

So if Arab intellectuals complain of exploitation and colonialism at the hands of the foreigners, this isn’t because of some “wild conspiracy theory that all Arabs have about foreigners” but because it is the truth. Israelis would do themselves a favor if they stopped thinking their governmental system is so much more advanced than the “primitive” Arab culture, and realized that their perception of the history of the conflict is not accurate.

So if one is to dive into the history of the Arab world – leaving the Arab-Israeli conflict aside for the moment – it would be helpful to understand the Arab perception of reality. That reality is based on one simple principle: legitimate Arabs leaders are never allowed to develop or surface because unless an Arab leader does what the foreigners want them to do, they will find themselves the victim of a coup concocted by foreign elements. Or the Arab leader will be branded a “radical Arab dictator” and thus a “threat to regional security.”

For instance, Gamal Abdel Nasser was loved by his own people and the entire Arab world for standing up to the foreigners. While not democratically elected, he was not considered at all “radical” or a “threat to regional stability” – as the western nations made him out to be.

Israel’s purpose in the conflict is to play the role of the “hated enemy” that Arab national leaders can point their finger at and say to their masses: “see, that is your real enemy.” While Israeli propaganda claims these leaders do that in order to keep their people from realizing how bad their socio-economic condition is, the actual reason is that this is what the foreigners demand so that nobody will be looking at what the foreigners are doing –dominating the oil reserves and proposing multi-billion dollar arms sales. Thus the poor quality of Arab national leadership is the result of the foreigners’ need to have Arab leaders who will do what is expected of them in order to keep the conflict with Israel alive.

How do the foreigners corrupt Arab national leaders?

There have been about 35 coups and coup attempts in the Middle East in the past 50 years. Only one of them came about without Western involvement.

Any independent review of modern Middle East history reveals that except for Egypt, the boundaries of every state which emerged after the First World War were drawn by European powers. Indeed, every Arab state of the time was run by what Desmond Stewart (The Temple of Janus, p. 166) calls a “client dynasty.”

Says Middle East scholar, Dr. Mohammed Daud Mirak : “Most of the time, the elite controlling the governments of Muslim states view their survival as being parallel to the interests of the elite in the United States and her allies, and view the continuation of their hold on power in their submission to the will of the United States.” (Essay January 28, 2003)

In Richard Becker’s October 2002 article: “The Battle For Iraqi Oil: US Corporate Skullduggery Since WW1,” we learn about the real history of the foreigners’ involvement in the Arab Middle East:

“In February 1919, Sir Arthur Hirtzel, a top British colonial official, warned his associates: ‘It should be borne in mind that the Standard Oil Company is very anxious to take over Iraq.’ (Quoted in Peter Sluglett, Britain in Iraq, 1914-32, London, 1974)

Becker continues: “In 1927, major oil exploration got underway. Huge deposits were discovered in Iraq, and the Iraqi Petroleum Company was created by Anglo-Iranian (today British Petroleum), Shell and Mobil, and Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon) was set up. Within a few years it had totally monopolized Iraqi oil production.”

Baker explains that during the same period the al-Saud family, with Washington’s backing, conquered much of the neighboring Arabian Peninsula. Saudi Arabia came into being in the 1930s as a colony of the United States. The US embassy in Riyadh was located in the Armco (Arab American Oil Company) building. But the US oil companies and their government in Washington weren’t satisfied. They wanted complete control of the oil, just as they had a near monopoly on the Western hemisphere’s petroleum reserves. This meant displacing the British, who were still top dog in the region.

Says researcher Dr. John Coleman: “The mission of the great names of British Middle East intelligence, T.E.Lawrence, E.G. Browne, Arnold Toynbee, St. John Philby and Bertram Russell was to keep the Middle East backward so that its natural resources, oil, could continue to be looted.”

Rami Khouri, a syndicated columnist for The Daily Star in Beirut, offers this view of the Arab elite’s ties to foreign elements:

“We Middle Easterners (Arabs, Iranians, Turks, Israelis, Kurds, and others) have a long track record of both arranging others’ national configurations and having our own rearranged by others. The modern Middle East was largely configured by the British and French, who sought to ensure their own colonial interests; they created new countries whose fundamental assets and attributes often made little logical sense. One of the problems we suffered after our last reconfiguration by the British and the French around 1920 was that most of the Arab countries had closer relations with London and Paris than they did with each other. The scheduled flights of our national airlines went to Paris and London more frequently than they went to other Arab capitals. This indicated that political and economic ties with the former colonial powers were more important for the nascent Arab ruling political powers than relations with other Arabs.”

Khouri contends there is nothing inherently wrong with being rearranged; peoples, societies and states do it all the time, to themselves and to others.

“However, our experience in the Arab world indicates that if the people being reconfigured have a say in the process, and their new national map corresponds to their identities and aspirations, the resulting reconfigured region may prove satisfying to both its citizens and state within the global context. The British and the French did not do this around 1920, and left behind a mess of fragile, often violent, states. That episode resulted in unsatisfactory, intemperate Arab statehood in many cases – a terrible modern legacy of security states and tensions that finally exploded into political terror in the 1990s and beyond.” (Essay, February 13, 2003)

Why the foreign elite corrupts Arab leaders

If one really wants to understand how the Arabs view the west, they should read A Brutal Friendship; The West and the Arab Elite (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1997) by the well-known Arab journalist, Said Aburish.

Aburish claims there are no legitimate regimes in the Arab Middle East. The House of Saud, King Hussein of Jordan, Presidents Hosni Mubarak, Saddam Hussein, Hafez al-Assad, Yasser Arafat and the remaining minor Arab heads of state run various types of dictatorships. He claims they depend on phony claims of legitimacy while representing small special interest groups – minorities whose members owe their allegiance to them rather than to the state….

“The result is religious, tribal, army-based or hybrid ruling cliques and leaders who have one thing in common: they are opposed to the desire of the majority of the Arab people to develop legitimate governments. By affording dictatorships unqualified recognition, the foreign powers support the individual leaders, army groups, sects, clans and families who run the Middle East and determine its shape and direction. Perpetuating Western political hegemony and protecting economic interests from real or imagined threats takes precedence over considerations of legitimacy.”

Aburish believes that it isn’t Islam the West is battling, but the notion of popular political movements that represent a threat to the West’s interests. The bad image the West creates for them isn’t meant to explain them; it is meant to justify declaring war on them.

He explains: “The ruling groups in the Middle East use income from oil, and their armed forces (including the security forces), to stay in power. Because the West controls or influences the acquisition of arms… and because it manipulates the oil market through oil companies which decide where to buy, refine, distribute and use the income generated from oil, it relies on both tools to determine the policies of these countries. This is why the West, in cooperation with friendly regimes and against the wishes of the unfriendly ones, seeks to perpetuate its monopoly of both businesses. The rich Arab states were discouraged from developing their petrochemical industries, moving into refining and distribution, investing in the industries of the West or making any move toward a more equitable distribution of wealth.”

On the subject of what the oil states did with their newfound wealth, Aburish explains: “The surplus from oil was linked to the world capital market controlled by US, British and French banks. Placing the surpluses in Western banks ensured the continued use of money to fuel Western economies. There was no attempt to use the surpluses to develop the Middle East.”

Regardless of how the mainstream media ignore the role oil plays in the conflict, the fact is if the Middle East had no oil reserves, there probably never would have been a Middle East conflict for the past 75 years.

As to where this policy of the British (and later the Americans) originated, we needn’t look further than a series of meetings held in Britain starting in 1905 headed by Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. From these meetings, a High Committee was formed. It specialized in matters of colonialism, and consisted of members from the participating states, leading historians, social, economic and agricultural analysts, scholars, geologists and experts in oil and gas. The members met in London in 1907. The final decisions made were threefold:

1) Separating the Muslim lands in the East from those in the West, thus making their unification more difficult.

2) Planting a new enemy for the Muslims on their lands. This would focus their attention on the new enemy, and in turn weaken their ability to resist Western aggression.

3) Establishing an advanced base for the colonialists – at the head of them Britain – to protect their interests, implement their plans and ensure the outflow of natural resources from the region, as well as the import of their goods and products into the markets of the region.

The goal of the colonialist powers – then and now – is to keep the Arab peoples backwards by not enabling them to elect popular leaders, and to control the vast mineral wealth that the Arabs were fortune enough to possess.

While the control of oil may be the ultimate goal of the foreigners, the way to maintain their control is to inflame the Middle East and then have everyone think this strife is a result of “hatred between Arabs and Jews.” Meanwhile, the foreigners continue to dominate the region, without the Arab and Israeli publics being any the wiser.

How Britain kept Jews and Arabs from living in peace

Alternative views of the Arab-Israeli conflict are rare. We are taught to believe that Jews and Arabs hate each other, and no other view of the conflict is given. Blame for the conflict is usually fixed on one side or the other – based on a “moral claim” that one side is not acting nicely toward the other.

It is in this context that a book first published in 1938 is critical to our understanding of why the Middle East conflict was created, and to dispute the notion that Jews and Arabs in the Middle East have always hated each other.

Although little is known about the author, William Ziff’s book, The Rape of Palestine, (Argus Books, US) is the first attempt to offer an alternative view of the origins of the conflict. The book documents the difference between the overall pro-Jewish sentiments of the British political elite, who saw a strong Jewish presence in Palestine as being good for the empire, and the group of high level anti-Jewish British officials who believed that the Jews would become so powerful (if Britain let them) that they would no longer have to accede to British demands.

The latter group was entirely right. A strong Jewish presence in Palestine meant Jewish national independence, which wouldn’t serve the British masters the way the Arab puppets did. Arab tribal leaders were corruptible, and this was how those running Britain’s colonial policies could control them. They realized that controlling the Jews was not going to be so easy.

Ziff’s book documents how the British created the opposition to Zionism, and proves that until these so-called “radical Arab leaders” came into the picture, most Arab residents of Palestine wanted nothing more than to live in peace and prosperity with the Jews.

“The Moslem religious leader, the Mufti, was openly friendly. Throughout Arabia, the chiefs were for the most part distinctly pro-Zionist: and in Palestine the peasantry was delighted at every prospect of Jewish settlement near their villages. Commercial intercourse between Arab and Jew was constant and steady.” pp.13

“The Arab National Movement was hated by the huge Levantine population, who continued to regard themselves simply as Ottoman subjects, and looked to the strong, influential Zionist Organization for sympathy and assistance.”

“Hussein of the Hejaz looked to the Zionists for the financial and scientific experience which the projected Arab state would badly need. In May 1918, Dr. Chaim Weizmann and Hussein of the Hejaz met in Cairo, where the latter spoke of mutual cooperation between Jews and Arabs in Palestine. In early 19l9 a Treaty of Friendship was signed to provide for “the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab state and the coming Jewish Commonwealth of Palestine.” On March 3, 19l9, another Arab leader, Feisal, son of Sherif, wrote: “We wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.”

Ziff writes:

“With conscious design, the Administration fostered hostility between Arabs and Jews. It directly advised the amazed Arabs of Palestine and Egypt to abstain from any concessions to the Jews. It formed the Moslem-Christian Association, and used it as a weapon against the Zionists. It instructed astonished Arab young-bloods in the technique and tenets of modern nationalism, in order to resist Jewish ‘pretenses.’ And in London it contacted reliable anti-Jewish elements to form a liaison that has endured to this day. The Arabs were not only instigated and advised, but supplied with funds and their arguments ghost-written by Englishmen in high places.”

“Matters came to a head in 1920, when Feisal staged a revolt against the French in Damascus, using money and ammunition supplied by the British General Headquarters. He had been proclaimed King by a ‘Syrian Congress’ which included Palestinians, and which asserted the principle that Palestine was a part of Syria and couldn’t be cut off from it. Almost simultaneously, in order to show how impossible it was to implement the Balfour Declaration in the face of native hostility, the generals arranged a pogrom in Jerusalem.”

Ziff believed that the stage was set, charging that “the riots of April 1920 were perfectly timed.” He reveals how Arab agitators ran through the Moslem crowds gathered for the Nebi Moussa festival in Jerusalem, urging ‘death to the Jews’ and shouting that ‘the government is with us.’ Ziff discovered that all Jewish policemen had been relieved from duty in the Old City.

He says that such planned riots occurred again in April 1921 in Jerusalem. Ziff charges that the British Commandant of Police was “conveniently out of the country. The few Jews on the police force had been mysteriously taken off duty for the day. The Arab mob shouted: ‘Bolshevik! Bolshevik! The Zionists are flooding the country with Bolsheviks!’” pp. 20

The point isn’t that the British government was pro-Arab, or anti-Jewish. The point is that much of the violence and strife was contrived – and didn’t occur as a natural result of Jews and Arabs hating each other, as the mainstream media have told us for decades.

While many students of the Arab-Israeli conflict have heard of the Mufti of Jerusalem, most don't know how the Mufti became the Mufti. Ziff writes:

“Implicated in the disturbances was a political adventurer named Haj Amin al Husseini. Haj Amin was sentenced by a British court to 15 years hard labor. Conveniently allowed to escape by the police, he was a fugitive in Syria. Shortly after, the British allowed him to return to Palestine where, despite the opposition of the Moslem High Council who regarded him as a hoodlum, Haj Amin was appointed by the British High Commissioner as Grand Mufi of Jerusalem for life.” pp. 22

Regarding the Arab pogroms of 1929, Alif Beh, an Arab newspaper in Damascus, wrote: “the uprising was the result of British intrigue... the English were looking for an excuse to reject the demands of the Jewish Agency to participate in the administration of the country, and encouraged the Arabs to teach the Jews a lesson.”

Regarding Arab views toward Jewish immigration, Ziff quotes Count Carlos Sforza in his book, Europe and Europeans: “Syrians of all classes, who had been watching Palestine’s development with envious yes, were anxious to have something of the same phenomena duplicated in their country.”

This desire is written in the clamorous petition sent to the French in 1935 by the inhabitants of Lebanon, begging them to encourage Jewish immigration, as that would bring prosperity. Said the Damascus newspaper, Iissan Alkhar : “We ought to demand Jewish immigration, for through it our situation will be saved.”

Sensing that some crude agenda was toying with their collective destiny, in May 1930 the Jerusalem-based Arab newspaper Al Iqdam wrote: “We are led by a group of men who bargain us away, buying and selling us like cattle. The Arab people have not yet said their last word on the Arab-Jewish question. When this word has been said, it will not be one of hatred, but one of peace and brotherhood, as is suitable for two people who live in one country.”

During a seminar of leading Moslems and Christians of Nazareth in March 1934, a statement given to the press read: “On behalf of the majority of the property owners and consumers, we declare that we would welcome Jewish immigration, and trust the enlightened Jews with their financial commercial associations.”

Ziff is suggesting that the opposition to Jewish immigration to Palestine was not nearly as widespread as conventional wisdom and standard history books have led us to believe. By the time the Peel Commission was in full swing in 1937, Arab desires for rapprochement began appearing. From The New York Times of