The Arab World

There is no room in the Arab world to admit of the feasibility of a neighbour whose antecedents are not Arab nor Muslim sharing a mutual geography. Not even a neighbour whose heritage is as ancient as their own, and whose religion is one out of which sprang their own, in no small portion. But then, this is human nature; no matter how many disagreements exist between family members who may view one another with repugnance and anger, any outsider is greeted as an unwelcome interloper, as family members join in a common front.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora whose own country has been rent asunder by the bitterness of civil war through sectarian violence, and whose country then became a satellite of neighbours - their autonomy and singularity as a nation burdened by the schemes of Syria to spread its tentacles, social, cultural, economic, into Lebanon - manages to overlook those outrages against peace and sovereignty for the greater purpose of denouncing Israel's status in the Middle East.

Osama bin Laden has issued a call to the Arab world and the world of Islam to come to the defence of the Palestinians, to finally rid the world of a colossal nuisance that the aspirers of the Third Reich attempted and did not succeed in achieving. Those Arab governments which saw the practical aspects of finally accepting Israel in their midst, however tentatively, have no vested interest in responding to the call of al-Qaeda; that same force that would wrest power from them.

But the call resonates in the Arab street, because Israel, the Zionist Entity, and its Jewish population, are the classic and universal scapegoats, not only within the world at large, but within the world of fanatical Islam in particular. Arab leaders must keep a cautious ear to the ground, to be attuned to the rumblings of the Arab street. The Arab street which has been fed a steady diet through the auspices of their governments, demonizing and blaming Jews and Israel, to detract them from the misery of their life conditions.

"Gaza is the focus of our hearts", claims the interior minister of Kuwait. The very country which another Arab dictator felt should fall to his regime's aspirations to inherit its vast fossil fuel wealth. Conflicts with Israel, currently points out Fouad Siniora, have "rendered millions homeless and disrupted the Arab world for six decades...wasted a substantial amount of resources". Israel is held responsible for ten wars over six decades. Lebanon chose to confine their Palestinians to foetid, squalid camps out of which rose Hezbollah, another curse imposed upon Lebanon.

Who launched those wars? Which countries deprived their Jewish citizens of statehood and personal belongings, thrusting them stateless and penniless to fend for themselves, and look for a haven in Israel? But the conflicts and the financial crisis the collective Arab states had imposed upon them were an "external" imposition, from the world that chose to entitle Israel at the expense of a stateless Palestinian population.

Stateless because the two occupying Arab powers, Egypt and Jordan, had no intention of granting sovereignty to Palestinians. Stateless later as refugees because the Arab governments of one country after another, felt it expeditious to grant refugee status, but not citizenship, to Palestinian refugees who fled the Territories, largely at the behest of the invading Arab armies certain of the imminent defeat of Israel.

"Israel is violating international conventions" stated the interior minister of Kuwait. "All we are concerned with are the suffering people in Gaza. We maintain the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and uphold anything that will help them create their own state. We hope the Arab stand will be clear with regards to this issue. We have endured more than 60 years of suffering."

And why might that be? Because, perhaps, of the intransigence first of the Arab geographic community and then, when saner government heads prevailed, the naturally-occurring advent of a guerrilla movement to aspire to what the Arab world assured the Palestinians they should avail themselves of. A partitioned territory unjustly declared with half-ownership of Jews, the other of Palestinians. Rejected in perpetuity.

Neither the Arab community of nations nor those of Palestinian descent claiming to have the best interests of Palestinians at heart, and who formed various nascent governments-in-waiting ever succumbed to the determination to do the right thing for their people and bring them to a place of advantage and statehood. Instead, they sated their appetite for grievance and conflict, and siphoned off UN funds for their personal bank accounts rather than invest in working civic infrastructure.

Birthing conflict in perpetuity.