WORLD VIEW:THE SOUND blasts from the loudspeakers in the mosque near my office in Beirut are causing the windowpane to shudder. It is noon on Friday, and the local muezzin is leading the faithful in prayer. The mosque is full, the crowd of believers spilling over to the sidewalk in front. Today, the muezzin is more upset than usual, and he has been very upset of late.
He is admonishing Arab leaders for failing to stop the violence in Gaza, for failing to confront Israel and the United States, for failing to come to the assistance of Hamas and the Palestinians. Arab leaders are traitors to the ummah [Arab world], he tells the crowd. He quotes from the Koran to make it clear that they will burn in hell.
“You ask why they are not coming to the help of our people? Because they are corrupt; they are cowards, puppets of the imperialists. That is the reason.”
It is taking him a long time to make his point, but that is the gist of this Friday’s sermon.
In my opinion, there is at least another reason, and that is that Arab leaders, as well as large segments of their populations, are suffering from war fatigue. They want to see an end to the conflict, one way or another. If Israel is able to crack down decisively on Hamas, they reason, the road may be open for a peace agreement. Admittedly, to many others, this is nothing short of defeatism, surrender to the enemies of man and God.
But defeatism or not, there is no denying that an increasing number of Arabs want an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Those leaders being admonished by the muezzin probably believe that only a minority of diehards, particularly Hamas and Hizbullah supporters, remain as obstacles to peace.
That may be the case. But even if so, the Israeli incursion into Gaza is unlikely to change matters much. Hamas and Hizbullah are likely to remain thorns in Israel’s side for a long time, and this for at least three reasons.
The first is that come what may, Hamas will portray this last round of fighting as a victory. From his exile in Damascus, the Islamic group’s leader, Khaled Meshal, has been touting the success of his fighters’ resistance every day. Despite the human tragedy, he remains unwilling to compromise. His tone is defiant and unyielding. Almost incomprehensibly, many of his and Hizbullah’s supporters are convinced that the tide has changed. When he speaks about fighting for Palestine, he means all of Palestine, and not just land lost in 1948.
Recently on a morning political show on Hizbullah’s Al Manar TV, a respected Shia scholar told his hosts that it was about time Arabs start discussing what the Middle East will look like without Israel. “I am not saying that this is going to happen tomorrow or after tomorrow,” he said. “But there is reason to think that we will not have a Jewish state in the region in the not too distant future.”
Was it not time for scholars and politicians to study that possibility? “Obviously,” seemed to think his female co-hosts, who nodded repeatedly in agreement.
Particularly after the failure of the Israelis to end the July 2006 attack on Lebanon on their own terms, morale among Hizbullah and Hamas militants has soared. The myth of Israeli invincibility has been conclusively put to rest, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah tells TV audiences at every one of his appearances.
The second reason is the ability of Hamas and Hizbullah to secure weaponry.
Unless the Israeli incursion results in the destruction of all artisan tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, Hamas will continue to have access to armament and material needed to manufacture their rockets.
The Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis reported on January 14th that Palestinians in Gaza have recently started to manufacture a 122mm-calibre Grad version of the Katyusha that is about 30 per cent lighter than the most advanced Qassam rockets they previously used, with an improved range of 18-30km. According to the report, the Palestinians may be “on the verge of improving their range capability and placing the larger Katyusha rocket as the mainstay of their inventory in place of the Qassam, which carries a lighter explosive load and has a range of no more than 9km”.
While Israel is currently in the midst of restructuring its anti-rocket defence systems, even the more favourable assessments recognise that its options are limited and will ensure only partial results. Matters may improve after 2010 when the Jewish state begins to take delivery of its high-speed anti-rocket Iron Dome defence system, and more so after 2013 when it will start putting in place its long-range Magic Wand systems. Nevertheless, Israel’s vulnerability to rocket attacks will be diminished but not considerably removed.
The third reason is that the appeal of Islamic organisations among Palestinians, as well as other Arab militants, is likely to grow rather than diminish in the years to come. It is naïve to expect that the impoverished Palestinian and Arab populations surrounding Israel will choose to confront Israel as secular liberal democrats, when the West in all of its wisdom, wants to support, arm, and, in the case of the United States, finance a Jewish state in the Middle East, albeit dressed in the garb of modernity.
Those who want to support a religious state must be ready to fight a religious war. The muezzin in the mosque nearby has learned that lesson, and his crowd grows larger every week.
Ramez Maluf is a professor of communication at the Lebanese American University in Beirut.
Paul Gillespie is on leave