Since the creation of Israel, animosities between Israel and Arab neighbours have resulted into several conventional wars and many ongoing acts of terrorism and violence in this region.
Roots of the animosities are not on the shoulder of one or another side, but both and the weakness of the UN which could not effectively bring peace in the region.
In the case of Israel, since its existence in 1948, whoever governs in Israel, the policy is more or less influenced by Zionist ambitions. Zionism propagates the idea that the whole region is the sacred homeland of Jews, where allegedly the early Jewish nation originated over 3,200 years ago. Zionism is a fundamentalist ideology in the region. It goes so far that it claims the entire Palestine. It violates the UN mandate of 1947 dividing Palestine into two independent states. Zionism explicitly ignores the rights of many vibrant communities who have been living there during the last 3000 years.
The counter-pole to Zionism is Islamism which grew up in the region after the advent of the IRI. Islamists dream of destruction of Israel as expressed by president Ahmadinejad. Their goal is to create a God’s state in its place. They regard the territory of Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank as an inalienable “Islamic waghf” (Islamic assets), which should not be governed by non-Muslims.
The two Islamist militant movements fight to push back Israel from their occupied territories, but at the same time sow seeds of Islamism in these territories with the hope to pick their fruit. They do not intend to free their territories for the sake of freedom and prosperity of people but to impose the yoke of a God’s state on them. The God’s state dreamed by Hamas is similar to the IRI which is now largely rejected and abhorred by a growing majority of Iranians.
Despite that the Islamic revolution of Iran failed, the Islamic radicalism of which it was a projection, continues to be an aggressive ideology and imposes problems for the entire region. What now bothers all freedom loving people is the future of this region which is widely overshadowed by the plague of Islamism. In other words, not only Israeli occupation, but also a take-over of Islamists in Palestine is a serious alarm for Palestine.
The international community must help Palestine to attend its deserved rights of independence, while rejecting any God’s state in the region. The plague of Islamism in Palestine was reborn with Hamas, founded in 1987 in Gaza by late Shaikh Ahmad Jassin and started its existence with its jihadi attacks on both military and civil targets in Israel.
Though Hamas is a Sunni organisation, however, a protégé of the IRI; it follows a strict charter which is not different from IRI’s official policy towards Israel — the State of Israel must be wiped off the region and replaced with an Islamic state. Hamas rejects a non-Islamic state, even represented by the majority of people, in Palestine.
Hamas, like all Islamists, opposes to any peace process with Israel; it regards such a process a “betrayal of God’s will”. This is its fundamental difference with the PLO which in 1988 recognised Israel’s sovereignty, Hamas’s last success in the Palestinian elections is rather a related reaction to the deep frustration of Palestinians who were disappointed from the West. This frustration is characterises by the continued postponement in the resolution of Palestinian conflicts, US foreign policies in their absolute support for Israel in its occupation of “Islamic” territories.
Islamists, wherever they are, guided or inspired by the IRI, stage the question of state at the middle of their battleground. The legitimacy of such a state cannot be ignored. Therefore in the case of Palestinian independence, the PLO or any non-Islamist political force will not be for Hamas in the legitimate position to govern.
The second IRI’s proxy-movement in this region is Hezbollah. It was formed in 1982 by the IRI’s officials and the Revolutionary Guards Corps. It was to import the “Islamic” revolution of Iran in the region. The movement was logistically helped to fight Israeli occupation following the 1982 Lebanon war. Hezbollah’s ideology is based on the Shiite Islam, specifically in the concept of absolute power of supreme leader or “Welayat-e-Faqih” put forth by Shiite Islam in Iran.
Although, Hezbollah is considered by the West as a terrorist organisation, it is a recognised political party in Lebanon, where it has ministers in the government. The Lebanese government rejects Hezbollah’s slogans: “God is the target, the Prophet is the model, the Koran the constitution, jihad is the path and death for the sake of God is the loftiest of the wishes”.
Terror is its principal weapon and Islamism its only ideology. It follows a jihadist and Islamist policy dictated by IRI’s officials. Lebanon with only 40 percent Shiites is not a cosy cradle of Mullahs. Hezbollah has taken this fact into consideration; therefore, a God’s state, on the IRI’s model, is not officially demanded. However, it claims that an Islamic state requires the consent of the people, and since Lebanon remains a religiously and ideologically heterogeneous society, their political platform favours the introduction of an Islamic state in Lebanon by non-militant means.
All trilateral parts of conflicts, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Zionism, reject constantly peaceful solutions. All of them believe that Palestine is a consecrated land for their future generations and only so it must exist until Judgement Day. If all of them are at the height of their radicalism, they will gender an eternally vicious spiral of war and violence. The two antagonistic poles have different charges and sacred altars. Neither Zionism’s sacred expansionism nor Islamism’s God’s state can guarantee peace and co-existence in this region.
It is to mention that Israel is implicitly authorised by the US to continue its animosity not only against Islamist groups, but also the legitimate rights of Palestinian.Now, the least the international community is to encourage both sides to achieve peace and co-existence based on the UN repeated resolutions and bilateral agreements. If this conflict is to be stopped, the international community must defend the historically rights of Palestinians to install their UN proposed state. The Lack of an international consensus can be interpreted as a green light to continue the conflict.
What concerns Israel and Palestine, a durably peaceful co-existence of all peoples in the region can be guaranteed when only the democrats and seculars are the official peace-makers of both sides. Zionism and Islamism cannot narrow down their differences.
For the peole of Iran, as a part of the international community, a UN mandated two-states option is the best and fairest solution because it is consequently a defeat of fundamentalist ideologies from any calibre in this region.
