By: Tashbih Sayyed, Ph.D
On March 21, 1968, a party of Israeli school children from Tel Aviv was being taken by bus for a picnic to the Negev desert. The school bus hit a mine planted by Arabs, two children were killed and twenty eight injured. The Israelis, shocked by the barbaric act, decided to take punitive action and launched a raid to destroy the Arab base at Karameh, a village on the East Bank of the Jordan River.
The Israelis thought that Jordanian army will not come to guerrilla's aid. But the Israelis were wrong. Jordanians came out in full force to assist the guerrillas. "The Israelis, taken in the rear by a Jordanian armored force and unwilling to escalate the raid into a full-scale battle, pulled back." Yasser Arafat who was leading the guerrillas, ignoring the Jordanian army's role, immediately claimed Karameh as a great victory for the Arabs. "Fatah had taken on the might of Israel and defeated the vaunted Israeli army – that was the message that rang round the Arab refugee camps." According to Donald Neff, "The battle of Karameh sent a surge of optimism through the Palestinian community and established the Palestinians' claim to being a national liberation organization.
Yasser Arafat painted Israel's withdrawal at Karameh as Fatah's "victory" to claim that the Arab refugees are in fact Palestinians, "What we have done is to make the world...realize that the Palestinian is no longer refugee number so and so, but the member of a people who hold the reins of their own destiny and are in a position to determine their own future."
Observed Israeli diplomat Gideon Rafael: "The operation gave an enormous lift to Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization and irrevocably implanted the Palestine problem onto the international agenda, no longer as a humanitarian issue of homeless refugees, but as a claim to Palestinian statehood." Donald Neff writes, "Refugee camps throughout the Arab world hailed the birth of the Palestinian people and volunteers flocked to the guerrilla groups. Fatah reported that 5,000 volunteers applied to join within 48 hours of the battle."
Karameh reconfirmed for the Arabs that terrorism works and they can outmaneuver Israelis in the propaganda war. Since that day in 1968, Palestinian leaders have used every opportunity to cast their defeats as victories, thereby creating a false sense of invincibility in the minds of their camps. According to a scholar of Middle Eastern affairs, "The Palestinians have outmaneuvered the Israelis in framing the conflict for the world media.
The turning point came during the 1982 Lebanon War, when the Palestinians initiated a propaganda campaign to cast themselves as the defenders of human rights and the Israelis as the violators of human rights. At the same time, Yasser Arafat's brother, Dr. Fatchi Arafat, exploited his position as director of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society to release grossly inflated casualty figures.
On June 10, 1982, for example, Dr. Arafat issued a statement declaring that "10,000 Palestinians have died and 600,000 have become homeless in the first few days of the war"— a lie calculated to portray the Palestinians as the victims of a genocidal assault in Lebanon. In fact, the total population in the war zone numbered fewer than 300,000. Yet the International Red Cross and Middle East Action Committee of the American Friends Service Committee spread the 10,000/600,000 figure to every media outlet in the world, and the major American networks picked up the story. NBC's Jessica Savitch reported, "It is now estimated that 600,000 refugees in south Lebanon are without sufficient food or medical supplies."
And now I am sure Israel's decision to withdraw from Gaza and Judea and Samaria, will definitely be projected by Arabs as another victory against Zionism. Disengagement will be presented to the radical Islamist controlled Muslim world as a proof that Israel can and ultimately will be destroyed. Israel's decision to disengage in Gaza has already reconfirmed Islamist view that Jews have no stomach for a fight. The withdrawal will go down as an important victory for the Arabs in the war to destroy the Jewish state of Israel. And just as Karameh had established Arabs as Palestinians and Fatah as their representative, Gaza withdrawal will provide Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and their ilk with a sure opportunity to convince the radicals that Jihad (terrorism) is the only way to destroy Israel.
The latest developments in Lebanon are indications enough of what can be expected in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Hezbollah that works closely with Hamas and stands to gain much strategically will locate itself side by side Hamas. In its Web site Hazbollah, presents itself as a "struggle movement that is totally affiliated in the long complicated and complex fight against the Zionist enemy. They claim that their struggle's starting point was the Zionist occupation of Palestine. ...All that led to the establishment of the identity of Hezbollah as a struggle movement against the Zionists."
Just like Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in July 2000, established Hezbollah as a regional power to be reckoned with, expanding its influence in all jihadi circles and allowing it to spread the perception that by killing Jews, Israel can be made to withdraw from anywhere, Gaza disengagement will also empower Hamas and Hezbollah in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. The most dangerous part of Hezbollah mind is its faith in the institution of suicide bombing and belief that it always works. In a brochure prepared for a Hezbollah conference in Beirut on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the terrorist group argues that "the first harsh defeat" for Israel came in May 2000 when it withdrew its forces unilaterally from southern Lebanon after several years of Hezbollah suicide attacks on Israeli soldiers there.
Hezbollah is never tired of boasting that suicide bombings have succeeded where everything else failed. "The Zionists do not dare to move in the streets and he who ventures out is not sure he will come back alive," the Hezbollah pamphlet said. "In this climate of fear, the Israeli economy has lost more than $5 billion, and Israelis are migrating away from the Jewish state, according to the pamphlet." According to David Ignatius, Hezbollah believes that the Islamic forces arrayed against Israel are winning—thanks to the carnage wrought by suicide bombings. These "martyrdom operations," as Hezbollah prefers to call them, are often seen in the West as a tactic of desperation. But the leaders of this Lebanese militia view them as a successful weapon that has put Israel on the defensive. And there is no doubt in my mind that Gaza, Judia and Samaria will become new bases from where new wave of suicide bombers will be unleashed against Israel.
Hezbollah has long experience in recruiting jihadis and converting people for its anti-Simitic cause. It took advantage of Israel's first withdrawal from Lebanon in 1985 and is already looked up to by the Muslim street. Funded by Iran, it established storage depots for weapons, recruited activists and fighters and worked very hard to win the hearts and minds of the local people. It succeeded by providing widespread aid to residents in South Lebanon, such as the donation of money, equipment, and medical supplies.
"Using cover names such as 'Islamic Jihad', 'The Revolutionary Justice Organization' and 'The Islamic Resistance', with the blessings of its religious leaders, Hezbollah has carried out a series of high profile attacks against Israeli targets in southern Lebanon and American and Multinational Forces targets in Lebanon. Hezbollah was responsible for the two explosions in Beirut on October 23, 1983 that killed 241 American Marines and 56 French servicemen sleeping in their barracks. Their attacks became more intensive as well as demonstrating better planning immediately prior to the opening of the peace process in 1991."
According to records, in 1991, the Hezbollah was responsible for 52 attacks, as compared to 19 attacks the organization carried out in 1990. In 1992, the Hezbollah launched 63 attacks and in 1993, 158 attacks, when during the course of 'Operation Accountability' they fired hundreds of Katyusha rockets into the Security Zone and Israeli territory. In 1994 a total of 187 attacks against Israeli troops and positions by Hezbollah were recorded. There were 119 instances of artillery fire, 31 detonations of explosive charges and two frontal assaults on IDF positions. In 1995 a total of 344 attacks against Israeli troops and positions by were recorded. There were 270 instances of artillery fire, 64 detonations of explosive charges and 2 frontal assaults on IDF positions.
Just like Hezbollah used its bases in Southern Lebanon to perpetuate acts of violence against Israel. Gaza, Judea and Samaria will also be used to terrorize the citizens of the Jewish state. I am sure that once Hezbollah succeeds in entrenching itself in the new areas, Israel will face a new era of tension, insecurity and instability.
Just like the 2000 disengagement provided Iran and Syria with an opportunity to use Hezbollah as their proxy force to intimidate Israel and intimidate Jews. Gaza, Judea and Samaria will also become new and more dangerous out-posts of terror for the advancement of radical Islam's anti-Semitic and anti-American agenda. Acquisition of Gaza by Hezbollah and other Islamists will deepen the Islamist confidence that radical Islam's victory is nearer.
As a Muslim, I know that so long as Islamists believe that they are winning and the Jewish state can be destroyed, there can never be any peace in the Middle East. Appeasing the Palestinian terrorists is like playing with fire – it will only cause more deaths. Israel can only hope to survive by defeating the Palestinian terrorists decisively and absolutely. Radical Islam has to be convinced for the sake of the world peace and stability that Israel is here for good and nothing can destroy her.
(The writer is editor-in-chief of Muslim World Today and Pakistan Today, California-based weekly newspapers, president of Council for Democracy and Tolerance and adjunct fellow of Hudson Institute.)
