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eretzyisrael · 3 months

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The Middle East needs to roll back Arab imperialism for peace

Arab, Turkish and Iranian imperialism deny non-Arabs and non-Muslims self-determination in the Middle East: Palestinian maximalism is an extension, under a different name, of post-WW1 Arab imperialism, which claimed that where Arab Muslims are a significant part of the population, they should rule. Western liberals prop up this view, and ignore the long history of Arab and Muslim oppression of minority national groups. Ironically, they see Israel and Jews as ‘European settler colonialists’. But it is Arab imperialism which needs to be rolled back if there is to be peace. Thought-provoking article in Fathom Journal by Olga Kirschbaum-Shirazki:

Kurds are among the MENA national groups oppressed by Arab imperialism

While there is a ubiquitous academic discourse that European imperial powers made a mess of the Middle East – and Africa – over the course of the twentieth century, little is said about the fact that Iranian, Turkish, and Arab state violence towards national groups seeking their independence – a project they have made clear over the course of the twentieth century – has been deadly, and one of the major sources of violence in the region including today. And yet our intellectual class is obsessed with Hungarian, Polish and Israeli illiberalism, which, whatever one might think about it, does not come close to the state violence, oppression, and corruption of the imperial states in Middle East.

And so sadly it is necessary to offer a macabre tour of what Arab, Iranian, and Turkish imperialism, often billed as nationalism, has done in the past century. One could point to the hundreds of thousands of dead Kurds at the hands of all three imperial groups, to the mass emigration of Assyrians due to violence and oppression, to the likewise massive emigration of Lebanese Christians and mass death and destruction brought on by the Lebanese civil war from Arab imperialism. Or the Turkish conquest of Cyprus and current bombardment of Rojava, not to mention Turkey’s indirect support for ISIS. And this is not to speak of the forced Turkification, Iranification, and Arabisation of minority populations, or the death of political dissidents in jails or on the gibbet. Or Iranian and Saudi support for the Islamists in the deadly Algerian civil war, as well as Qatar’s support for Islamists during the Arab Spring. Nor is this list comprehensive, even if already damning. One has to mention the dead in the Arab-Israeli conflict as well.

ARAB IMPERIALISM AND THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

Indeed, Arab imperialism is a central source of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With the ubiquity of the discourse about Palestinian nationalism, its Arab imperial dimensions are almost totally occluded. Yet Arab imperialism was, a serious political force in the Middle East for most of the post WWI period, and remains so. It started with the aspirations of the leaders of the Arab Revolt to create a unified Arab state in the entire Levant as well as their successful sabotage, with British and French assent, of the creation of states for the other peoples in the region, most dramatically the Kurds, but also the Assyrians, Druze, and Maronites. It continued with the policies of Arabisation and Islamification of the post WWII period in all of the Arab League countries with non-Arab, non-Muslim population without exception. And while many of these policies were carried by states seeking to create a new local Syrian, Iraqi, Palestinian identity, these identities were in practice Arab and Muslim. Indeed, the creation of a Palestinian national identity never meant the rejection of an Arab identity for the Palestinians themselves, as the documents of the major political parties involved in Palestinian politics show. Palestinian maximalism is an extension, under a different name, of the Arab imperialism present in all of the post-WWI states, which claimed that where Arab Muslims are a significant part of the population, they should rule. This attitude of entitlement, characteristic of imperial peoples and their cultures, remains deeply entrenched in many countries in the Arab League. It is also present among the intellectual classes in the West, particularly those in Middle Eastern Studies departments, which idealise Convivencia in the medieval caliphates or the multicultural rainbow of ‘Iraqi’ or ‘Lebanese’ identity, vilifies sectarianism, or simply ignores the history of the national groups of the region.

Unsurprisingly, the most fascist forms of Islam find fertile ground in historical imperial states and among historically imperial cultures. Conversely, notable Kurdish, Amazigh, or Azeri equivalents are conspicuous by their absence. That is not to say that there aren’t any Islamists among the smaller peoples of the region. However, the Kurdish, Azeri, and Amazigh political movements tend to be comparatively liberalising, and their attitude towards Islam traditionalist rather than Islamist or jihadi. Instead, we find among the traditionally imperial peoples, the Persians, Turks, and Arabs, the state sponsors of terrorism and Islamism in the area.

IMPERIAL ROLLBACK IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Yet, imperial rollback is underway in the Middle East. One of the least discussed but in some ways most significant aspects of the Abraham Accords is that its signatories exhibit multiple signs of imperial rollback. It is not simply the recognition of the state of Israel and normalisation. Morocco has made significant steps towards recognising the Amazigh, including language rights, official holidays, and some political rights. These internal policies demonstrate a shift away from a homogenous Arabisation or Islamification, and towards an acceptance of the history of the country its peoples and their aspirations. Gulf Arab states are also making efforts to liberalise, reject Jihad and Islamism, and even more recently to open up a frank interfaith dialogue – significant signs of imperial rollback in the context of the Arab League.

Israel, uniquely successful as a national movement in the region, is a test case for what path the region will take. This is why it is incumbent, even for those who wish to see a two-state solution, to be honest about the imperial relationship of Arabs and Islam to the areas. Yet rather than supporting these developments, and understanding their revolutionary significance, liberals across the West and in Israel minimise them or view them as part of the problem. In fact, it is they who are the problem.

One of the most damaging developments for the stability of the entire region has occurred among liberals in the West and Israel, namely the internalisation of the Arab imperial discourse in its repackaged form: Israel and Jews as European settler colonialists. Even among people who support a two-state solution, we increasingly find that they only accept Israel as a de facto reality, and agree with Palestinians that the country is indigenously Arab. Other variations of this acceptance come in the form of claiming that both Jews and Arabs are indigenous to the area. The problem with claims about Palestinian Arab indigeneity — or Arab indigeneity anywhere in the “Arab World” outside of the Gulf and Jordan — is not only that they are objectively incorrect by the UN definition of indigeneity, Arabs arrived in these regions through imperial conquest, but more importantly they serve to negate Arab imperialism past and present. The issue at stake here is not the two-state solution as an option for solving the conflict, or the existence of a Palestinian Arab collective identity tied to the land – a development exhibited by Arabs in Iraq, Syria, Algeria, Morrocco, etc. who have developed local land-based collective identities as well — but the acceptance of an ideology which fundamentally views any Jewish national sovereignty as unjust because it refuses to see any Arab or Muslim history as imperial.

Today the Palestinian Arab claim to indigeneity, as well any other Arab claim to indigeneity in the “Arab World” in areas outside of the Arab homeland, denies this imperial entitlement, while simultaneously granting its objectives legitimacy: it is a brilliant political manoeuvre.

The two-state solution cannot reasonably survive in the context of widespread commitment not only by Palestinian Arabs, but other Arabs in the region, to the sole legitimacy of Islamic and Arab power. Much of the so-called Israeli left, following or leading liberals in the West depending on who you ask, seems to be propping up this very view directly, in the case of anti-Zionists, and indirectly in the case of supporters of a confederation or two-state solution supporters who accept the narrative of Jewish settler colonialism or Palestinian indigeneity. This approach is dangerous for the entire region as well, as it usually goes hand in hand with an underestimation or even denial of the problem of local imperial culture and politics, as well as the overestimation of the responsibility of Western powers. That is not to say that peace, mutual respect, and compromise are not desirable: they are, but they cannot be based on historical falsehood, they cannot allow imperial entitlement to go unchecked propped up by false histories, and they cannot continue to project onto the Palestinian national movement, as it currently stands, a programme and outlook of mutual acceptance which it is does not in fact support. The failure to achieve Arab imperial rollback will continue to breed conflict across the region. One can see it playing out in the past year in Iraq: the current Shia Arab-dominated government has been attacking the autonomy of the Kurdistan region.

Of course, globally there are two other forces that are upholding imperial entitlement in the region, directly and indirectly. There are the left-wing parties who have historically supported the imperial enemies of the United States, whether Russia, China, or more recently Iran and Qatar. The latter have also strongly cultivated these groups in South America, Africa, and Asia. The others are the liberals in Western Europe and the Anglosphere, as well as business people from around the world whose financial interests come first. Western financial support has contributed to the lasting power of these imperial states as it has to the maximalists among the Palestinian Arabs, most spectacularly in Gaza.

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#Colonialism #Indigenous Jews #Non-Arab/non-Muslim minorities

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