Desert diplomacy: no end in sight to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

• Author: Marsh, Gerald E.
• Position: Worldview

AFTER SEPT. 11 and the subsequent bombings in Madrid and London, many have asked, "Why do they hate us?" There is, of course, a ready answer: It is the way the West interacts with the Islamic world and, most importantly, it is our policy of supporting Israel and repressive Arab governments. Never mind that the policies of Great Britain and Spain--two countries that have been bombed by Islamic radicals--do not particularly favor Israel, nor does public sentiment in these nations. Moreover, excluding some of the Emirates, there are no nonrepressive Arab governments to support--the regimes of the most important countries being the most repressive.

From the rhetoric, one would think that, if Israel ceased to exist, peace would reign in the Middle East. This is nonsense. While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be irrelevant to the problems facing most countries in the Middle East, it is used by all of their governments to deflect the discontent of the "Arab Street" from themselves. As put by Sir Lawrence Freedman of King's College in London, should decent, moderate governments ever appear in the Middle East, they "will not be embraced by the radicals, who seek theocracies rather than democracies. Nor, as is often fondly believed, would terrorism stop if only a two-state solution could be found to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The radicals aim for no Jewish state at 'all."

Given that the Palestinians have brought Hamas to power--in the opinion of most nations, a terrorist organization whose raison d'etre is the destruction of Israel--the sincerity L of that group must be questioned after Khaled Meshaal of the Hamas political section stated that, "If Israel officially announces that it will i leave all territory occupied since 1967, returns refugees, frees those arrested, then our discussions can take serious steps to achieve peace."

The breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I set the stage for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In particular, the politically expedient divisions of the territory of the Palestine Mandate made the conflict almost inevitable. It is by no means the only factor but, without this unfortunate history, relations between the Palestinians and Jews might have been very different.

The story leading to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict begins in what is now known as Saudi Arabia with the birth of Wahhabism. Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab was an 18th-century religious leader whose alliance with the House of Saud in 1745 had been strengthened over the years by frequent intermarriage between the two families. The Wahhabis were severe puritanical reformers who were seen by their adversaries as fanatics. The movement later came to be known as the Ikhwan, or Brethren. As put by Robert Lacy in The Kingdom: "The Ikhwan movement was a twentieth-century revival of the religious reform preached by Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, purification according to the literal word of God, and the Ikhwan found in the Hadith (the collected doings and sayings of the Prophet and of his Companions) a treasure chest of advice and instruction to regulate every detail of their existence in a holy fashion. They followed it slavishly." By 1912-13, Ibn Saud--the founder of Saudi Arabia--had established himself as the leader of the Ikhwan.

Wahhabism is a rigid form of antimystical puritanism. Any changes in belief and ritual alter the pure and primitive Islam of the century after Muhammad are rejected. The Wahhabi strain of Islam has, for many years, been a source of friction in the Muslim world. In the early 19th century, the Turco-Egyptian army, sent by the pasha of Egypt, defeated the Wahhabi empire and confined Wahhabism to its native Nejd, the large plateau in the central portion of what presently is known as Saudi Arabia. While Wahhabism again played a political role in the mid 19th and 20th centuries, it now is flourishing as never before because of heavy financial support by the Saudis, and is a major factor in the worldwide spread of intolerance in Islam. Actually, the Saudis object to the term Wahhabism, believing their form of Islam to be the only tree Islam. If Wahhabism is acknowledged as a distinct branch of Islamic thought, they prefer this school to be called Salafism, which refers to the beliefs and practices of the earliest followers of Islam.

At the end of the Ottoman Empire, Hussein ibn Ali ruled the Hejaz (the northwest of present Saudi Arabia bordering the Red Sea) on behalf of the Ottoman Sultan and was known as the Sherif of Mecca and its Emir. He referred to himself and his family as "Hashemites" since he was a member of the House of Hashem, as was Mohammed himself. It was the spread of Wahhabi puritanism from Nejd into the neighboring Hejaz that threatened to undermine the authority of Hussein, so he decided to use force to put an end to the spread of the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, and eliminate the threat to his role.

Preparations for the battle, and the unfortunate outcome, have been described by David Fromkin in A Peace to End All Peace: "The final expedition was mounted in the spring of 1919.... Led by Hussein's son Abdullah, the trained Hejazi army of 5,000 men brought along the modern equipment which the British had supplied during the war.... But the pitched battle for which both sides had prepared never took place. A Brethren force of 1,100 camel-riders, who had gone ahead of Ibn Saud's forces as scouts, came upon Abdullah's camp on the night of 25 May. Armed only with swords, spears, and antique rifles, they swooped down upon the sleeping Hejazi army and destroyed it. Abdullah, in his nightshirt, escaped; but his troops did not."

Despite subsequent British help, Ibn Sand captured the Hejaz and, by 1924, had driven Hussein into exile.

Before continuing the story, we need to explain how the British came to control Palestine and how the Balfour Declaration of November 1917, promising the Jews a homeland in Palestine, came to be. Lord Arthur James Balfour was Britain's Foreign Secretary when he issued the declaration in a letter to Lord Rothschild. It contained the key paragraph: "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and...