Oh hush hush, ummah’s leaders, lest you wake. Heads of Muslim states, from rich Arab princes and kings to democrats controlling some of the world’s largest armies, surprised nobody with their trademark impotence at the joint OIC-Arab League summit in the luxury of Riyadh last week.
Among those watching very closely were Palestinians, of course, and the few who were able to find some space in the international press made sure everybody knew and understood how they felt.
After all, if they can bury their infants and elderly even as the world surrenders to Israel’s barbarism, they can remind everybody that it is the rich and proud leaders of the Muslim world, not the wretched of the earth braving genocide, that are truly dead.
“Nobody is going to die short (of the lifetime allocated by God). But some people will die short of dignity, short of humanity, and short of principles. Shame on you, and shame on your Arabism.
May Allah disown you, may Allah never forgive you,” Dr Basel Mahdi lamented on Facebook, hours after the OIC-AL combine effectively left Gazans to their fate and, apparently, minutes before he was killed in an Israeli strike on the Mahdi maternity clinic; which, according to reports, can no longer function because of shortage of supplies and killing of too many of its staff and volunteer workers.
Palestine Chronicle, a news website run by brave Gazan journalist and prolific author Ramzy Baroud, quoted one Mohammed Hasan, a resident of Gaza, as saying, “Record this, oh history. In Gaza, 39 infants are dying after the hospital’s fuel has run out. The Arabs’ lands are filled with oil. We swear to God that we will not forgive you, and we will not forget this betrayal”.
It also quoted another resident, Omeima Al-Ghaseen, who said, “Damn everyone who betrayed the people of Gaza, leaving them alone for 36 years under bombardment and destruction”. Another, Ibada Mohammed, said, “Adhering to resistance, relying on it, and bearing arms against the occupation to defend Gaza is better than all the Arab summits, which have proved nothing but statements of condemnation and denunciation”.
It’s pretty clear, then – as if it needed to be any clearer – that Israel’s hunt for Hamas and the innocent blood it shamelessly spills has instead turned the militia into an idea; a defiance that will resonate in the occupied territories unless it is wiped clean of all its residents.
Yet it’s not just the ummah that its representatives did not surprise with their characteristic lack of character.
Surely Israelis would remember the historic words of Golda Meir, one of the pillars of the country’s foundation and its first and only female prime minister, after the Al Aqsa mosque was set on fire in 1969.
“When we burnt the Al Aqsa mosque, I did not sleep the whole night for fear of Arab armies entering Israel from all around. But when the sun rose the next morning, I came to know we can do anything we want, for we are facing an ummah that is asleep”, she said.
Yet it’s not as if the summit was entirely inconsequential. The last few days have proved that only Turkey and Iran, the latter long considered a pariah state even within the world of Islam, are willing to stand in the face of the tsunami of international support for, and Muslim indifference to, Israel’s atrocities, even at the risk of sparking a regional war that sucks in countries from all sides.
President Erdogan rattled capitals from London to Washington by calling Hamas a “liberation group” and Israel a “war criminal”.
“Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, it is a liberation group, mujahideen waging a battle to protect its land and people”, he went on to say. He’s also vowed to deliver a message regarding the EU’s perceived double standards in favour of Israel during his visit to Germany on November 17, and question whether the bloc is standing up for the dignity of human life as Gazans are “massacred” by Israel.
Iran, which proposed a boycott of Israel and designation of the IDF as a “terrorist group” at the summit – only to be shot down – has gone a step ahead and claimed that it, along with the militias that form the resistance, “stands ready for any eventuality”, with “Israel-hitting missiles” in its arsenal.
Its military has also confirmed western media reports that Washington has sent numerous back-channel messages to Tehran, urging it “not to escalate regional tensions”.
That means keeping Hezbollah from lighting up the Lebanese border, no doubt. It is the only force to defeat the IDF in a ground battle, forcing a shameful retreat in 2006, and its leadership has made no secret of plans to enter the war if the bombing doesn’t stop.
So far it’s been raising the temperature slowly and steadily, and very wisely. With the IDF’s elite engaged in Gaza, the 75,000 or so soldiers manning the northern border with Lebanon are mostly reservists, not properly trained and kept away from their jobs, hurting the economy, in anticipation of Hezbollah’s advance.
If the border does become active, and Israel’s infantry overreach forces another aerial blitzkrieg in Lebanon, there is a very real chance of drawing Iran into the conflict, sparking a wider war, and triggering numerous diplomatic and cold war fault lines across the globe.
War with Iran will force a stiff joint response from its allies China and Russia, who are already deep in an anti-imperial alliance confronting US dominance in financial markets and the blood-soaked politics of Nato.
The whole world stands on a knife edge just because America has given Israel carte blanche for genocide to sooth its wounded pride. If the civilised world can condone, support, fund and arm the kind of horrific collective punishment that helpless and abandoned Palestinians are suffering right now, then the prospect of a wider, much bloodier war isn’t that far-fetched either.
It’s for a reason they say that, in extremis, anything is possible.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023