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Deja vu — Judith Apter Klinghoffer

Judith Apter Klinghoffer

YETERDAY IRAN, TODAY GAZA, TOMORROW SAUDI ARABIA

The pattern is as old as can be. When confronting a pack of wolves we desperately try to make distinctions between the more and less ferocious leaders of the pack. The problem is that the less ferocious one usually turns out to be the meeker, the front wolf. He can be used to hold us off while the pack gets ready. Yesterday, that familiar pattern played out in Iran. "Reformer" Khatami was put forward to generate false hope in Iran and abroad. He did little to change the theocracy but the hope he generated brought Iran good press, economic investment and even an apology for Madam secretary Albright. He was promptly followed by the growling Ahmadinejad.

Today "reformer" Abbas and his Fatah movement were violently evicted by Hamas. As Barry Rubin so accurately argues in Palestinian Politics: "'Good Guy' Fatah vs. 'Bad Guy' Hamas" is no Policy Solution, the difference between the two is merely cosmetic. Unfortunately, American policy is based on the difference. Why? Because as Princeton Professor Bernard Haykel and former ambassador Daniel Kurtzer explained in a recent seminar, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has come to view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a dangerous distraction to his "reform" efforts or , more precisely I believe, realized that he lost the Palestinian issue to Iran.

In any case, both Haykel and Kurtzer argue that as the Saudi treasury is flushed with cash, the King is willing to embark on an expensive Palestinian pacification program. "The Saudis know that Israel cannot go back to the 1967 borders or accept every refugee," Haykel says. Both argue that the Saudi change of heart is an opportunity that should not to be missed and Haykel hopes that the Palestinians will this time not miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Well, whatever opportunity there was, has just been missed. After all, the Mecca agreement was nothing more than a Fatah surrender to Hamas.

The result of the false hopes? Hamas captured Fatah assets in Gaza include American weapons and CIA documents. I am only grateful that this time Israel did not fall into the trap of arming the Fatah though I suspect its intelligence services along with those of the Americans and other Arab countries' are kept plenty busy with damage assessments. For it seems that those CIA documents contain "information about the collaboration between Fatah and the Israeli and American security organizations; CIA methods on how to prevent attacks, chase and follow after cells of Hamas and the Committees; plans about Fatah assassinations of members of Hamas and other organizations; and American studies on the security situation in Gaza." We better brace ourselves.

As unsettling as the Hamas takeover may be to Western policy makers, I can only hope that it will lead us to confront the Saudi reality with clearer eyes. Bernard Haykel, who has recently returned from that country where he had an opportunity to discuss matters with its princely elite, explains that there is an ongoing debate within Saudi Arabia on the appropriate way to meet the Al Qaeda challenge. King Abdullah, the liberal (though not in the Western sense, he cautions), is engaging the country in a national dialogue which acknowledges that "the Saudi society consists of a variation of cultural and religious elements." It is his way to bring the Shia, Sufis and women into the system without changing much more than its style. In other words, Saudi Arabia is currently rule by a kind of Khatami - Abbas type reformer.

Competing with the elderly king, is the man who will be king, Price Nayef, the Saudi interior minister, and the man the Weekly Standard called, the most powerful man in Saudi Arabia. Prince Nayef wants to make the country so straight laced Wahabi, that Al Qaeda would not be able to outflank it with the Salafist clerics. Indeed, he would use his petrodollars even more on exporting Wahabi ideology. In other words, this is my conclusion, not Professor Haykel's, hold on to your horses. An Ahmadinejad frere is coming to the land of chopped limbs, hate school books and Islamist propaganda diffusion.

In the meantime, Prince Nayef is in charge of the Morality police which has recently claimed the lives of four innocent Saudis.

As for Iraq, Professor Haykel predicts that an American exist from Iraq would lead to a mass infusion of Saudi cash into the pockets of Iraqi Sunnis who are sure to embark on an effort to reconstitute their rule of Iraq where they still "do not feel as a minority." Of course, "the moderate Abdullah" has recently characterized the American presence in Iraq as "illegitimate:"

"In beloved Iraq, blood is flowing between brothers, in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and abhorrent sectarianism threatens a civil war, said the king"

"He had no choice," argues professor Haykel, "Muslim law considers any foreign military presence on Muslim land to be illegitimate." "Would that hold for Spain?" I asked. "Not exactly as there are no Muslims born there anymore," he finally answered. Actually, now there are but never mind. The point I am trying to make is that time is not on our side and attempt to cooperate with so called moderates is futile. The time has come to gather our strength and recommit to this war on Islamist terror ASAP. The longer we procrastinate, the harder will the task be. At the moment the wolves smell our weakness and the results are deadly.

Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2007 at 11:55 PM | Comments (0) | Return

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