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The
Middle East: On the Edge of an Abyss
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Palestinian mourners carrying the body of Rantissi
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The
so-called Arab street is tonight boiling with anger, hatred and
resentment over the targeted assassination of newly-elected Hamas
leader Abdel Azis Rantissi. There are conflicting reports that
Rantissi was killed by a missile fired from an Apache helicopter.
Palestinian eyewitnesses claimed it may have been a car bomb. Hamas
promised to draw Israeli blood.
Hamas
founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin was killed three
weeks ago and Israel braced for retaliatory strikes. Although there were sporadic attacks
mounted by Palestinian fighters, there was nothing of the gravity of
this morning’s suicide attack which killed one Israeli soldier and
wounded three soldiers.
In
July of last year, Israel tried and failed to assassinate Rantissi. There have been three
failed assassination attempts in the past two years.
Opposition
parties are calling on Arab populations to overthrow their
governments and rally to support the resistance in Iraq and in
Palestine . Many Middle East analysts have questioned the timing of Rantissi's assassination as
US policies in Iraq were coming under severe criticism. Human rights organizations have
accused the US Military of committing atrocities in Iraq and resorting to the uneven-handed approach perfected by the Israeli
Defense Forces over the past 15 years. Some British Military
commanders have complained that the US Military is creating a
blunder in Iraq.
According
to The Telegraph’s Sean Rayment, a British officer, “who
agreed to the interview on the condition of anonymity, said that
part of the problem was that American
troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen – the Nazi expression for
‘sub-humans’. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of
life in the way the British are. Their attitude towards the Iraqis
is tragic, it’s awful.” The British officer accused the US
Military of targeting “terrorists” even if they are located in
densely-populated civilian areas: “They may well kill the
terrorists in the barrage but they will also kill and maim innocent
civilians. That has been their response on a number of occasions. It
is trite, but American troops do shoot first and ask questions
later. They are very concerned about taking casualties and have even
trained their guns on British troops, which has led to some
confrontations between soldiers,” The
Telegraph reported.
(Untermenschen
is the popular term Adolf Hitler used to express his disdain for
what he termed the inferior Jews in Mein Kamp.)
“We
are resorting to collective punishment,” Newsweek
editor Fareed Zakaria told Chris Matthews on Hardball recently. He
denied the official US position that fighters in the “Sunni Triangle” are dead-enders.
He also claimed uneven-handedness in Iraq was feeding the “insurgency.”
The
siege of Fallujah (where some 873 civilians were killed and 2,203
wounded), the siege of Najaf, the holiest city for the Shi’ite
Muslims of the world, the US promise to either capture or kill
Shi’ite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Bush administration’s
negation of the Palestinian Right of Return, the building of the
Israeli separation wall, the Bush administration’ branding of the
Palestinian National Authority as a non-partner, the killing of
Sheikh Yassin, and tonight’s killing of Rantissi are causing an
unprecedented wave of anti-Americanism in the Arab Middle East.
Moderates who were usually outspoken in their support of the US and
Middle East
political reform have now either changed their tune or withdrawn
into obsoleteness.
There
have been three failed assassination attempts in the past two
years.
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At
press time, thousands of Egyptians demonstrated in front of Al Azhar
University. Such impromptu demonstrations have been extremely rare
in Egypt and are usually preceded by government approval and a heavy security
presence that outnumbers the demonstrators by six to one. “Allahu
Akbar, Jihad is the answer. Look we are coming,
martyrs in the millions,” thousands of Egyptians chanted. Egypt
is considered a traditional US ally. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was earlier in
Crawford, Texas. He later endorsed the Israeli plan to unilaterally withdraw from
the Gaza Strip, “but with conditions.” The conditions were not
disclosed to the press.
The
Middle East
is going through an untenable period of imbalance. Iraq, which was considered a strategic balance to
Israel and Iran, is on the verge of collapse, according to Middle East
analysts. During the standoff with Al-Sadr, the young Shi’ite
cleric said he was the right hand of Hamas and Hizbollah. When
Sheikh Yassin was killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis – Shi’ite
and Sunni - took to the streets and protested the
Anglo-American-Zionist aggression against Islam. When Fallujah was
pounded by F-16s and AC-130 gunships, Palestinians took to the
streets to protest what
they called “the murder of Iraq .” Two conflicts that were once seen as mutually exclusive have
now become mutually inclusive. Increasingly, Arab opposition
newspapers, union leaders, and parliamentarians have linked the two
conflicts and pointed
to a greater war against Arabs and Islam. So angered and hateful of
the US and Israel are the Arabs that they have put aside thousand-year theological
differences
and vowed to fight as one. There has been widespread Arab Sunni
support of the Shi’ite uprising in southern Iraq.
Ironically,
Rantissi was quoted as saying he was ready to be martyred if Israel
succeeded in assassinating him. Al-Sadr told a Shi’ite
congregation in Najaf that he was
ready to be martyred. The connection and timing of both conflicts is
not lost on the Arab street.
At
press time, tens of thousands of people had taken to the streets of
the pristine port
of Alexandria in Egypt. Many have been quoted as saying they were ready and willing to
become suicide bombers.
Egyptian
foreign minister Ahmed Maher has called the assassination of
Rantissi as inexcusable and an incredible blunder. “We are now
moving to the edge of an abyss,” he told reporters.
Firas
Al-Atraqchi is a
Canadian journalist of Iraqi heritage. Holding an MA in Journalism
and Mass Communication, he has eleven years of experience covering
Middle East issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecom
industry. You can reach him at firascape@hotmail.com.
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