QURTERLY JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STRATEGIC DISCOURSE
Year:2019 | Volume:1 | Issue:2|Papers Count:12

לצד איומים לוחמניים במיטוט החמאס נוקטת ממשלת נתניהו צעדים פרגמטיים לשמירת השקט ולהשגת הסכמות, כפי שממליץ הדרג הצבאי. עד מתי נצליח לרמות את עצמנו? בכל הנוגע למשחק הכוחות בין הדרג הצבאי לדרג המדיני בסוגיית עזה, רב הנסתר על הנגלה. אולם מדי פעם מבליחים הצהרה או מסמך השופכים אור על המתח בין הגישה הפרגמטית בעיקרה של מערכת הביטחון, לבין הגישה הנצית של ממשלת נתניהו. באוקטובר 2017 התפרסם בכתב העת "מערכות" של צה"ל מאמר יוצא דופן. המאמר עורר סערה במערכת הציבורית, לא רק בגלל תוכנו – שנוסח בשפה זהירה – אלא בעיקר בגלל מחבריו: מתאם פעולות הממשלה בשטחים, אלוף יואב (פולי) מרדכי, ויועצו לענייני פלסטינים, אל"מ מיכאל מילשטיין. תחת הכותרת "שש חטיבות או שני מיליון בני אדם? כיצד שינה מבצע 'צוק איתן' את דרך ההתבוננות של ישראל על רצועת עזה", תיארו מרדכי ומילשטיין את העימות בין ישראל לחמאס בקיץ 2014, עימות שגבה את חייהם של למעלה מ־2,100 פלסטינים ושל 73 ישראלים, לא כ"תוצר של תכנון, של היערכות ושל כוונות סדורות משני הצדדים, אלא של הידרדרות לעימות רחב היקף, שבו אף צד לא רצה ולקראתו אף צד לא נערך". כמו במלחמת העולם הראשונה, הוסיפו, "התגלגלו שני הצדדים למערכה [...] שנבעה ביסודה מחישוב מוטעה ומאי בהירות אסטרטגית הדדית".

Deal of the Century is a 1983 Hollywood comedy about crooked arms dealers conspiring to peddle new weapons that “ allow for localized and conventional wars that will keep (the global arms industry’ s) business viable into the next century” (Wikipedia, June 1, 2019). Thirty-five years later, a non-fictional crooked businessman, Jared Kushner, has borrowed the title for his so-called Middle East peace plan. Is this some kind of sick joke? A bad Hollywood remake? Have Kushner and his accomplices Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman chosen this title for their so-called peace plan as a snarky acknowledgment that its real purpose is to keep the Zionist war on the Muslim East viable into the next century? Kushner’ s alleged peace plan was obviously set up to fail. It does not offer the bare minimum acceptable to Palestinians: A genuinely sovereign Palestine including all territories stolen by Israel in 1967, with its capital al-Quds, alongside an Israeli acknowledgment of the internationally-recognized Palestinian right of return and a plan— however gradual — for its implementation. Anything less is a non-starter. Kushner’ s plan does not just offer a little less than the above, nor even a lot less. It is a joke. According to Arab officials briefed on the plan, the Zionists would keep and expand their settlements on territories stolen in 1967. They would take all of al-Quds, leaving a few Palestinian neighborhoods on the outskirts. There would be no sovereign Palestinian state. Instead, the Palestinians would be herded into a slightly-expanded Gaza open-air concentration camp including a small portion of the adjacent Egyptian desert that would remain under Egyptian, not Palestinian, control. The resulting constellation of Bantustans would be labeled “ New Palestine, ” and its residents would have no sovereignty. Instead, they would actually pay their Israeli prison wardens for “ protection. ” The “ deal” amounts to the liquidation of Palestine and the completed genocide of the Palestinian people. Clearly Kushner’ s radical Zionist advisors, Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, know that their plan is not only unviable, but an insult to every Palestinian. The only thing it offers is money— as if the Palestinians, who have fought and sacrificed bravely for their cause for more than a century (losing tens of thousands of martyrs in the process) are willing to prostitute themselves in return for something even worse than humiliating surrender. Clearly this grossly insulting proposal was designed to be rejected. Its real purpose is to unleash a new round of war justified by the public relations slogan: “ We offered the Palestinians a very good deal, so good we called it ‘ the deal of the century, ’ but those ungrateful Palestinians wouldn’ t accept it. ” This is precisely what the Zionists have done in the past, notably after the 2000 Camp David Summit, during which they intentionally presented non-viable proposals in order to obtain a Palestinian rejection that would provide PR cover to go ahead with their 9/11 false flag, ruthlessly attempt to crush the Palestinian resistance, and trick the USA into invading and destabilizing regional nations that the Zionists consider enemies. All of this was in line with the Zionist strategy laid out in the 1996 Netanyahu-commissioned Clean Break document (www. irmep. org) authored by neocons led by 9/11 suspect Richard Perle — roughly the same group that authored the September 2001 blueprint for 9/11 “ Rebuilding America’ s Defenses” that openly called for the coming “ New Pearl Harbor” (David Ray Griffin, 2004). Since the Kushner-Greenblatt-Friedman “ peace plan” is really a war plan, any geopolitical analysis of its ramifications must analyze the conflict(s) that will accelerate once the plan is officially rolled out and rejected. Those conflicts will presumably be continuations of the ongoing, long-standing conflicts in the region....

Many theoreticians of regional issues and foreign policies interpret the idea of the “ Deal of Century” along the lines of viability of US-mediated Palestine-Zionist Regime peace. Such approach embraces mutual acceptances of actors from Arabian Middle East and South West Asia, each seeking particular goals and desirable outcomes in their international policies. The so-called deal of century emphasizes the concept of laying the groundwork for inception of an independent Palestinian state. However, the structure and the foreseen process of the “ Deal of Century” do not identify any genuine national authority for Palestinians. It was just a government that would cover half of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and some neighborhoods in the eastern Jerusalem. The “ deal of century” has designated Abu Dis as the capital of Mahmoud Abbas-run government. This deal never found favor with Americans during Obama’ s administration. Backed by Donald Trump, most of Arab’ s villages and neighborhood are slated to be handed over to the Palestinian National Authority with a passage as their way of access to Al-Aqsa Mosque. With the “ Deal of Century” , Arab states of the Middle East will encounter a geopolitical impasse as well as security uncertainties. This paper principally asks “ what are the regional and international consequences of the Deal of Century” ? The paper hypothesizes that “ the Deal of Century engineers changes in geopolitical and identity balance of the US-Islam world relations which will considerably escalate the conflicts” . The paper adopts a “ threat balance” approach. This approach essentially seeks to diminish Iran’ s role as the linchpin of the Axis of Resistance. The Zionist Regime and the US see the Deal of Century as a preamble to regional peacemaking through defusing the Resistance Movement in the southwest Asia and the eastern Mediterranean.

While emphasizing the convergent aspects of countering Zionist Regime as the common enemy of all Muslim countries, the Islamic Republic of Iran has consistently exercised efforts to inspire Islamic movements and lend support to aligned movements in Western Asia. This support ranges from material and technical cooperation to spiritual backing in what has come to be known as the Resistance Diplomacy. Employing the qualitative descriptive-analytical methodology and using librarian resources, this study attempts to explore the Islamic Republic of Iran‘ s Resistance Diplomacy in support of Palestine Cause with emphasis on PLO (Fatah), Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). This is to answer this question “ How Palestinian Resistance groups are placed in the Resistance Diplomacy of the Islamic Republic of Iran? ” The findings indicate that in its Resistance Diplomacy and in line with the principles and foundations informed by Islam, the Constitution and the view of the Revolution leaders, the Islamic Republic of Iran has prioritized Palestine via formal and informal networking to boost the Axis of Resistance. It supports Palestinian resistance groups in their struggle against the Zionist Regime regardless of their religious differences and divergent methods of operation. As a matter of fact, the Islamic Republic of Iran’ s approach to the Resistance Diplomacy follows the principle of “ unity while plural” in the sense of supporting the cause and strategy of Palestinian resistance groups in their fight against the Zionist regime despite their different tactics and methods of action.

Melting Pot or social integration approach is a nation-building policy prescribed for multi-cultural and immigration friendly countries. This approach deems the society as a melting in which people of different backgrounds lose their previous micro-identities into integration of a unified national identity. This approach is measured against occupational, educational and religious criteria. Having provided two major definitions of the Melting Pot approach and its gauges of success or otherwise, this paper attempted to run a critical view of the implementation of this approach in the Zionist regime. The results revealed that as of results of ill-informed policies of the elites and the decision-makers of the Zionist regime, the approach was minimally put into practice for three voluntary ethnicities of Russian-speaking, African and Iranian migrants in the wake of which the identity of the individual, particularly the second generation of migrants is defined based on the identities of the parents. This has given rise to the failure of the bid to form a unified national identity in the Zionist regime’ s society and the emergence of active and semi-active fault lines. This alienating approach has driven the migrants to define their identity first in relation to their country of origin and then their Zionist identity. It also has prompted them to resort to reverse migration, protests or even social-political violence to counter such alienating trends.

Over the last hundred years, constricted water resources coupled with growing water demands and adverse climate changes have fuelled water politicization. This has pushed striving to secure water supplies to the center of attention of the territory-holders (rulers and chief executives). Furthermore, more than 300 rivers flow through two or more countries’ borders which are per se a source of political instability. Through indisputable mutual dependence, this has made water a critical issue for such countries and has prompted some scholars to dub 21 century “ the water century” on following the lead of the 20 century as “ the oil century” . This is a century when the water will be both the child and the mother of violent confrontations. It goes without saying that dry, water-scarce parts of the world will be the geopolitics of the crisis. Being located on the world arid belt on the one hand and with more than 50% of the world population in the same drainage basin on the other hand has given this region a massive potential for violence. Once mixed with ethnic hostilities, land-border disputes and religious-political conflict, water becomes a ploy for regional rivalry and tensions. Out of 37 violent confrontations over water in the last 50 years, 30 have taken place in this region in form of military showdowns. Employing the qualitative descriptive-analytical methodology and using librarian resources, this study looked into the process of Golan Heights occupation by the Zionist regime. Affirming the military significance of this region for Zionists, this study assumes that water and hyrdo-political value of this region played significant roles in 5-decade occupation and later illegal annexation of the Golan Heights by the Zionist regime. The results showed that the Zionist regime would never abandon the water resources of the region even if it had to retreat from the occupied lands as part of the Middle East Peace Plan.

Employing descriptive-analytical methodology, this study attempts to examine security strategy of Russian Federation and the Zionist Regime in the Middle East based on Copenhagen school. Expansion of software power and globalized information have contributed to diversified threat factors in military, economic, political, science and technology, social stability, environment, terrorism etc aspects. Moreover, uncertain nature and blurred boundaries of information revolution have exposed cultures of many countries to a variety of perils. Means to attain such objectives could be ethical and political methodologies, military and economic power, coalition relations, public diplomacy, security cooperation, developmental cooperation, technological and science cooperation, international organizations and diplomatic missions which lend themselves well to analysis of Copenhagen school. The results indicate that despite different security pursuits in the Middle East and a strategic break regarding countering terrorism, Syrian crisis and the Islamic Republic of Iran, they have a lot in common when it comes to economic (political-economic) and other Middle East security issues such as how to interact with Arab states.

While the regional security tensions are escalating, in particular between Iran and the US, all eyes are gazed on the role played by the Palestine Resistance Movement in this confrontation which has taken the form of political and media views and comments, economic sanctions and perhaps an armed conflict between Iran and US or their allies. Iran maintains that its support of Palestinian armed resistance is not a sudden phenomenon or something that is rooted to realization of its transient, immediate regional plans. It is rooted in history and precedes the Islamic Revolution in 197. The victory of the Islamic Revolution kick started increased media and political supports of Palestine. Late Imam Khomeini, the leader of the Revolution handed over the embassy of the Zionist Regime during the time of the Ousted Shah to Palestine and established strong relations with Yasser Arafat, late Palestinian leader. Making passing references to various financial and spiritual, armaments and military, media and propaganda supports provided by the Islamic Republic for the resistant nation of Palestine, this paper addresses the relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and other resistance groups and identifies this relation as the continuation of Axis of Resistance countries that includes Iran, Syria and Lebanon as the supporters of such groups. This paper believes that the fates of all these are interconnected. Palestinian resistance groups in general and Hamas in particular has always asserted that are on special terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran as all of them share the same enemy in Zionist regime and we have adopted the strategy of combating and confronting this regime. The Zionist regime is our common enemy. Iran has never stopped its supports of Palestine cause the latest of which has been the Return Marches in the Gaza strip. The parties have worked out a strategic partnership.

This paper focuses on keeping the Gaza Strip under the dominance of the political system of the Zionist Regime and elimination of Hamas as a dangerous terrorist group from the region. However, Zionist political leaders and its military officials have conflicting views as to whether it should take the Gaza under its control and perform its separation operation in earnest or recognize it as part of Palestine. This paper also notes military and strategic defeats of the Zionist regime against Hamas as one of the major causes of concern for Zionist senior executives. This paper introduces Hamas as a terrorist group which poses grave dangers to the region and masterminds most of the provocative measures by Palestinians, something that has drawn condemnations of many Arab states, European countries and the US.