The ongoing events in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, as well as in the Palestinian Authority territories and potentially soon in Jordan, demonstrate the failure of Western political concepts that began during the Mandate period. The artificial state entities imposed on Arabs in the Middle East under Western influence are now turning back on their creators and rulers, extracting a bloody price from all involved.
The wisdom of Ottoman rule in the Middle East, which lasted about 400 years, did not survive World War I. The Western powers, Britain and France, who viewed themselves as enlightened, failed to truly understand and respect the Arab-Muslim order of the Middle East. They destroyed the old regional order and imported to their occupied territories – where Islam had ruled for about 1,300 years through desert laws, honour, and the sword – "progressive" ideas and political and social structures that had evolved in their own societies over centuries through evolutionary processes including wars, revolutions, and guillotine executions.
Now the West stands astonished at the disintegration into "atoms" of these artificial Arab states – the masterpiece of Western inspiration and imposition upon the Arabs. The forced political conglomerates created over about a hundred years are breaking down into their original and natural components, which were there for centuries and remain based on clan values, strong tribal loyalties, and deeply rooted desert laws.
A State, a Kingdom or a conglomerate?
In the early 1920s, after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the end of World War I, the League of Nations approved the implementation of the mandate system in territories conquered by France and Britain in the Middle East, divided between them under the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The idea underlying the mandate system was control of occupied territory until local inhabitants could establish and manage an independent state. The attempt to allow an Arab leader from one tribe, faction, and religious belief to rule those not of his tribe, faith, and sect with informed consent and genuine desire for fair coexistence, was and remains detached from the Arab and Muslim reality of hundreds and thousands of years, that took root in the Middle East even before Islam arose and spread.
The notion that the artificial national conglomerate created by the French in 1943 called "Lebanon" could function properly, enlightened and tolerantly over years under Western inspiration did not last long without violent conflicts and civil wars. The religious, sectarian, social, and cultural division in Lebanon exploded, in every sense of the word, into fragments.
The remnants of Lebanon, held together in recent years by "Iranian adhesives" and occasionally resuscitated by French courtesy, are not healing or promising good and healthy lives for the divided residents who remain in their country for lack of choice. They are unlikely to soon consolidate into a united entity in the spirit of Western ideals and the supposedly good old format. The Sunnis and Shiites will not give up their identity, heritage, and bleeding inheritance. They will separate from other communities: Christians, Alawites, Druze, and others trying to survive in their shadow without significant influence or extra success.
The notion that the Syrian conglomerate that gained independence in 1946, ruled by force, governmental terror, corruption and slaughter, could maintain a Western-style state proved to be science fiction. The Alawite minority that ruled brutally for over fifty years has been defeated after a civil war lasting about 13 years, despite generous Iranian and Russian support. What will replace the regime? Will it be rule by Muslim Arabs from ISIS, Al-Qaeda, or "just" Islamic Jihad?
It is no wonderthat the Druze in south west Syria were fed up with the idea of a Syrian state, and some of them even sought to annex to Israel lately. Is there anyone who believes that the Muslim Arabs, who observe the "law of Muhammad by the sword" and slaughter infidels, anyone who denies their path, will succeed in establishing a united and prosperous state, on the basis of the same Western system called "state", who has failed in this part of the world?
Did the Iraqi conglomerate, which consolidated into a kingdom in 1932, hold up better in the past than it has since the toppling of the tyrant Saddam Hussein in 2003 by the Americans? Those who in their arrogance thought they could educate the "savages" and make them more Western and democratic than the British who preceded them? With the American withdrawal from Iraq, the country remained torn and divided. Democracy is not a value or concept that took hold through Western political thought, supposedly pure, sanctimonious and enlightened.
Next in Line
Which conglomerates are next to be revealed as artificial and not necessarily royal? Will it be the Kingdom of Jordan, which received the territory of Transjordan as part of a work arrangement for King Abdullah I courtesy of the British Mandate, at the expense of part of the territory designated for establishing a national home for the Jewish people? Has there been a clear answer since the kingdom's declaration of independence in 1946 about who is Jordanian, what is their identity and unique heritage that distinguishes them from an Arab in Iraq, Israel or Saudi Arabia?
Are the descendants of the Hashemite dynasty, who constitute a minority in Jordan, the model of an "authentic" Jordanian, or are they more identified as Bedouins originating from Arabia who rule over other Arabs who came to the kingdom through waves of refugees and migration, through cunning, force, and Western support for now?
Similarly, it is worth questioning how anyone still believes that the fragile Arab conglomerate in the Land of Israel, which fails to unite around any issue not involving hatred of Israel, even under the Palestinian Authority's leadership, is capable of maintaining an entity that would be called a "Palestinian state"? We even struggle to name a single noteworthy Arab municipality or council across Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and certainly here, whether in Palestinian Authority territories or other parts of the Land of Israel.
Our Arab neighbours will continue to blame the State of Israel and Jews for their failure to flourish in the Middle East. They will refuse to acknowledge their unwillingness or inability to change their basic habits and characteristics that hinder their growth. Instead, they sanctify hatred of Jews, concern only for blood relatives, and blood itself (blood revenge, honour killings, and expertise in theft and robbery).
Summary and Points to Consider
In the Arab world, tribal, familial-clan loyalties are the most important, dictating and determining factors. They will decide the character of society, entity or state, and what path it will take.
Western political-social ideas are not necessarily suitable, and certainly not life-prolonging for those forced to live surrounded by Arabs. Many Western ideas are not internalized in this part of the world where we live, which is accustomed to different laws, traditions, and codes hundreds of years old.
In our region, there exist Arab-Muslim societies at their core, respecting desert and Sharia laws. These societies live, survive, and exist based on tribal heritage, traditions, and loyalties that those who deviate from, pay for in blood. These are relationship systems that override international alliances and forced agreements, pleasant to Western ears lacking understanding. Systems that override Western logic disconnected from Arab reality and often as far from it, as east is from west.
The recommended formats therefore, as alternatives to the conglomerates that constituted the artificial entities called Arab states, are different and creative, such as those of the Emirates – mostly homogeneous tribal political entities operating with great success. Dr. Mordechai Kedar has written and lectured extensively on this as a possibility for the Arabs of Judea and Samaria as an alternative to the Palestinian Authority, certainly to a state led by Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, and others.
The Arabs, for their part, struggle to understand that the Western political model is not necessarily suitable for them, and they try to implement it forcefully in their territories instead of replacing it with another, possibly more successful one. The Arabs of the Land of Israel ignore their brothers' lessons, refuse to learn from their own and others' experiences, and are mainly busy spoiling and destroying their future.
The Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, and other state models, as they have existed until now – have failed. The conglomerate states, composed of different and hostile sects, religions, and tribes, have been breaking apart into fragments and pieces for years. After the "enlightened" world has witnessed the void created with each Arab-political failure, how can there still be those who think and believe that a "Palestinian conglomerate state" deserves to be established on the Land of Israel that isn't in the realm of a horror movie or sick fantasy?