The new strategy being employed to militarily defeat the Islamic movements in the Arab/Muslim world is not really a new strategy. It is an old strategy being employed in a new venue. It is a strategy that until now seemed to favor Israel, since Israel has the most powerful proxies in the region, the United States and Britain who both entered the war in Iraq to advance Israel’s geo-political interests, and also to secure a source of reliable energy for Israel that would either originate in Iraq, or be piped through some part of Iraq into Israel. The war between Israel and Hizbollah was another rendition of that same strategy without the oil interest. In this instance, the proxy war saw some adjustments that left Israel pretty much on its own against Hizbollah, since the US and Britain couldn’t find any believable pretense like WMD or regime change under which to engage Hizbollah militarily on behalf of Israel, and so Israel had to fight for itself, while the US and Britain provided legal cover and weapons for Israel’s illegal onslaught against both the Palestinian and Lebanese people, an onslaught that left Lebanon peppered with illegal cluster bombs, and resulted in another illegal and immoral massacre of innocent unarmed Palestinians by Israel. Considering the proxies and the players in the Israeli v. Hizbollah and Palestine war, and also in the Iraq war, anyone asked to pick a winner, would have likely put their money on Israel and its fellowship of tyrants and warmongers, the US and Britain, and they would have lost their bets. Anyone betting today on Abbas in Palestine, will loose that bet too.

Unfortunately, Israel and its proxies are unrepentant following their defeat in Lebanon and their pending defeat in Iraq. Frustrated by their continued failure to undermine the duly elected Palestinian government, and still belligerent and convinced that militarism is the only solution to all problems, Israel and its league of dishonorable proxies have now sought to create a civil war that pits the Palestinians against one another in a classic proxy war that is aimed at defeating the growing influence of Iran in the region, and to restore their lost aura of invincibility and also what the secular nationalists lost in bragging rights to Iran, Hizbollah, and Hamas, and their loss of face that resulted from the UN General Assembly’s official condemnation of Israel, that overrode the now impotent US veto, cast in the UN Security Council to shield Israel from the condemnation it earned and deserved as a result of its brutal, and illegal military assaults on Lebanon and Palestine.

Just as in Iraq, Israel and its lackeys, including their Arab worshippers, are pursuing a divide and conquer strategy in Palestine, which could possibly engulf the entire region in a sectarian war not fought along religious lines, but rather along ideological lines. The media loves to offer up the Sunni/Shia divide as the primary weakness to exploit in the Arab/Muslim world by those who use differences to foment hate and war. The real divide between Fatah and Hamas is ideological, and it symbolizes the difference between those like Iran who do not believe that the US and Israel should dominate, subjugate and dictate the future of the region, and its people, and those who have become so accustomed to being well paid stooges of the US and Israel, that no other possibility except servitude seems either feasible, or reasonable to them, and so they cast their lots against their fellow Arabs and Muslims, fearing Iran more than they fear Israel, even though Iran has never slaughtered their people to ethically cleanse them from their land, targeted and killed their leaders, confiscated their land, robbed their banks or forced any of their people into refugee camps to languish for years, barely surviving. In fact, Iran, almost more than any other Muslim country, put everything on the line for the sake of Palestine, determined to break Israel’s psychological and material choke hold on the region that has left it economically, spiritually and politically fatigued, being pushed back and forth through periods of either intense and brutal Israeli violence, or quite US, British and Israeli political gamesmanship and subterfuge designed to undermine the fragile democratic institution that was set up in Palestine to legitimize the PLO as a negotiating partner for Israel, hoping to create the illusion of a negotiated agreement between the two parties that was really only a paid capitulation by an illegitimate PLO, brought back to the territories from exile to replace a newly founded Hamas movement that had spawned a militant resistance more fierce than anything the secular nationalist PLO had ever dreamed of, and a nightmare for Israel and its patrons in the West.

When the people of Palestine voted Hamas into power, and rejected the PA corruption and capitulation to Israel that caused a bloody uprising that resulted in the Jenin massacre, the Palestinian people sent a message to the west more profound, and more powerful than anything ever dictated by Israel at the negotiating table. They said that they were no longer afraid, and no longer willing to roll over to the status quo, or to be sacrificed on the political altars of the Arab elite. The Palestinian people, like most of the Arab and Muslim people of the region, old and young alike, are tired of business and life as it has been, and they have repeatedly cast their votes for change, and a leadership that will use the truth as a power, like others had used lies and tricks and double talk to make themselves rich and powerful men, celebrated by Israel and the West as peacemakers, having traded the freedom and lives of their people for a pat on the head, and a photo op. That the other Arab governments have now come out openly to oppose democracy in Palestine, and to undermine the legitimate and duly elected government, is nothing new to the people of the region who have always known that the occupation could never have lasted as long as it has without Arab support, and that Israel would not continue to attempt to drive the Palestinians from the occupied territories without an agreement with some Arab nation or nations, to take them in and assume responsibility for them, just like they invaded Iraq with the hope of using Jordan as a proxy authority to govern what they had hoped would be a broken and vulnerable Iraq. Just as the US transitional authority under Paul Bremer either knowingly or unknowingly incited the insurgency in Iraq by shutting down newspapers and other proactive acts, Israel, the US and Britain are inciting a civil war in Palestine. Just as the real insurgency in Iraq, not including Al-Qaeda and the Kurds, is frustrating Israel’s plans for Iraq, the civil war in Palestine will completely undo Israeli and western influence over the region, and spoil any hopes of a negotiated settlement between the Arab countries and Israel for years to come. Proxy wars in the Arab/Muslim world are not a new strategy. Nothing can be learned from them except one thing; when the proxies fail, that becomes the pretext for more desperate measures, including more violence, more troops, and last ditch efforts to wipe out all opposition once and for all, which will ultimately lead to another intifada that will probably be more like a popular insurgency than a Palestinian uprising.

The writer is the Founder and President of the National Association of Muslim American Women. The author is also head of the International Assoc. for Muslim Women and Children, an accredited NGO with the UN Division on the Rights of the Palestinians.