Jordan's King Abdullah renews stark warnings about Palestinian problem - 22-May-07 - Generational Dynamics

Palestinian militias continued launching numerous rockets from Gaza into Israel. Most did no harm, but one killed a woman driving a car.

The Israeli Air Force continued striking in Gaza, targeting members of Palestinian militias accused of launching the rockets.

Both sides are threatening to escalate further: Israel is threatening to target the Hamas leadership, and Hamas is threatening to renew its suicide bomber attacks on Israeli civilians.

The escalated fighting with Israel has, for the time being at least, quelled the internecine fighting between the Fatah and Hamas factions of the Palestinians.

All of this happened as heavy fighting continued in the Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, home to about 40,000 Palestinians. Dozens have been killed in the crossfile between the Lebanese army and the new al-Qaeda linked terrorist group, Fatah al-Islam, led by Palestinian terrorist Shakir al-Abssi. Evidently, Palestinians are not supporting Fatah al-Islam and feel no connection to the group, but they are appalled that it's Palestinian refugees that are being killed as collateral damage. (There are 13 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, set up in the 1960s to house the Palestinians displaced by wars with Israel.)

At the same time, there was another bomb blast in the capital, Beirut. Sunday's bomb blast was in a Christian neighborhood, and Monday's was in a Muslim neighborhood.

With the Palestinian situation seeming increasingly out of control, Jordan's King Abdullah has appealed once more for international help to bring the situation under control, in an interview with the BBC.

The interview was very interesting because of his analysis of the situation, and where Generational Dynamics agrees with him and where it disagrees with him.

Jordan's King Abdullah II, addressing a joint session of Congress on March 7 (Source: CNN)

Abdullah's central point is that the Israeli/Palestinian problem is the core problem, the heart of all problems in the Mideast. In an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos in November, he explained this to Stephanopolous five times, but Stephanopolous remained clueless.

There is absolutely no question that Abdullah is 100% correct in this appraisal, as I've been saying on this web site for five years. And yet, none of these journalists, politicians and pundits seem to get it. They constantly focus on the Iraq war as the cause of all problems, as if the Arab/Jewish conflicts began in 2003 instead of eons ago.

Abdullah repeated this point in Monday's interview, but he made a number of other interesting points as well. Here's my transcript of some excerpts, with my comments interspersed. The first question had to with the reasons for the Palestinian civil war:

Abdullah: "I think it's an issue that's just erupted between both parties. But I do know from all our accounts that both sides, Fatah and Hamas, are trying to maintain calm as quickly as possible, because I think they realize that it's very easy for this issue to spill out of control." ...

Q: "Is this about a power struggle between Hamas and Fatah, or is it street level power?"

Abdullah: "I think it's a bit of both. I would say that at least the leaders are being very responsible on both sides now because whatever is happening on the street now can get out of control. Our reports indicate that the leadership on either side are trying to bring calm as quickly as possible. ..

I think that there are quite wide ideological differences between both groups and that's one of the challenges that the Palestinians have. They have to keep in mind that overshadowing their difficulties is really this final opportunity for peace, and the final opportunity for a Palestinian state, and my concern is that this infighting, or this civil disorder at the moment, will affect the future of Palestine."

These comments go to the heart of what I've been saying about this conflict. The Gaza strip is densely populated and the median age in the Gaza strip is 15.8. Thus, the Gaza strip is run by a generation of children with guns and missiles.

It certainly is true that there are differences between Fatah and Hamas at the leadership level, but those differences are nuances, not really of interest to the children running Gaza. My reading of the situation is that it's much more a "street level" struggle than a leadership struggle. And as the generational changes continue, the conflict at the "street level" will continue to grow, not lessen, no matter what the leadership does.

Q: "Are Israel's attacks on Gaza mean a return to the battles of the last year?"

Abdullah: "No, I don't think so. I think the leaders realize on all sides -- the Israeli leadership is keeping themselves mindful of the peace proposal. I don't think it is back to the drawing board. We see a spike of tension and crises, and I think this is why everyone is scrambling to try and restore calm as quickly as possible because we don't want to lose the next month or two due to the instability that allows the extremists to call victory against the peace process."

Q: "What do you think -- what's been your reaction when you've heard of Israeli warplanes targeting very specifically hamas headquarters?"

Abdullah: "We want all sides to be a positive element to bring stability back. so our reaching out as Arab countries to fight Hamas also Jordan and Egypt are reaching out to Israel.

We need cooler heads to prevail at the moment because if one element is involved in targeting or violence then it's very easy for the other elements to get into it. We just need everybody to back off -- understanding that Israel has some major of having rockets fired at their country."

Abdullah calls it "a spike in tension and crises," but this is not what's going on at all. It's a TREND of increasing tension and crises.

As regular readers will recall, I first said in 2003, that the Jews and the Arabs are headed for a new genocidal war, replaying the genocidal war of the late 1940s, when Palestine was partitioned and the state of Israel was created, and that this new war will pull in countries in the entire region, including Europe and the United States eventually. These conclusions were based on a Generational Dynamics analysis.

Since then, especially since the death of Yasser Arafat, the trend in the region has been almost straight downhill, with worsening tension, crises and chaos, almost on a daily basis, as I've documented frequently on this web site.

Q: "But do you fear what some might consider an impetuous move by the Israelis to assert themselves in Gaza, given what's happening internally but for domestic Israeli political reasons?"

Abdullah: "That is always a concern and again, we keep reminding all the players to keep their eye on the prize, the larger picture, which is trying to launch a peace process.

By the way, whenever we come close to launching a process, this is when extremists on all sides want to destabilize the issue, and create arguments not to move forward. So whenever we come closer to getting the parties to resolve their differences and take that step forward, these things happen. We just need to keep our eye on the bigger prize."

This is an interesting point that's not made often enough: That there are groups of people, like Osama bin Laden but especially in younger generations, who WANT to provoke full-scale war.

An example came out yesterday. There were 140 rockets launched from Gaza into Israel last week, and according to an analysis by one columnist, Hamas times "the lethal Qassam [rocket] salvo to occur just before the 8 P.M. television news after keeping a low profile all day. The purpose is to create maximum terror and maximum news coverage.

The same thing is true in Iraq, incidentally. The al-Qaeda insurgents set off one or two car bombs in marketplaces each morning, so that they'll make the BBC morning newscast, and then the American newscast later in the day. Terrorist can be just PR.

Q: "I'm tempted therefore to put to you the remarkable progress that was made in Northern Ireland two weeks ago. Now, you could have said there were equal moments of despair over many years, including the last decade, when people thought it was impossible to get any kind of deal. Do you think there's something in what we've seen in Northern Ireland which will be applicable to what we have here, which will end what we're seeing in Gaza at the moment."

Abdullah: "Having studied in England for many years, I always see many comparisons of the complications of Northern Ireland and the difficulties that the British and the Irish face to what we have here. There's a lot of similarities. But what it comes down to, what history shows, is that people with the right conscience do not give up. As difficult and as dark as it gets, we have to keep trying. And this is what we're saying."

It's the technique of journalists who really don't think very much to think that two situations that have some cosmetic similarities are completely similar, and that some magic solution that worked in one case worked in the other. What matters is the generational timeline, and journalists never have any concept of that.

I've never done an in-depth analysis of what's happened in Northern Ireland. There had been centuries of fights between the Protestants and Catholics, and they seemed to be tapering off, until the 1840s when the Irish potato famine occurred. This triggered new waves of violence, most recently in the 1970s. It's not surprising that the violence is tapering off, just as some of the European "religious wars" of the 1500s and 1600s have tapered off. But there's absolutely no connection between those situations and the Arab/Palestinian struggle, with the latter going much, much deeper. Fortunately, King Abdullah didn't swallow the bait.

"Specifically on the Palestinian issue, because physically in a year or two, we may not have much left of a Palestinian state to talk about, and therefore if we don't have a Palestinian state, can we ever have peace between the Arabs and Israelis?

This is why we're trying our hardest to launch the process now, knowing that this is not the right time, but really it's the only time we have left to us."

Here he puts forth an idea that I don't understand, and neither did the pundit who followed the interview.

What does he mean that "physically in a year or two" there won't be "much left of a Palestinian state to talk about"?

Is he saying that the region is on the verge of total war? Or does he mean that the Palestinian government is falling apart, and won't be able to govern at all in two years?

Q: "Can I finally ask you about the implications of what's happening in Iran. Because you're trying to keep the crisis here focused on the Palestinian question. And there are those who say that Iran is creating enormous challenges."

Abdullah: "We have always understood in this part of the world that everything in this part of the world is interconnected. That's a difficulty I think that the West has of connecting the dots. We're looking at all these regional issues as big pieces of a puzzle. And what I'm saying is that the most critical piece of that puzzle for the future of the Mideast is the Israeli/Palestinian one."

Q: "So Iran does not broaden the issue. Iraq does not broaden the issue."

Abdullah: "They're all interconnected, but if we want to start pushing them at least back into the light, we need to start getting some winds. I keep saying that the core issue, of all the issues we have in the Middle East, the central issue, the heart and the center of all Arabs and Muslims IS the Israeli/Palestinian one. If we can move that in the opposite direction, it allows us much more flexibility in dealing with the others."

Q: "Your majesty, thank you very much indeed."

Conflict risk level for next 6-12 months as of: 9-Feb-2006

W. Europe

Arab Israeli

Russia Caucasus

Kashmir

China

North Korea

Financial

Bird flu

Key:

1=Low risk 2=yellow

2=Med

3=High 4=black

4=Active

As I said earlier, people just don't seem to get it that the conflict between Arabs and Jews overshadows everything in the Mideast. I get that because Generational Dynamics tells me, and King Abdullah understands it intuitively, because he's at the center of everything.

On my little conflict risk graphic, Iran and Iraq don't even appear. There's a very good reason for that. Both countries are in a generational Awakening era, just one generation past the genocidal Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s. Therefore, Generational Dynamics tells us quite clearly that it's very unlikely that either country will spark a major war. That's just how it is, and how it's been throughout history. The same is true of Lebanon and Syria.

But Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories are all in generational Crisis eras. Saudi Arabia's last crisis war was the Ibn Saud conquest that ended in 1925; and as for the others, the last crisis war was the extremely genocidal war between Arabs and Jews that occurred in the late 1940s, after Palestine was partitioned and the state of Israel was created. And incidentally, the reason that so many suicide bombers come from Saudi Arabia is because that country is so deep into a Crisis era, farther even than the Palestinians or Israelis.

So that's where the real war is going to begin -- not in Awakening era countries like Iran or Iraq, but in Crisis era regions like Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

In fact, the reason that there's still any major insurgency at all in Iraq is because it's being driven by al-Qaeda Sunnis from Crisis era countries. I detailed this in an article in April.

King Abdullah's desperate plea has fallen largely on deaf ears. It was perfectly obvious that the BBC journalist didn't believe Abdullah that the major problem in the region was the Arab/Jewish conflict. It's simply too abstract a concept for him and most journalists to understand.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the Arabs and Jews are headed for a new genocidal crisis war, replaying the genocidal crisis war of the late 1940s. This war will pull in other countries, including America, and will trigger the Clash of Civilizations world war if it hasn't already begun. (22-May-07) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 22-May-07
Jordan's King Abdullah renews stark warnings about Palestinian problem

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 22-May-07 Jordan's King Abdullah renews stark warnings about Palestinian problem

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 22-May-07
Jordan's King Abdullah renews stark warnings about Palestinian problem