mordant wit

The war is now part of the global conflict between the U.S. and radical Islam


Something radically new is emerging in the Middle East: the century-old Arab-Israeli dispute has been transmuted from a nationalist to a religious war. And as a result, the Arab-Israeli wars are now merging into the global conflict between radical Islam and the West.

The transformation was swift in coming. Hamas' electoral landslide in Palestine just six months ago marked the political death of Yasser Arafat and the secular, vaguely socialist and entirely nationalist movement he represented. Hamas is fighting not to create a 23rd Arab state but, as its charter explains, to recover "an Islamic Waqf." Meaning? Territory claimed under the Islamic precept that "any land the Muslims have conquered by force ... during the times of [Islamic] conquests" more than a millennium ago belongs to Muslims forever because "the Muslims consecrated these lands to Muslim generations until the Day of Judgment."

In the first period of the Arab-Israeli dispute, Israel was at war with pan-Arabism, the idea of essential Arab unity across states and the rejection of any non-Arab state in their region. Pan-Arabism was humiliated by Israel's six-day victory in the 1967 war. The subsequent death of Egyptian President Nasser, who instigated that disaster, accelerated pan-Arabism's decline. Its final collapse occurred when its last great proponent, Saddam Hussein, was swept away in 2003. The successor Arab rulers no longer dream of a single Arab state and have grudgingly come to accept a small Jewish state in part of Palestine. Hence the peace treaties that Egypt and Jordan signed with Israel.