As reported on Whaleoil recently, the Trump administration’s “Peace to Prosperity” conference in Bahrain attracted the patronage of no less than seven Arab states. The Trump plan is simple: rather than try and enforce peace, build up the prosperity of the Palestinian territories and peace will naturally follow.
Unfortunately, the absentees from the conference spoke louder than all the attendees.
Israel’s Arab neighbors increasingly are looking to bury the hatchet after decades of a technical state of war, but not the Muslim Brotherhood.
Recognising the legitimacy of the Jewish state is a huge step forward for the Arab states which have since its inception vowed to destroy it.
Bahrain knows Israel is here to stay and wants peace, Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa told the Times of Israel on Wednesday.
His comments came as the parties debate the pros and cons of President Trump’s “Deal of the Century” in Manama, Bahrain. The Brotherhood made it clear the details didn’t matter.
Developing nations around the world would leap at the prospect of tens of billions of dollars of investment. But, it appears the power players in Palestine would prefer guns and rockets to schools, hospitals and factories.
The U.S. proposal would devote $27.5 billion to building up the West Bank and Gaza, including a $5 billion transportation corridor to connect the territories. It is part of a proposed $50 billion economic investment in the region akin to the post-World War II Marshall Plan. Saudi Arabia contends the plan leads to a fully independent Palestinian state.
No, thanks, say the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. They just want the Juden raus.
The statements make it clear that, to the Brotherhood and to Hamas, the problem is not Israeli government actions or policies. It is the country’s existence that can never be accepted in a negotiation. They believe that Jews are the enemies of Allah, as countless videos on Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV show.
“Killing the occupiers [Israelis] is worship that Allah made into law,” a 2012 propaganda music video produced by Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, and translated by Palestine Media Watch, says. “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah,” Arabic text on a sign in the video said.
The Hamas charter quotes Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
These anti-Semitic views predate Israel’s establishment.
The Brotherhood’s anti-Semitism made them natural allies of the Nazis. The Brotherhood sent the then grand mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Muhammad Amin al-Husseini, to Germany to meet with Hitler. Al-Husseini helped recruit Muslims from the Balkans, Egypt and elsewhere to fight for the Nazis and became an SS general.
Al-Husseini and the Brotherhood rejected the post-war 1947 United Nations partition plan that would have created two states, one Israeli and one Palestinian. Instead, the Muslim Brotherhood chose the path of violence. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Special Apparatus entered Palestine in March 1948, two months before the proclamation of the State of Israel. The Brotherhood rejected repeated U.N. truce resolutions and vowed to fight until “we shoot the last Zionist soldier to the sea.”
Although many in the Middle East are currently reconciling with Israel, the Muslim Brotherhood and its Palestinian offshoots remain firm in their belief that there can be no peace as long as Israel exists.
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This raises the question of how long Western democracies like Britain and the United States can continue to tolerate followers and front groups of the Muslim Brotherhood, much less politicians with direct links to both the Brotherhood and Hamas. Both groups have repeatedly demonstrated that they are implacably opposed to peace on any terms with Israel and are blatantly anti-Semitic hate groups.
