Amid all the empty rhetoric coming from Muslim leaders on the Palestine issue (at best, solidarity rather than condemnation, as from the UAE), the only concrete proposal that deserves attention was voiced by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu. They suggested that member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) form an international peacekeeping force to solve the problem. But how realistic is this idea? Isn’t it just populism, like the promises of a fading «eternal state» to conquer all the countries of the world under Dabiq and conquer Rome? When asking such a question, one must look at things realistically.
On the one hand, the author of this initiative has failed to fulfill many of his modest promises, be it to overthrow the Assad regime or even to take Manbij. On the other hand, he has achieved many things that seemed impossible before — three military operations in Syria with the creation of a safe zone for Syrian Sunnis, the rescue of a friendly government in Libya, the return of Muslims to Hagia Sophia, and significant assistance in the return of occupied brotherly Karabakh, which also seemed impossible to many. However, Israel is certainly not Armenia, not the battered regime of Assad, and not Haftar. Therefore, one must clearly understand what is fantasy when it comes to Israel today (in the existing reality, which can change on the Day of Judgement, as known from the Hadith…) and what can be an ambitious but achievable goal even in the foreseeable future.
First of all, it is clear that no hypothetical joint military operations of Muslim countries against Israel will be possible as long as Israel is under the protection of the world’s greatest military power, the United States. Therefore, in order to eliminate this key factor, either the United States must cease to be such a global power with an active policy in the Middle East, or the direction of its policy in the region must change, which could theoretically be compatible with conducting an international operation in the region with goals that would please it (and others), as will be discussed below. At present, however, the US has not reached the necessary condition for this, although its objective decline, growing internal contradictions, fatigue from active foreign policy, and a decline in support for Israel among its changing population allow for the hope that within a few decades the situation may change in the desired direction. Again, who could have hoped that the Kremlin would allow Azerbaijan, with the support of Turkey, to carry out such an operation in Karabakh? However, something happened that made it possible under certain conditions and in a certain format. The same could happen here one day.
Secondly, it is clear that such an operation can only be a joint project of the main Muslim military powers, not only Turkey. Even Pakistan with all its military potential will not be able to help if two Muslim countries neighboring Israel — Egypt and Syria — do not participate in this operation. The rise to power of Mohammed Morsi, may Allah bless him, could have been the first step on this path, and that is why the international Zionism had to get rid of him with blood on their hands and replace him with forces convenient to them, which happened. Likewise, Syria in its current state cannot be a participant or even a launching pad for such an attack. Therefore, these two key problems — Egyptian and Syrian — should be solved in order to be able to talk about something serious in this regard.
Finally, there is Israel itself. A state with an army, the potential of which should not be exaggerated, as is often done, but neither should it be underestimated, as the history of Arab-Israeli wars in the last century has shown. Most importantly, it is a de facto (if illegal) nuclear state, capable of turning not only its own territory into a scorched earth, but also a significant part of the region, if its life is threatened. Something that, of course, will not go unnoticed by the surrounding world.
So what can we talk about, especially considering the last and first points?
We need to understand and study Israeli society and politics in the same way that Zionist «Islamic experts» and analysts study the Islamic world and the threats emanating from it. They know our weaknesses and play on them, but in reality they have weaknesses as well, and no less. The main one is the deep division in Israeli society, as well as in world Jewry, into several factions with different goals and interests. When we talk about Israel, there are camps of religious Zionists, centrist Israeli Zionists, Russian-speaking Zionists, religious anti-Zionists, secular anti-Zionists and post-Zionists, as well as the camp of Israeli Arabs with conditionally left and conditionally right factions. Although many of them can unite against common threats and neutralize the resistance of others, there are serious contradictions between them that will objectively grow. The same applies to the attitude of influential circles of American Jewry towards the policies of the ruling circles of Israel. In this context, it is important to understand what the various factions of Israeli and international Jewry want, in which case almost all of them will act together, and in which case it will be possible to find common ground with them.
Of course, one could dismiss all this as the product of an inflamed imagination, but in reality it is a symmetrical response to an extremely ambitious strategy that expansionist Zionism is currently trying to implement. They also understand that regardless of their initial desire to be a Western outpost in the Islamic world, the reality of geography and demography is such that they are part of the latter and will have to live in its midst, one way or another. They just want to build a configuration of this Islamic world that is advantageous to them by removing the Palestinian issue from the agenda by dividing Palestine between Jordan (West Bank) and Egypt (Gaza), weakening Turkey with the help of the Kurds and Arab regimes, and anchoring all this with the Abraham Accords. But now it is obvious that this strategy has encountered insurmountable difficulties, and the hands of the clock of history have begun to move in the opposite direction. In the direction where Jews will have to accept the reality of the Islamic world, including Palestine, and Muslims will have to help them find their place in it.
Thus, the international peacekeeping operation of Muslim forces should have a clear roadmap that will be proposed for implementation to the healthy forces of Israeli society and the international community against the backdrop of the military defeat of extremist Zionism. Simultaneously with the military defeat of Israel 1.0, it would be optimal to create Israel 2.0, possibly in confederation with Palestine, which would avoid the serious consequences of territorial division between Jewish and Palestinian enclaves. And in this Israel there would be a place for the religious sector, the secular sector, and of course the Muslims would play an important role, which is objectively already happening due to demographic changes. Therefore, Israel 2.0 should ultimately join the OIC, which includes countries with mixed Muslim-Christian populations, so that a country with a mixed Jewish-Muslim population could also join.
Some may see all this as the ravings of an inflamed imagination, but in reality it is a symmetrical response to an extremely ambitious strategy that expansionist Zionism is currently trying to implement. They also understand that regardless of their initial desire to be a Western outpost in the Islamic world, the reality of geography and demography is such that they are part of the latter and will have to live in its midst, one way or another. They just want to build a configuration of this Islamic world that is advantageous to them by removing the Palestinian issue from the agenda by dividing Palestine between Jordan (West Bank) and Egypt (Gaza), weakening Turkey with the help of the Kurds and Arab regimes, and anchoring all this with the Abraham Accords. But now it is obvious that this strategy has encountered insurmountable difficulties, and the hands of the clock of history have begun to move in the opposite direction. In the direction where Jews will have to accept the reality of the Islamic world, including Palestine, and Muslims will have to help them find their place in it.