Palestine, Iraq, and American Strategy

Michael Scott Doran

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2003

Summary:  Many critics argue that the Bush administration should put off a showdown with Saddam Hussein and focus instead on achieving a breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But they fail to understand that although Palestine is central to the symbolism of Arab politics, it is actually marginal to its substance. Now, as in 1991, if a road to a calmer situation in Palestine does in fact exist, it runs through Baghdad.

Michael Scott Doran is Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Pan-Arabism Before Nasser: Egyptian Power Politics and the Palestine Question.

To interpret this statement properly, one needs to understand that the cause of Palestine is so deeply wrapped up with fundamental questions of identity in the Arab and Muslim worlds that a simple reference to it reveals almost nothing about the speaker's political agenda. A call to action over it, on the other hand, especially when accompanied by implied or overt criticism of government inaction, does reveal something: the speaker's opposition to the status quo. What the statement above shows, therefore, is bin Laden advancing his candidacy as an avenger, an opponent of the West and the corrupt Arab regimes that do its bidding. But it says nothing about his specific goals, nor does it even indicate that he has any practical concern for the fate of actual Palestinians. If anything, quite the opposite: Palestine-as-symbol works best when Palestine-as-place is burning.

Bin Laden may have moved Palestine to the center of his propaganda on the advice of al-Zawahiri, who brought to the organization years of political experience and considerable acumen. Or he may have recognized that the outbreak of the second intifada created a regional atmosphere conducive to a message couched in Palestinian terms. Whatever the trigger, what matters is that in Palestine-as-symbol he found the perfect vehicle for his propaganda.

Al Qaeda had been seeking to topple near enemies (such as the Saudi dynasty and the Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt) by sparking a conflict with the far enemy (the United States). To achieve this, bin Laden needed a war that would polarize Arab countries between ruling elites allied with the United States and societies sympathetic to him and his cause. If he and his associates had gone before the world proclaiming that they had carried out the attacks in order to, say, raise up the shari`a, they would have alienated potentially valuable constituencies for whom questions of religion are not the main grievance. By spinning the attacks as retribution for crimes committed against Palestine, however, al Qaeda benefited from the symbol's universalism, the fact that it represents all grievances in the Middle East against the West and its local agents.

In order to foster the broadest possible popular identification with the September 11 attacks, furthermore, the leaders of al Qaeda avoided taking direct responsibility for them, implying that the attacks expressed the collective will of the Islamic world itself. In their imagery, September 11 did not reflect the agenda of a specific political organization with its own parochial interests, but rather a belated counterattack in response to a prolonged war that the United States had been waging against Muslims everywhere -- a natural, even inevitable backlash against the oppressive status quo.

Given such an ideological framework, it is hard to conceive of any plausible change in American policy with respect to Palestine that would appease bin Laden and his ilk. Radical Islamists are by nature revolutionaries, enemies of the prevailing order and enemies of the West. A practical solution to the Palestine question would solidify the status quo and further legitimate the presence of the United States in the region. Far from welcoming such developments, radical Islamists would consider them a catastrophe.

THE JAWF INTIFADA

Al Qaeda invoked Palestine as a trump card in a game of Arab nationalist one-upmanship, trying to delegitimize the Saudi regime and weaken its grip on power. It was a kind of political theater that invited audience participation. When a figure such as Osama bin Laden attacks the United States, he hopes to energize disaffected groups and create cadres that, although mobilized in the name of Palestine, will actually work on behalf of local agendas.

A similar phenomenon has been taking place recently in Al Jawf, a region located in northern Saudi Arabia east of the Jordanian border. In the two years since the second intifada broke out, Al Jawf has earned the distinction of being the only place in the Saudi kingdom repeatedly and consistently to defy laws criminalizing popular demonstrations. Matters reached a head last April 5 in the town of Sakaka, where about 4,000 angry young men congregated in town squares, burned Israeli and American flags, and called on Arab states to take action on behalf of the Palestinians. To restore order Saudi authorities had to dispatch three transport planes carrying 500 riot police, and for weeks afterward these forces continued to patrol the area.

As extensive reporting in the London-based Arabic daily Al-Quds al-Arabi has made clear, the demonstrations "were organized in solidarity with the Palestinians and in protest over the neglect which the region is suffering at the hands of the government." Al Jawf is one of the most backward places in Saudi Arabia. Many towns in the region, including Sakaka, lack electricity and the basic amenities of modern life. Located far from ports and oil revenues, lacking access to the corridors of power, the residents of Al Jawf feel deprived. They secretly quote lines from their poet laureate, Dabis al-Murkhan, who immortalized the region's anti-Saudi sentiments: "By God, were the skies to rain sheikhs and agencies ffi the tyranny that has been heaped on us would not pass away."

Like bin Laden, in their protests the people of Al Jawf chose to express their grievances by playing the Palestine trump card. By decrying the "shameful Arab silence" in the face of Israeli military operations, they telegraphed to their government a simple message: prove that you are authentic Muslims and Arabs by taking meaningful action on Palestine. Of course, the protesters knew that the government, given its strong economic and security ties to the United States, would do no such thing, thus tacitly admitting its complicity in the oppression of fellow Arabs. What was really at issue in Al Jawf, therefore, was less Israeli-Palestinian relations than the legitimacy of the Saudi government -- something that can be seen from the details of the protests themselves.