The Muslim Ummah is in a shambles. The civil wars in Yemen and Syria have not yet ended. Though an uneasy calm and peace characterizes the Arab-Iran relations after Saudi Arabia and Iran moved to reconcile, the war in the occupied land of Palestine has jolted many Muslim capitals exacerbating their security concerns. The genocidal killings of tens of thousands of Palestinian people by Israel would keep haunting the Muslim kings and Emirs for years to come. Israel is hell-bent on dragging Iran into the conflict.
The apathy of the Muslim leaders was shocking. None of the Muslim countries did more than lip service to the just cause of the Palestinians and, despite the bloodbath, no Muslim country dared to suspend its diplomatic relations with the Jewish State. All cowered under fear for their security or were reluctant to incur the anger of Washington DC. Israel, with the support and abetment of the USA, has long emerged as the dominant power in the Middle East with a robust kinetic power and poses an ultimate threat to any Muslim country.
The global political and strategic scenario will certainly change after the forthcoming US Presidential elections. Former President Donald Trump has emerged as the Republican candidate to face President Joe Biden. There are seasoned analyses that he would be re-elected as the leader of the USA if no extraordinary global event takes place to turn the swing vote in favour of President Biden.
None of the Muslim countries did more than lip service to the just cause of the Palestinians.
Nevertheless, it makes no difference whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump is in possession of the White House. All the US leaders have been unabashedly abetting the atrocities of Israel against the Palestinians. However, Donald Trump had gone a whole hog to brazenly harm the Muslim Ummah. Joe Biden too did not lag in supporting the blood-thirsty Israeli leaders in the genocidal killings of the Palestinians. This would be an ugly blot on his legacy.
President Donald Trump’s bile and rage to give bloody cuts to the Muslim world at the behest of Prime Minister Netanyahu is etched in our memory. Unfortunately, some Arab monarchs, in their shallowness of vision, undermined the only broader platform of the Organization of Islamic Conference at the altar of the expedient-ridden and pliable Arab League aggravating their vulnerability to manipulation by the global powers. They are more culpable for the current plight of the Ummah.
Today, the Muslim world stands voiceless; its protests are taken in stride and rulers ridden roughshod in world politics. Remorse, Jean Jacque Rousseau says, goes to sleep when our fortunes are prosperous, and makes itself felt more keenly in adversity. What more enormous adversity do the Muslims need to move their leaders for introspection?
The Palestinian issue engaged the rapt attention of the Muslim world and the comity of nations for many decades. Though the Muslim leaders could not put enough pressure on the USA and the Western world to compensate the Palestinians for the injustice slapped upon them by establishing the Israeli state in their land in 1948, they were successful in keeping this issue alive in international forums.
The Muslim world was dominated by tall leaders who, though autocrats but hardcore Arab nationalists, wielded influence in world politics. Besides the precious resource of oil which the world needed most after the Second World War, the Muslim leaders maintained their influence in world politics by the sheer force of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, and as a collective mass within the fold of the OIC.
Gradually, the Muslim world lost its lustre and influence because of a lack of vision. The events triggered by the so-called Arab Spring proved a debilitating blow. The leaders got frightened and nervous running helter and skelter in the pursuit of major powers to save their thrones from the avalanche of spontaneous public protests and bring down those leaders whom they perceived a threat to their kingdoms and Emirates. No longer than the overthrow of Bin Ali in Tunisia, the Muslim world presented a chaotic scene leading to civil wars in many Muslim countries.
In their search for security, the Arab leaders lost the sense of Muslim fraternity trotting as pawns in the mayhem wrought on the most important Muslim countries from Iraq to Libya, Syria and Yemen. The frontiers collapsed and the armies disintegrated into armed groups; the sovereign territories were bombarded; the leaders were hunted down by mercenary troops or executed by agents of death and destruction; the traditional equilibrium so assiduously maintained between sectarian populations was destroyed. Sectarian groups and private were trained and financed to go on a killing spree.
All this devastation of the Arab world was tempting for Israel to advance its vicious designs to become the mini superpower of the region with almost all the Arab monarchies and emirates looking forward to having some sort of security arrangement with it. President Donald Trump had more plans up his sleeves to help Israel. It looked as if he was in a hurry to finish his agenda of reversing the decades-old policy decisions of his predecessors about the Arab countries.
Goaded by the pro-Israel trio of his advisors, Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, he started unfolding his plans step by step recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in December 2017, moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to the sacred city in May 2018 and exiting from the UN Human Rights Council in June 2018 accusing it to be biased against Israel. In September 2018, he closed the representative office of PLO in Washington.
Followed in quick succession was his proclamation of recognizing the illegal annexation of the Golan Heights by Israelis. This proclamation also owed a great deal to the persuasive intervention of the above extremist trio who, as reports then suggested, were also against the Oslo peace process in the 1990s. Would Donald Trump have a different policy this time around? I doubt it. The security situation in the Muslim world would remain in a state of flux.
(To be concluded)
The author was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books.