How not to win friends and influence foreign Prime Ministers

By
Omri Ceren
– December 27, 2003Posted in: Palestinians, Syria

DEBKAfile’s military predictions have been, shall we say, poorly correllated with reality recently. However, their diplomatic analysis is still top-notch. Two days ago, they posted (as near as I can tell) the first accurate, in-depth analysis of the diplomatic fallout between Egypt and the PA over the Maher attack: DEBKAfile wrote that:

Cairo is still fuming over the “flying shoe ambush” to which Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Maher was treated when he tried to pray Monday, December 12, at al Aqsa mosque on Temple Mount, Jerusalem. Mubarak regards the assault as a spiteful rejoinder from Yasser Arafat for the Egyptian minister’s failure to call on him in Ramallah. Since the incident, Palestinian delegations have been rushing to the Egyptian capital to grovel. DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources report Cairo is not buying the show of remorse and Arafat has been told that the photos of a panic-stricken Maher may have faded from the news pages, but remain very vivid in Egyptian minds.

Two days later, we get this from Ha’aretz:

In a rare attack for an Egyptian newspaper, the editor of an influential weekly has assailed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for the assault on Egypt’s foreign minister in Jerusalem this week.

“It is now time to adopt a new attitude toward the Palestinian Authority, to tell them ‘No’ a thousand times, as we are not so naive as they think,” Ibrahim Saada wrote in an editorial of Akhbar Elyom on Saturday.

The upshot of all of this is that, again, the Arab world shows just how little it really cares about the Palestinians. This is not exactly a new story – the loathing that Arafat is held in by most Arab leaders is close to legendary. However, the kind of geopolitical situation that the Palestinians face now is among the grimest since Lebanon:

The Palestinians, therefore, are confronted with Mubarak’s rancor, Assad’s willingness to ditch them (he recently told American visitors to Damascus that the Palestinians entered into peace talks in Oslo and launched two uprisings without consulting Syria) and uncertainties in Jerusalem. In post-Saddam Iraq, their situation is tricky.

Some 140,000 Palestinians live in Baghdad along the eastern bank of the Euphrates, most concentrated on Haifa Street. Times were good when Saddam Hussein was in charge, and Palestinians were among his biggest supporters. The former Iraqi leader used them as middlemen for overseas business deals and treated them as a loyal elite.

Now they are paying the price. More and more Iraqis want to deport them and seize their property. Jordan, according to our sources, has spurned approaches to take them in. They are regarded with suspicion by the US civil administration and military commanders.

And now, according to DEBKAfile’s military sources, a Palestinian is found to have taken part in a suicide bombing on December 11 in the city of Ramadi. The bombers gained entry to the headquarters of the US 82nd Airborne Division disguised as deliverymen bringing furniture to the base. A U.S. soldier was killed and 14 wounded in the explosion.

Incidentally, the Jerusalem Post, got this story wrong in their initial analysis because they were too intent on running the line that the Arab world is united in a conspiracy to keep the truth about Palestinian militancy from the rest of the world. While this spin is largely true, it is clearly not true in this case (Mubarak is pissed, which highlights the danger of letting ideology guide your political analysis.

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