Camp David destabilized the Middle East??? (updated)

Elder of Ziyon
17 February '11


The rhetorical hoops that Israel bashers force themselves to go through get ever more convoluted. Here's a really egregious example, from Patrick Seale in Foreign Policy:

Israel has been unnerved by Egypt's revolution. The reason is simple: it fears for the survival of the 1979 peace treaty - a treaty which by neutralizing Egypt, guaranteed Israel's military dominance over the region for the next three decades.

By removing Egypt -- the strongest and most populous of the Arab countries -- from the Arab line-up, the treaty ruled out any possibility of an Arab coalition that might have contained Israel or restrained its freedom of action. As Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan remarked at the time: "If a wheel is removed, the car will not run again."

Western commentators routinely describe the treaty as a ‘pillar of regional stability,' a ‘keystone of Middle East diplomacy,' a ‘centerpiece of America's diplomacy' in the Arab and Muslim world. This is certainly how Israel and its American friends have seen it.

But for most Arabs, it has been a disaster. Far from providing stability, it exposed them to Israeli power. Far from bringing peace, the treaty ensured an absence of peace, since a dominant Israel saw no need to compose or compromise with Syria or the Palestinians.


Instead, the treaty opened the way for Israeli invasions, occupations and massacres in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, for strikes against Iraqi and Syrian nuclear sites, for brazen threats against Iran, for the 44-year occupation of the West Bank and the cruel blockade of Gaza, and for the pursuit of a ‘Greater Israel' agenda by fanatical Jewish settlers and religious nationalists.

In turn, Arab dictators, invoking the challenge they faced from an aggressive and expansionist Israel, were able to justify the need to maintain tight control over their populations by means of harsh security measures.

One way and another, the Israeli-Egyptian treaty has contributed hugely to the dangerous instability and raw nerves which have characterized the Middle East to this day, as well as to the sharpening of popular grievances, and the inevitable explosions which have followed.

Yes, Patrick Seale is really trying to argue that Camp David caused wars, regional instability and somehow caused Arab regimes to mistreat their people.

It takes a mind that is thoroughly twisted by hate to come up with such a scenario.

In Seale's worldview, Israel is, always has been and always will be the aggressor in the Middle East.

He does not seem to have noticed that in the thirty years before Camp David there were 4 regional multi-front wars between Israel and its neighbors; in the thirty years since there have been zero.

(Read full "Camp David destabilized the Middle East?")

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