A summit of loud belching

Crescent International

Dhu al-Qa'dah 12, 1416 1996-04-01

Occupied Arab World

by Crescent International (Occupied Arab World, Crescent International Vol. 25, No. 2, Dhu al-Qa'dah, 1416)

Arab rulers, long denied their favourite passtime - rhetoric - as a result of the US-sponsored ‘peace process’ in the Middle East, have discovered a new sport: belching. At least 20 kings, shaikhs, presidents, generals and colonels met in Cairo for two days from June 21 in what was to be a summit of loud belching.

‘Look it,’ said one Arab diplomat, ‘If the belches of 20 of the mightiest in the land do not scare Nutty Yahoo (referring to the new Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu) back to the negotiating table, nothing will.’ Things, however, do not look too promising for the potentates.

‘How can you have an Arab summit to which the toughest nut on the block is not invited?’ asks the Iraqi tyrant’s son Uday in his favourite mouthpiece, Babel. But even the playboy of the Middle East - king Hasan of Morocco - did not attend. He is miffed at not being consulted when three Arab rulers (or sort of rulers because Saudi’s prince Abdullah is not a ‘full’ ruler yet) attended the meeting in Damascus on June 7 and 8 at which the decision was made. Hasan, who calls himself Amir al-Mu’minin (defender of the faithful), felt that he should have given his two pennies ‘ worth of advice on how best to entice Nutty Yahoo to the negotiating table where the Arabs would present their collective instrument of surrender.

Israeli prime minister-elect Netanyahu has already told the Arabs that he has decided to change the ground rules for ‘peace’. The Zionists do not need peace, it is the Arab rulers who need it. And if the Zionists decided not to give them any, then the potentates would just have to do without it.

Netanyahu’s election has exposed the Arab rulers for what they are - a bunch of paper-tigers who are eager to surrender to the Zionist invaders but determined to crush their own people with the torture instruments supplied to them by the west - the US, Britain, France etc. The Middle Eastern countries are the largest recipients not only of military but also torture equipment from the west. Such equipment is not used to fight external enemies but to torture opponents of their oppressive regimes. The US even has a special category for export of such instruments, we are told by Amnesty International in its latest book (A Glimpse of Hell, London 1996).

The Arabs’ belching session may already have been dampened somewhat by US secretary of State Warren Christopher who on June 10 urged Arab rulers not to take any action that could ‘close doors’ with Israel’s new government and harm the peace process’. ‘I think it’s particularly important that they not close any doors at the present time, that they not take any action that would derail the peace process,’ Christopher told reporters in Washington.

The Arab potentates were greatly relieved at these soothing words from Washington and from Slick Willy himself who told them that Nutty Yahoo was not so bad after all.

The only person in the Middle East who understood the reality completely was Shaikh Muhammad Husain Fadhlallah of Lebanon. He said that ‘Peres was a steel fist with a velvet glove. Netanyahu is a steel fist without a glove.’

Days later, Arab mujahideen delivered the only message that the Zionists understand: five Israeli soldiers were killed and eight wounded in a daring operation in Zionist-occupied South Lebanon on June 10 and another three on June 27 in the West Bank.

Muslimedia - April 1996-August 1996