Middle East Occupier will itself destruct

Edited excerpt, re-reporting by Carolyn Bennett

From Amal Saad-Ghorayeb’s “Examination of ideological, political and strategic causes of Iran’s commitment to the Palestinian cause”

Resistance endless, “Implosion” inevitable

Political analyst, Middle East expert, author and academic Amal Saad-Ghorayeb in a paper published in July examines the Who, what and why of persistent Palestinian resistance and the inevitable implosion of Israeli occupation.

 The “constitutional and rhetorical leitmotif ‘fighting oppression’ is as central to the Iranian constitution and self-definition,” Amal Saad-Ghorayeb writes, “as are principles of freedom and liberty in western democratic constitutions.”

Quoting Hizbullah leader Seyyid Hassan Nasrallah, she writes, “‘Iran will never abandon the peoples of this region or the resistance movements in this region. For Iran and for its Supreme Leader, other leaders and people, the cause of Palestinians is in their prayers, in their fasting, in their nightly worship. It will remain their creed until Doomsday.’”

Resistance ingrained

“In so far as the discourse of resistance is widely recognized by Iran’s friends and foes as a defining feature of its foreign policy, and a ‘behavioral expectation,’ the concept of resistance becomes further entrenched in the Islamic Republic’s political identity.

“The relationship between the expectations of others and identity can be explained by role theory, which stipulates that identities are anchored in the roles actors play and the consequent ‘shared understandings about what is expected’ of the actor. The actor in question therefore internalizes both the role and the behavioral expectations associated with it, leading to the formation of a specific identity.”

Washington irrelevance

Therefore, “it is highly unlikely that the Islamic Republic would strike a Grand Bargain with Washington [because] it would, in the process, lose its identity as an independent, justice-seeking and resistant nation — an identity which is far more crucial to the survival of the Islamic Republic than its security as an organizational entity. Its security as an ideational entity is a strategic priority for an ideological actor like Iran considering that it cannot withstand a change in identity. Even if it remained organizationally intact, a change in identity would effectively spell the demise of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which would consequently become a different entity altogether.…”

[“Despite the United States’ fixation with Iran’s nuclear program and its futile attempts to pummel it (Iran) into submission with sanctions, it is more than likely that Washington would turn a blind eye to an Iranian nuclear weapons’ program or even contribute to one as it has with its allies (Germany, Belgium, Canada, Greece, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey) under the NATO nuclear weapons’ sharing policy — were it not for Tehran’s support for resistance movements in Palestine and Lebanon.”]

“…The organic relationship between the two actors [Iran and Hizbullah] is based on its historical and cultural origins, shared religio-political ideology and strategic outlook, the backbone of which is the existential struggle against Israel. Not only does Hizbullah share Iran’s demonization of Israel and its attendant sanctification of the Palestinian cause, it owes its raison d’être to its struggle against Israel and, as such, defines its political identity.…”

Liberation a Duty

“[O]ver and above the resistance movement’s own struggle against Israel in Lebanon, it deems the liberation of Palestine from Israeli occupation as an obligation incumbent upon it, and as such, is ideologically committed to supporting the Palestinians to achieve national liberation. This commitment to the Palestinian cause and enmity towards Israel by each of the two allies is instrumental in cementing the ties between them.…

Ending her paper, Amal Saad-Ghorayeb quotes the Israeli think tank, Reut Institute, saying, “‘Military superiority does not mean strategic superiority … the Resistance Network’s ability to survive against Israeli retaliation has eroded Israel’s deterrence capability and military image.’”

Network of resistance unstoppable

In a series of papers published by its National Security program, “the Institute testifies to the success of Hizbullah’s discourse on the inevitable destruction of the Zionist regime.”

Among the concepts developed by the program and adopted in the papers are: “‘Permanent Resistance,’  ‘the Resistance Network (which alludes to Hizbullah, in addition to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Iran), ‘the Logic of Implosion,’ ‘De-Legitimization of Israel,’ and ‘Promotion of One-State Solution.’

The main thesis guiding the series of papers, Saad-Ghorayeb summarizes, is this —

“The Resistance Network conducts itself against Israel according to a political logic that is based on a theory of ‘Implosion,’ whereby Israel will not be overthrown militarily, but rather will be pressured on a number of fronts that will ultimately lead to its internal implosion as a state.

“This logic promotes the establishment of one Palestinian / Arab / Islamist state in place of Israel.”

Sources and notes

“An examination of the ideological, political and strategic causes of Iran’s commitment to the Palestinian cause” (Amal Saad-Ghorayeb), A Conflicts Forum Monograph (Conflicts Forum: Beirut – London), July 2011 [The opinions in the paper are the author’s and not necessarily representative of Conflicts Forum, Amal Saad-Ghorayeb is an independent Lebanese academic and political analyst. She is author of  Hizbullah: Politics and Religion (2002)]  

http://conflictsforum.org/briefings/AmalSaadGhorayeb.pdf

Amal Abdo Saad-Ghorayeb is a Lebanese writer and political analyst known for her writings on the Israeli-Lebanese conflict and Hezbollah. She works as an assistant professor of political science at the Lebanese American University. Her Ph.D. was taken at the University of Birmingham [England, UK]. She was a visiting scholar at the Beirut, Lebanon-based Carnegie Middle East Center (CMEC). In 2009, Amal Abdo Saad-Ghorayeb was disinvited to speak at the NATO Defense College. Her work has appeared in Open Democracy and Foreign Affairs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amal_Saad-Ghorayeb

The Carnegie Middle East Center is a public policy think tank and research center based in Beirut, Lebanon. CMEC was established (November 2006) by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and draws on the successful experience of Carnegie’s Moscow Center, established in 1994. It also runs parallel to new Carnegie initiatives in Beijing and Brussels.

The Reut Institute established in January 2004 by Gidi Grinstein and a team of founders is a policy group in Tel Aviv designed to provide real-time long-term strategic decision-support to the Government of Israel. Reut describes itself as a ‘non-partisan non-profit policy team’ that supplies its services pro-bono solely to the Government of Israel.

On February 11, 2010, the Institute reported to the Israeli Cabinet, which it advises, that violence had failed to achieve Israel’s ends and had produced worldwide revulsion.

‘In last year’s Gaza operation,’ said the report, ‘our superior military power was offset by an offensive on Israel’s legitimacy that led to a significant setback in our international standing and will constrain future Israeli military planning and operations...’ [http://reut-institute.org/en/Publication.aspx?PublicationId=3766] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reut_Institute

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