The paths of the imperial powers towards resolving the "Eastern Question" included the division and colonization of the former Ottoman states in the context of World War I (Al Jazeera)

More than two centuries ago, in the context of the European imperialist powers’ pursuit of colonial hegemony over the world, the “Eastern Question” was raised in European circles, which means seeking to stop and repel the Ottoman tide in Europe, contain and defeat the Islamic world, overthrow its unity and caliphate, and then colonize, fragment, and control it. final decision on his fate and abilities.

The paths of the imperialist powers towards solving the “Eastern Question” were multiple, from annihilating and occupying the peripheries of the Islamic world from India to North Africa, all the way to its heart in the Arab Levant, penetrating modernization projects through Westernization and subordination, and dismantling the historical institutions of Islamic society: traditional education, endowments, the Sharia judiciary, and the institution of scholars.

Then the modernization process was hindered by exploiting trade privileges to destroy existing local industries, flooding the markets of the Arab Islamic Levant with cheap products of the European industrial revolution in general, and English and French in particular, depriving the Ottoman Empire of due customs revenues, and plotting and conspiring against it. Finally, the occupation of the Ottoman Empire in the context of World War I, the overthrow of the Sultanate and then the Caliphate, the division and colonization of its provinces, and the end of “Islamic universalism.”

The functional role of the settlement entity

The Western imperialist solution to the "Eastern Question" and the aggression against the Islamic world culminated in the establishment of the Zionist imperialist replacement project in the heart of the Islamic world, to guarantee, consolidate and sustain this imperialist solution.

One of the most important functions of the Zionist settlement project in the heart of the Arab and Islamic world is the sustainability of the fragmentation resulting from the division and fragmentation of the region in accordance with the British-French Sykes-Picot Agreement.

As well as aborting attempts to unify and revive the nation, obstructing socio-economic development, perpetuating the situation of the region and its peoples in a state of submission and dependency, exhausting its resources in the face of the Zionist threat to impoverish it, and depriving it of the freedom and independence of its decision and will and the stability necessary to establish social justice, empower the nation, and achieve its mandate over itself.

This means keeping the nation’s peoples deprived of freedom, consultation, and the right to choose and self-determination, and perpetuating political, economic, social, and administrative corruption, parasitic capitalism, and Western interests.

Undermining Egypt's role

But what is most dangerous of all is the continued control of the tribal, security, military, and police state elites over the state, politics, economy, media, institutions, legislation, and judiciary. The late Arab thinker Jamal Hamdan described the role of the armies in the emerging Arab national states, after the two world wars and the establishment of the Zionist entity, as “control and oppression at home and negotiation and collusion with the outside”!

Strategically, the Zionist project represents the final imperialist (Anglo-Saxon) solution to control the Arab Levant, separate Arab Asia from Egypt and North Africa, and prevent the repetition of the experience of Muhammad Ali Pasha in extending Cairo’s control over the Arab Levant, by confining Egypt between the 22nd parallel separating it from Sudan and the Taba-Rafah is the current separation between Egypt and the Zionist entity, preventing any Egyptian attempt to lead the Arab region.

This has actually been enshrined since the Camp David Accords (1978) and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty (1979). Hence, keeping Egypt in a state of dependency, water-threatened, economically suffocated, and geopolitically depressed, in favor of the expansion of Israel and its local vassals on behalf of the imperialist powers.

And then the sustainability of this situation in a way that prevents Egypt from returning to its leadership, its historical geopolitical position, and its natural vital space, from the Hijaz in the east and the borders of Anatolia in the north to the sources of the Nile in the south. Thus, the most important factors of resistance and liberation from colonialism in the region were extracted.

Danger. Threat. Blackmail

There is a known dimension to the preambles and justifications of the Zionist settlement project, but it is rarely referred to in the West. However, it has strongly occupied the circle of Zionist and Western interest to justify the excessive and blind Western support for Israel recently, especially after the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation.

The saying or idea has been repeated in the circles of politics, media, and thought in America and the West in general, that “if Israel did not exist, it would have to be created,” and that its non-existence requires “the deployment of dozens of warships, aircraft carriers, and military bases in the Arab region,” without questioning the justifications and legitimacy of that!

Geostrategic triangle

Here comes the role of the “functional” Zionist settlement project in recycling the system of imperial control and sustaining Western hegemony over the Arab Levant within a structurally interconnected geostrategic triangle, and each of its links leads to the next within a continuous, self-reinforcing cumulative circle, after extracting the causes of resistance from this Levant:

The danger

: the establishment of a superior Israeli strategic military force that exceeds the strength of the countries of the region combined, as America always declares and aims in the context of justifying its military aid and expensive and unjustified arms deals to Israel.

Threat

: This superior military force threatens the countries of the region through penetration, aggression, expansion, occupation, undermining, and attrition.

Blackmail

: The countries of the region threatened by the Zionist entity resort to the powers of imperial hegemony, Britain previously and the United States currently, seeking protection from the Israeli threat, which consolidates, magnifies, and perpetuates imperial control and returns the countries of the region to their previous status as protectorates.

All of this is accompanied by the growing importance of the Zionist settlement project within the Western control system, and the strengthening of the relationship between them. The capacity of this settlement project to expand is also increasing, and the areas and areas of Zionist settlement are expanding:

  • Internally in Palestine, by swallowing huge areas of land to establish settlements and bypass roads, isolating Palestinian cities, towns and villages and besieging them with hundreds of military checkpoints and settler attacks on a daily basis, leading to complete uprooting.

  • Regionally, by imposing normal surrender and alliance on the Arab and Islamic countries at the center and the peripheries, and liquidating the Palestine issue within a comprehensive imperial vision of a new regional order centered on the Zionist entity.

  • Internationally, with the expansion of settlement internally and regionally, countries of the world are being dragged to transgress prohibitions such as recognizing Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel, transferring embassies to it, liquidating the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), redefining the refugee to be limited to those born before the 1948 Nakba, and erasing the right of return from Regional and international agenda.

It is therefore a dynamic, continuous, expanding, and self-reinforcing cumulative circle!

An army owns a state

We will always find that the military, security and intelligence institutions, industries and arsenals of conventional and nuclear weapons, and the machine of deterrence, violence and extermination, occupy the highest priorities of the Zionist entity and other settlement entities.

Military generals, security leaders, spies, strategic experts, and military development and production institutions possess a great deal of importance, control, and influence in the life of the settlement entity, and they are the center of the government and decision-making circles in the Zionist settlement state.

Rather, it is common in Zionist media and political circles to say that the state of the Zionist entity differs from all natural states that possess armies, but “Israel is an army that possesses a state”! In short, it is a formation of armed robbery gangs with multiple levels and specializations. This is how it started and this was its process and becoming.

This explains the profound shock that befell the Zionist entity, its institutions, elites, and society, and then the madness of its disastrous, self-destructive response to the military, security, and political failures that resulted from the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation.

The Palestinian resistance invaded the bases of the Israeli army and intelligence, destroyed the “Gaza Division” designated to defend the southern front of the Zionist entity, stormed the settlements and towns surrounding Gaza, and took dozens of its officers, soldiers and settlers prisoners after neutralizing hundreds of them.

Its iron and electronic walls and superior espionage, monitoring and hedging capabilities have been surpassed, which strongly indicates strategic decline and the fall of deterrence capacity.

The irony is that organizing and militarizing this settlement bloc in this way is not a historical novelty. Prince Osama bin Munqidh, one of the Arab leaders and intellectuals at the time of the Crusades, had extensive observations of the conditions of the Franks and the Crusader knights at the top of the pyramid of the Crusader settlement community.

Ibn Munqidh recorded the influence of those of importance and status among these knights and their monopoly on the right to conclude judgments and inflict punishments, saying, “And the Franks have been forsaken by God. They have no virtue among the people except killing and fighting, and they have no advancement or high status except for the knights, and they have no people except the knights, for they are companions.” Opinion and they are the owners of the judiciary! And tonight is like yesterday.

Source: Al Jazeera