THE Arab summit has been deciding that it will form its own armed force based on Egypt and Saudi Arabia to fight subversion, extremism and Iran, but not of course Israel!
These ‘coalition’ states are currently engaged in or supporting the bombing of the Yemen, and are preparing for an intervention on the ground to overthrow the Yemeni Huthis. These are Shia who are considered to be allies of Iran, and who have been fighting Al-Qaeda in the Yemen.
There has been much talk at the Arab summit of an Arab force being organised to deal with Iranian-backed subversion in the Yemen and Bahrain, where Saudi Arabia has already intervened, and to clean up the ‘mess’ in Libya where a NATO-organised coup against Colonel Gadaffi has led to IS and Al-Qaeda militias threatening to take over Libya’s vast oil resources.
The fact that the Huthis were fighting Al-Qaeda in the Yemen posed no problems for the Arab summit, and for the Qatari and Saudi delegations, who have been financing the struggle to smash President Assad in Syria. In fact, they are quite prepared to strengthen Al-Qaeda and arm IS, if it weakens their main foreign enemy, which is Iran.
In fact, the states that have nothing to fear from this new Arab military force are Israel and the USA.
Egypt, under Marshal Sisi, is already laying siege to the borders of Gaza, while Israeli security forces and settlers are running riot throughout the West Bank.
Yesterday, under the nose of the Arab League, Israeli bulldozers demolished part of a home belonging to the Amr family in the Wadi al-Joz neighbourhood east of Jerusalem”s Old City on Tuesday.
Family members said that the demolition came after dozens of Israeli vehicles escorted bulldozers into the area, near the bridge connecting Wadi al-Joz to neighbouring al-Suwwana.
Dr Jamal Amr said that Israeli forces raided the family home with the support of a helicopter and held family members in a small room, which they were not allowed to leave.
Amr said that two younger family members were beaten by Israeli soldiers. Dr Amr added that the land on which the house is built is ‘only a few metres away from the Al-Aqsa mosque’ and is therefore of ‘strategic’ importance.
None of these actions by Israel appear to disturb the Arab League in the least, they are too busy planning and plotting to get at Iran, with the US egging them on, and to prevent the working class of North Africa and the Middle East from removing them from power.
At the same time as Israeli bulldozers were smashing Palestinian homes, Palestinians were marching on Land Day to commemorate the theft of their lands since the Naqba in 1948.
With the Arab League mobilised to fight the Huthis and others, the leader of the Palestinian people, President Abbas, had to plead for Palestine at the Arab summit.
He spoke at the summit after Netanyahu had defied the Arab peoples and workers worldwide with his electoral declaration that a Palestinian state would not be established on his watch, were he to retain the premiership.
Abbas used his speech to warn of a possible future in which the West Bank and the Gaza Strip could become separate states, Bantustans, leaving Jerusalem in Israeli hands and the Palestinian refugee crisis forgotten.
He added that he hoped the summit would condemn and refuse any proposals that might lead to such a scenario. Abbas said that it would not be long before Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem was complete.
Fourteen Arab presidents, kings, and emirs were in attendance at the summit. Many of them displayed a hatred for the Iranian revolution that rivalled the hatred and fear that Netanyahu displays every time he mentions Iran.
However, when the Arab League leaders talked about the struggle against subversion, they were referring to the enemy at home, the powerful Arab working class movements, such as those of Tunisia and Egypt, who have brought down more than one tyrant, and will not rest until Palestine has been freed and a Socialist United States of North Africa and the Middle East has been established, with a free socialist Palestine at its centre.
