The Cease-fire

From Muslim World Today, Friday, August 11, 2006, by:Tashbih Sayyed, Ph. D. ...

The latest flare-up in a 59 years long war to wipe the Jewish state off the map of the world is fast approaching its expected closure. Israel is once again being forced to leave the job of eliminating the Islamist threat unfinished. The world's powers, blinded by their anti-Semitism, politico-commercial considerations, and regional agendas, want Israel to stop pursuing its legitimate campaign to secure itself by eradicating the Islamist threat from its door steps: they want an immediate cease-fire.

They are not ready to accept that in case of political Islam, cease-fires are nothing but tactical pauses which are used as tools to gain time in order to recoup losses, re-arm forces, and rebuild terrorist infrastructure. For example, the world thought that the Oslo Accord was a step in the right direction - peace. But for Yasser Arafat who signed it on September 13, 1993, it was just a tactical cease-fire "Hudna" that could be broken at any time.

Political Islam finds a number of examples in the life of Prophet Muhammad that sanction the use of treaties as a tactical necessity. In explaining why he signed the Oslo Accord, Yasser Arafat cited a truce signed by Prophet Muhammad with the Meccan tribe Quraish at Hudaybiyah in 628 C.E. According to the PLO leader, Prophet Muhammad had signed the truce when he was not strong enough to win a war and it was to last for ten years. But when, within two years of the signing, the Muslims felt that they have gained enough strength to defeat the Quraish, they broke the truce, attacked the Quraish and captured Mecca.

....Those who understand the Islamist ethos know that for political Islam, disengagement, a cease-fire, or a pull back on the part of the "enemy" is a sign of its weakness. No one has more experience with this treacherous mindset than the Israelis. It was Israel's unwillingness to escalate a raid into a full scale battle in 1968 that helped the Palestinian terrorists to win the support of the masses.

..... There is no doubt in my mind that the cease-fire at this stage when Hezbollah is still seems to posses enough rockets and other armament to continue to terrorize the Israeli civilians for some time, will be perceived as a total victory of Hezbollah by the Muslim world. The terrorist group will be transformed instantly into a standard bearer of global jihad and Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah will certainly become a leader worth emulation.

In Egypt, protesters and opposition newspapers compare him with the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Arab nationalist champion against Israel. "Nasser 1956, Nasrallah 2006: We will fight and never surrender," read one headline in a weekly newspaper run by the Nasserist party in Egypt - referring to Nasser's 1956 war with Israel, France and Britain. Nasrallah means "victory from God" and Nasser is "the victorious."

The happenings on the Muslim street in the aftermath of Hezbollah's attack on Israel leave no doubt in my mind that the Islamists are certain that they have found their Saladin in Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah. The masses are gathering in Cairo, Baghdad, Islamabad, Dhaka and other cities to celebrate the birth of a new Muslim hero. Even in Saudi Arabia, where demonstrations are rare, hundreds of Shiites waved posters of Nasrallah, chanting, "Oh Nasrallah; oh beloved one; destroy, destroy Tel Aviv."

This war has already laid the foundations of a revolutionary change in the region. The Muslim world will never be the same. Observers watching the recent developments on the Muslim street have no doubt that a new Middle East is being born. But if a premature cease-fire is imposed on the Middle East, it will be very different from what US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has in mind.

(Tashbih Sayyed is the Editor in Chief of Pakistan Today and The Muslim World Today, President of Council for Democracy and Tolerance, an adjunct fellow of Hudson Institute, and a regular columnist for newspapers across the world.)