News, no matter how strenuously journalists minister to objectivity and balance, is a palimpsest of sorts, a multivocal, classification-intolerant riddle with beginning and end oft times unclear. The account of an event rendered by the media is one thing; the interpretation by the audience is another; and the story/stories behind the story is yet an additional layer to take into account. So what one thinks one receives in the daily newspaper is as simple as a conundrum, as readable as the hieroglyph. It is rarely as linear as one would like to insist, and many an expert has been dashed against the rocks of cultural criticism in attempting to navigate the daunting shoals of prediction and interpretation of the Middle East in general, and news concerning the region in particular.

 Thus it is with the latest muddled happenings in Israel. Though they may seem on their face to be dreadful, ominous, and all the other apocalyptic adjectives this seemingly endless conflict has invoked for the breadth of the last 100 years, recent turns of the kaleidoscope seem to reveal an interesting new layer of possible meter-readings. The first lesson to learn in news reading is, Consider the provenance of, the motivation behind, and the historical context for clarifying any news report. Which brings the reader to Iraq, by way of Washington, with a detour through Saudi Arabia.

 THE SURFACE READINGS

 The midweek headline was this: “Saudis deny access to al-Qaida suspects.”

The gist of the news was this: the country has arrested 13 suspects, some of whom recently attempted to shoot down an American military plane. After U.S. representatives tried to convince the Saudis to let them interrogate the suspects, a Saudi spokesman invoked an interesting and historically valid concept in refusing.

            “It is out of the question. It is a matter of sovereignty, and not a single foreigner will be given access to them,” said the fellow quite resolutely.

It will be for later to discuss the Arab definition of and veracity of “sovereignty,” especially vis a vis its long-time rival, Israel. Tales of double standards and lingering racism are on the horizon, but first, back to the archaeological dig on the site of the news of the day.

 The Saudis deny us our request, and yet they appear to be doing us a favor. Because remember, beyond the refusal to turn over any suspects, there is the overarching theme of the arrests in the first place. The bottom line: a country which has been foremost among the region’s philanthropists of violence since their cup began to runneth over with oil, one which has been in serious hot water with its American allies (and vice versa,  let the record state unequivocally) is all of a sudden doing a solid turn to justice.

 There is way more.

The 13 suspects include 11 Saudis, not surprising since 15 of the 19 educated primitives who demolished a series of buildings along with many vestiges of American complacency last September, were from the same place. Also among this bunch was a Sudanese, and, of all things, an Iraqi. Not only that, but this: before being cornered, the Sudanese fled Saudi Arabia through, of all places, Iraq.  And, still more. Also in custody are six other Saudis who appear to have been accomplices of the Sudanese, as well as five others. Among these is an Iraqi, who apparently helped smuggle the man out of the country.

 The uninitiated reader might be tempted to collapse in exhaustion at this point, but stay with the narrative. It gets more complicated, and then altogether simple.

 
AN OPENING GLIMPSED

Again, the Saudis refuse to let the Americans take part in interrogations, possibly because Western methods are rather tame in comparison to those of the Arabs, and possibly because they have no intention of any sort of operation in regard to interrogation. But they have unwittingly—and at this point, prior context on this Saudi group leads one to surmise that perhaps the word is “wittingly”—given the American president a serious batch of raw material which should undoubtedly be caste into justification for at some point in time proceeding with the government’s stated intention of facilitating through various means a “regime change” in Iraq.

For hearken back to the speeches and rhetoric of Sept. 12 and beyond, where President Bush sternly lectured to the world that any nation known to aid or abet terrorism or terrorists will be dealt with in the same manner as the perpetrators of terrorist acts themselves.

Here is no clandestine and possibly apocryphal meeting between Muhammad Atta and the Iraqis in Eastern Europe. Here is no abrogation of sanctions. Here is no hearsay. Here is proof that the Iraqis have been involved in aiding and abetting terrorism. Period. End of news item on that count.

 GROWING TREND AFOOT

 And on another level, the Saudi arrests, coupled with Wednesday’s full-page, anti-suicide bomber advertisement taken out in an Arab daily news organ, Al Quds, by 50 prominent Palestinians, and coupled again with developments in Egypt, where several recalcitrant terrorists have been offered amnesty for renouncing their intentions, there begins to take shape a very interesting pattern.

Faced with the growing awareness of the unwillingness of the Palestinian/Arab terror infrastructure to abstain from consistent murder, and faced also with the growing sense of impatience of the civilized world for such repetitive, anti-life acts, it appears that the Arab street is starting to adjust its public relations strategy.

Terrorism, as practiced by percentage overwhelmingly by Muslims in any number of countries, including Pakistan and Afghanistan, is beginning to suffer from a fatigue factor. The world has enough problems dealing with modernity without wanton killing and refusal to come to the bargaining table. The sands of the hourglass drain quickly for the Palestinians, who can smell the bitter breath of the perennially patient Israelis upon their kaffiyehed necks. There is beginning to form a critical mass of body counts in Israel, and history shows us that the Israelis, while somewhat beholden to the Americans given the impressive support and financial aid provided by the latter, can be counted on to retaliate when they have had enough. And make no mistake. The Israelis have had enough.

 The Arab world knows that it cannot defeat the Israelis in war. The recent spate of capitulations, for that is what they are, is designed to relieve pressure. The Arabs know that they cannot continue this game of encouraging terror indefinitely. The Americans, the Israelis, and the civilized world will not allow it. So, they have to make these offerings. And it matters not, in a sense, whether these actions are genuine. The linearity of Arab actions in the past is easily read, and therefore can be dismissed as subterfuge. The importance lies not in the fact that these Arab countries appear to be cooperating. It lies in the interpretation that they realize the gig, very nearly, is up.

THE AIR GROWS RARE

 Into the box go the Arabs. If they continue to allow the Palestinians and their terror accomplices to kill Israelis, the Palestinian state idea is doomed to die on the vine, probably in a hail of Israeli firepower which has in the past proven more than enough to send the Bedouins scurrying haphazardly into the desert.

The alternative, as presaged by the actions of the Saudis and Egyptians, twin actors in a fictional peacemaking narrative, is to find some convenient scapegoats to hand to the West, to make relief fissures in the growing pressure-packed Middle East dynamic. If the Americans take the initiative that seems to have been granted them, they will make plans for the invasion of Iraq come next year, or even the next, and the result will eventually be a satiated world power in Washington. Here, after all, is the probable cause and the involvement of the Iraqi regime in the terror war. Another result will be a lessening of suffering for the Iraqi people. Still another result is not a result, but an ultimatum. Once the Iraqi problem has been solved, the attention of the world will return once again to the terrible riddle of the Palestinians. In order to solve this one, turn again to the news, and to the multiple layers it presents.

TWIN STANDARDS OF EXPEDIENCY

 In invoking sovereignty as a reason for not turning over any of the terror suspects of al-Qaida, the Saudis have made an enormous blunder, from this view. Because in doing so, they have exposed one of the more incriminating aspects of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israel is a country, a state recognized even by the United Nations as such. The Palestinians are a people, without a state. However, heretofore, the Arab argument has neglected to take into consideration the rights and responsibilities of a sovereign state. Now they will be forced to do so, by their use of the term in their own defense.

A sovereign state, as originally dictated by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the 30 Years War, has a status among nations that a mere people do not. The Jews of pre-state Israel, realizing that there is no security for a mere people, followed the accepted pattern for becoming a state, and succeeded in this aim in 1948. Legal immigration, accompanied by diplomacy, usually does the trick. However, military force is usually a necessity to make the diplomacy stick, and completing this pattern enabled the Jews to become, in the eyes of the world, Israelis.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians, though they have found themselves for 54 years in the same predicament as the pre-state Jews, have failed to administer any of the necessary steps toward statehood, and have hence remained a people without a legitimate state.

In order for them to become a state, they must come to the table with rational thought, plans of vision, and offers of compromise. They have no leverage of the ilk usually borne by diplomacy or military might. They are quickly losing the support of the Arab street, if the recent unfolding of compromises can be read as anything resembling an about-face in public relations tactics by said street.

In the past, the Arabs have been expert at convincing the court of world opinion to judge the Israelis with a different standard than that which is usually engaged in reference to sovereign states. This is a thinly disguised racism which in history was normally employed in discussions of the solution to the Jewish Question, or Problem. Through propaganda and audacity, the Arabs have been able to sustain the use of a pernicious double standard in their dealings with the Israelis. For decades they refused to recognize the Jewish state as a state, despite the legitimacy that was conferred upon it by the world at large. When they were forced to recognize the existence of the Jewish state, the Arabs switched tactics, falling back on the idea that international opinion, in the form of intervention by world powers or such entities as the United Nations Security Council, should step in and compose a “fair” solution in the conflict between two “equal” parties. Through this cheap trick they have insisted that the problem regarding Israel be solved by American intervention, which disallows the sovereign status of the state of Israel and leaves it at the mercy of not its own designs, diplomacy, and force, but of an outside party’s intervention.

Let it be reiterated that the Jews, no longer wishing to be at the beck and call of the world, transformed themselves from hopeless, helpless wandering wards of the world into a sovereign nation, for the very purpose of deciding their own destiny, living or ceasing to do so on the basis of their prowess as diplomats and/or soldiers. The unwillingness of the Arabs to recognize this inalienable right of nations in reference to the Jews, not to mention the Palestinian practice of refusal to attempt statehood by similar, sanctioned methods, spells racism, whether the Arabs come up to scratch with an admission or not.

 By coming to the fore with a long-awaited reciprocity in regard to the aiding and abetting of terror suspects, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have not admitted their hatred of the Jews. They have not either intimated that they are ready at long last to make the transition from pre-modern to modern ways of living. But they have offered a crack in the firmament, a glimpse at compromise that threatens to backfire on them in spades.

THE UPSHOT FOR THE FUTURE

 Soon it will probably become time to fish or cut bait for the Palestinians. The inexorable tide of nation-states and life within them will not forever countenance the ability of an intransigent non-power to hold up the train of moderate peace among nations.

 The news seems at first glance to be the same old same old. However, by unpacking the layers of the palimpsest, one might be able to predict what will happen next. It does not look good for the old Arab way of life. In the Global Village, one’s actions are transparent even if one’s motives are still subject to subterfuge. Repetitive appearance before the tribunal of news renders one incapable after a critical mass has been reached of forestalling the inevitable. Fight or flight. Diplomacy or extinction.

 Now that is the news of the day, in all its complexity.

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