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Part Twenty-Eight

(This is a translation from the original Arabic, offered so that my grandchildren, and others of their generation, may understand something of their history— a history they were denied when they were uprooted without choice.)

Where To: What Have We to Do with the United Nations? — (4)

I concluded the previous instalment by posing a question concerning the treaties the Arabs signed in the field of armaments, their alignment—willingly or under compulsion—toward a condition of subjugation, and the price they paid for it.

Before entering into this matter, it is necessary to clarify whom I mean by “the Arabs” who signed these treaties. A reader may note that the number of member states in the Arab League today stands at twenty-two—a project originally advocated by Britain’s Prime Minister Anthony Eden. Some may take pride in this numerical abundance, while the rational mind, as al-Jawahiri once observed, may well feel anger:

One flag is patched with another,

While noble steeds are left to starve;

They boast their numbers have increased,

Well knowing their humiliation has grown.

This number, however, is of little value in understanding how many Arab states rushed to sign treaties of servitude—treaties that defined what weapons Arabs were permitted to possess in comparison with their neighbours. Most member states of the Arab League either gained independence only after 1960, or were brought into existence by decision of global Zionism, as is the case with most of today’s Gulf Cooperation Council states. By the very nature of their formation, these entities never possessed—and to this day do not possess—independent political decision-making. This reality was aptly summarized by Hamad bin Jassim when he remarked that one is simply not permitted to say “no.”

What concerns me, therefore, are the principal states—those that played, and continue to play, decisive roles in the fate of the nation: Egypt and Libya in North Africa; Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon in the Arab East. This classification may provoke the ire of some, particularly those who insist that Saudi Arabia belongs in this category. Yet I do not regard Saudi Arabia as a state at all, but rather as a powerful tribe ruling over dependents it designates as “Saudi” in the manner that clients were once attributed to Quraysh by association with the tribe’s chief.

Beyond this conviction, I assess the importance of Arab states according to how Zionism itself has dealt with them. When Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Libya are targeted, it is because Zionism considers only these states to possess genuine weight in politics, confrontation, and struggle. For now, I shall say no more on this point.

It is also necessary to recall a fundamental principle of customary international law, grounded in the concept of sovereignty and aligned with reason and logic: the right of every state to possess the weapons it chooses—not those chosen for it by others. Any agreement that restricts the types of weapons a state may possess is therefore an exception, not a rule. There is no meaningful distinction between weapons of mass effect and those of limited impact. The essential question—one consistent with justice and law—is this: why is one state permitted to possess a particular weapon while others are forbidden from doing so?

Numerous treaties and conventions regulating armaments have emerged since the Second World War. Of these, three concern us here:

1. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT);
2. The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons (BWC);
3. The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).

The Europeans—who administer these agreements as they administer nearly everything related to the United Nations—established organizations to oversee their implementation and to monitor compliance by signatory states. Since acceptance of any international treaty is formally voluntary, a state that ratifies a treaty becomes bound by it, while a state that does not remains free to act outside its framework and constraints.

If we examine the ratification records of a number of states—among them the Arab states I have identified and several of their neighbours—we observe the following:

Ratification of Major Weapons of Mass Destruction Treaties

A cursory glance yields several conclusions:

1. All Arab states hastily ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Israel, India, and Pakistan refused to do so.
2. All Arab states except Egypt ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, while Israel declined; Syria was compelled by force to ratify in 2013, after its devastation.
3. Iraq, Libya, and Lebanon ratified the Biological Weapons Convention, while Israel again refused.

These Arab states were, and remain, in a state of conflict with Israel. In any conflict, a party must observe its adversary’s actions and, at the very least, avoid voluntarily surrendering opportunities for strategic advantage.

What, then, drove these Arab states to rush toward ratifying disarmament treaties that the Zionist enemy openly refused even to discuss? The outcome was the destruction of Iraq, Syria, and Libya—under the pretext of non-compliance—while Israel, India, and Pakistan emerged as nuclear powers. Matters descended into absurdity when Israel, which possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in all of West Asia, began demanding that international monitoring organizations inspect other states on the basis of its own “documented intelligence,” all the while smugly asserting that it is not even obligated to confirm or deny whether it possesses such weapons.

To this day, I have found no satisfactory answer—despite extensive discussion—to the question of what compelled Arab states to ratify these treaties when other states refused, thereby protecting themselves from inspection, violation, and humiliation.

Is it conceivable that the rulers of these states failed to grasp these realities—realities that required, at the very least, an attempt to create some form of balance with the enemy? They were not fools.

Did Arab experts advise their leaders to enter this carefully constructed Zionist trap?

Or were Arab rulers coerced into submission? And if so, by whom—given that they were not all under the guardianship of a single power?

Who deceived or compelled Hafez al-Assad, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi, for example, to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—especially when their ratifications came after Israel had already tested its nuclear weapon?

And let no naïve respondent tell me that the motivation lay in the peaceful use of nuclear energy. North Korea has successfully employed nuclear energy for both civilian and military purposes without recourse to the International Atomic Energy Agency and without signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

To be continued…