What Peace? A Hundred Years of Blood and Shame
11.11.2018.
A date of significance to millions of people, marking 100 years since the end of World War One.
World leaders such as US President Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, all gathered to honor the soldiers who gave their lives to ‘preserve world peace’.
Ironically, on this same day, an Israeli operation in Gaza triggered hostilities between the two borders. The Israelis killed seven Palestinian fighters and one Israeli soldier was killed by the Palestinian fighters.
Scores of Palestinians were injured by Israeli fire – just a glimpse of what Palestinians are forced to go through on a daily basis.
And it’s not just the Palestinians, it’s the Iraqis, Yemenis, Syrians, Lebanese, Somalis and the rest of the citizens of the Middle East.
This is a region that apparently world leaders tend to overlook in their so-called peace calls. Either today or literally 100 years ago, nothing has really changed.
For them, this day is the celebration of their soldiers’ victories. The exact victory that paved the way for implementing Britain and France’s secret Sykes-Picot agreement to carve up the remnants of the defeated Ottoman Empire amongst their own.
Their peace was basically trading and compromising provinces that weren’t theirs to begin with, and drawing random borders to ensure they get the most out of these re-defined territoires.
Reckless calculations and interest-based considerations that kept an entire region bleeding until this very day.
It was these trivial interests and war promises that produced an issue as devastating as the Palestinian tragedy.
Britain wanted to beat the Germans and their Ottoman allies, and ultimately occupy more colonies in the Middle East, regardless of anything else. Accordingly, they promised the French a piece of the cake and used as many nationalist movements as possible to help them fight.
As luck would have it, one of the nationalist movements the British tried to use for their favor was the Zionist national movement, a political movement for the unification of Europe’s oppressed Jews in one Jewish state.
Whether we agree on the link between Britain’s support to the Zionist movement through the Balfour declaration and the American entry to the war in 1917, we cannot deny Britain’s motifs of using the Zionists.
The British also used the other nationalist movement – Arab unity against the Ottoman empire, led by the Sharif of Mecca Hussein bin Ali and his son Faisal. The British High Commissioner to Egypt Henry Mcmahon promised Arab independence, which was later violated with the exposure of the Sykes-Picot agreement.
All these contradictory war promises were nothing but higher bets to beat the Germans at the time, but later turned into much more.
As if the destructive war promises weren’t enough to hinder the Middle East’s future for a century, the British and the French worsened matters with their flawed colonialist policies.
How can they legitimize their governance and rape the resources if it’s not for the classic divide and rule policy?
They accordingly divided their states on the basis of religion, just to be able to recruit the minorities into the system to enhance their control.
This is a strategy which has affected Middle Eastern politics for the past century.
It’s also because of the Sykes-Picot’s divisions that we have a radical ideology like the Islamic State (ISIS) of today.
What do we really expect of oppressed individuals who have seen nothing but the brutality of Western occupation, calling for the return of the Islamic Caliphate that was represented by the Ottoman Empire?
Radicalization would be an understatement.
With all that said, one wonders what peace these world leaders were really celebrating.
Is the Middle East, as always, missing from their map of humane considerations?
Dear World leaders, there’s absolutely nothing to celebrate on Armistice Day but one hundred years of blood and shame.
