Antonio Navalón
If When the Berlin Wall fell, the book that best reflected this episode of history was Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History and the Last Man”. After the Hamas attack on Israel that began on October 7, the title that best defines this stage of history is the one that headlines this article.
In the book of books, the Bible, Exodus is – after the creation of the world itself – one of the first chapters, and it is so, basically because the epic of Moses’ reunion with his people through Yahweh’s command made the Israelites become the Chosen People from that moment on. At that moment, the Jews loyal to their God, who were the original inhabitants of Judea, were entrusted and promised to receive their Promised Land. It took two world wars, the discovery of oil, and the resettlement of the new powers between the developed Europe, North America, and the very rich, very distant, and very underdeveloped Arabia and the deserts of the Middle East, together with the original and structural Persian Empire, for a whole geostrategic map to be drawn in Balfour’s mind. On that map, a small land was located in the middle of countries such as Jordan or Egypt, where the Mecca of Judeo-Christian civilization, Jerusalem, is located, and where today we find what we know as the State of Israel.
It took six million deaths in the Holocaust, two world wars, the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, and the near annihilation of the Chosen People by the God of Moses to see the light finally. In 1948, they had, for the first time since the first Diaspora, the right to a territory of their own. A single vote was the one that allowed the birth of the State of Israel. It is fair and necessary to remember that the entire oil map, that of the configuration of the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, that of the ancient Persian Empire, and the Middle East, was made by the British to control and, therefore, create situations of significant divergence and internal confrontation where the main oil wells, traced in the Balfour map, sprang up.
Oil was the origin of the modern world. Today, Oil is the only essential element that – after having dreamed many times since the 1950s – of eliminating fossil parts to finance and develop our world, appears as the critical component to satisfy the desires and expansionist ambitions of some world powers. An example of this is the case of Russian gas and oil and what is currently happening with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This conflict is increasingly distant from becoming chronic and ending in a relatively short time.
The problems in Europe are ancestral. The problems created by the oil maps are as recent as the countries in which they were created. In 1917, Her Majesty’s government adopted and approved the original Balfour plans, which had only one objective, which was that whatever happened, recognizing the inevitability of the process of decolonization – especially in a part of the world controlled by an empire that ended in the First World War, which was the Ottoman Empire – it was imperative that the model of the colonies and empires could not be repeated. But what is true is that this gave birth to a series of countries which, precisely because of their artificiality and the fact that – in most cases – they had nothing in common but a God, Allah, and his holy book, the Koran, it was inevitable that at one time or another, there would be a clash.
At the time of drawing and creating the Balfour map, England never considered that what it was doing was putting into a simmering pot a series of conflicts that have come down to the present day. And so the new maps of the Middle East were created in the middle of the last century that were based, above all, on the proximity and presence of Jerusalem, with the origin of the creation of the Jewish world and the Judeo-Christian civilization. The question at that time boiled down to whether or not to give the right to the creation of the State of Israel; today, the story is different.
It is common knowledge all that was necessary for the creation of Israel. For a short span of eighty years, anti-Semitism did not disappear but was hidden because, in most countries, it is a crime to be anti-Semitic or because of the memory of the echoes of World War II and Hitler’s plans known as the “Final Solution” to wipe out the Jews. For a time, anti-Semitism filled not only Germany with shame but also those countries that denied or disregarded the fact that the Jewish people had suffered enough in their history.
As always happens, the worst wars are religious wars. As always happens, the worst destiny of man is to find himself in the middle of battles for the true gods. Regardless of the most profound respect for the belief of each one of us, the game of religions and the game linked to the collectivization of a way of life, in this case, the Western one, was causing phenomena such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon or the birth of Israel with an unsolved problem. A problem that never wanted to be assumed as such but which did allow to create the foundation of the problem of Arab-Jewish enmity.
Nobody loves the Palestinians. One need only look at the latest statements of the President of Egypt, Abdelfatah El-Sisi, or the refusal of the King of Jordan to have a meeting with Joe Biden to solve the Palestinian problem. In the end, the Palestinian problem for the Arabs is an uncomfortable and useful reality that serves to explain the political, military, and terrorist position against Israel. However, it is a problem that, in the end, does not mobilize per se, the search for the welfare of the Palestinians. With this generalized rejection, with this impossibility, and with this lack of understanding of the modern world that the only guarantee of peace is by generating conditions of balance, justice, and social distribution, Israel has become a country born under the protection of the divine heroism of King David with a behavior, from the force, that resembles Goliath more than King David.
We come to this moment where, on the one hand, for the first time since the 1950s, the United States has made it clear that child’s play is over. This is no longer an Arab-Israeli problem but a conflict over world domination. The great power game is currently taking place in an area as limited in substance – by strategic expansion – as the Middle East and what remains of the Persian empire.
The creation of Saudi Arabia further strengthened that feeling of victimhood carried from the conviction that the Shiites have. The fall of the Shah of Iran and the disappearance of the West from the former Persian empire allowed the Shiites – through Imam Khomeini – to find their country, which, in a sense, already was. Not only that, but these elements also allowed the creation of a military and economic organization – also based on oil and on Iran’s strength – to protect all the other Shiites, a minority force in the Arab world, against the domination and above all the religious, political and social hegemony of the Sunnis.
The conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia had always been on the cards. It was lacking, as always happens, that the common enemy would give the opportunity for wars such as the one in Afghanistan. Now, in the new distribution of the world – which is no longer bipolar – there are at least three powers disputing the remnants over which it is possible to continue to govern. On the one hand, we have the most prominent military structure since the Roman Empire, the United States of America, with more than seven hundred and fifty military bases worldwide. On the other hand, we have China, a phenomenon of economic, industrial, and technological explosion that – in a certain sense, if it is not given an intelligent way out – could end up being overwhelmed by its own success. At the same time, we have the decline not only demographically but also of the largest country in square kilometers on Earth, which is Russia, currently struggling to become an empire again when all the components, including demographic ones, are missing and failing it in order to be able to remain an empire.
Economic, technological, military, and nuclear dominance marks the times we live in. In the midst of all that, this is no longer a game based on a false conflict that has ended up being true, which is the hatred between Arabs and Israelis, but this is a conflict over the distribution of power. A confrontation in which the aim is to define what to do with that small and limited part – but the cradle of religions and civilizations – of the planet.
For the first time since the end of World War II, the Jews have been defeated in the propaganda battle. No matter the barbarities committed by Hamas, the underground anti-Semitic sentiment makes people fill the streets, not claiming and crying for justice for the burned or beheaded Israeli children but claiming justice for the Palestinian people and failing to condemn the terrorist actions of Hamas.
At this moment, anti-Semitism is receiving an injection of energy such as it has not had in many years, possibly in centuries. It raises the question of how it will be possible to build a military, nuclear, and energy balance without resolving – and waiting to see at what price it will be resolved – the Palestinian problem with Israel.
In all my life, I have never considered the possibility of the disappearance of the State of Israel. Indeed, it is written that for many, Israel is the Third Temple, and, as stipulated in the holy book, its disappearance would mean the end of the world. With this in mind, we are heading towards the final act of a problem that is already very difficult to solve, and that is if the Arab world only uses the Palestinian issue to maintain a situation of internal peace in their countries and relative balance in the power struggle, what solution will the problem have once peace is achieved? It should not be forgotten that the Vietcong won the Vietnam War thanks to tunnels. All the strength that Hamas has today is thanks to the tunnels financed by Qatar, that is to say, financed by Iran, to stand up and wage a guerrilla war that will continue to wear down a society that has had its sleep killed.
From here, the big question is: how will it be possible to find a trustworthy and lasting peace in the Arab-Israeli relationship? Knowing that this is not the problem but that the real problem is the distribution of power. The fact is that, as long as this conflict exists, a series of artificial conflicts can naturally continue to be maintained, which, in the end, gives the three powers the necessary peace of mind to know that they are in control of the situation until India arrives at the sharing out of the world.
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