"Saddam's Last Hurrah?"

Op-Ed, BitterLemons.org--Palestinian-Israeli Crossfire, issue 2

January 15, 2007

Author: Chuck Freilich, Senior Fellow, International Security Program

Belfer Center Programs or Projects: International Security

NOTE

This op-ed was published as part of an edition on "Saddam Hussein and the Conflict"

The name Saddam Hussein alone is enough to send an involuntary shudder of loathing, fear and abhorrence down many Israelis' backs. A latter day Hitler-wannabe, just much less "capable", Saddam threatened he would "burn half of Israel". A thug, maybe the worst of the many the Arab world has produced, he brutalized millions of his own people, started a bloody war with Iran and conquered and raped Kuwait. A depraved, murderous dictator, Saddam squandered his people's natural wealth; he took one of the Arab world's more educated and industrious peoples and stamped out their freedom, creativity, joy of life, even life itself. This Arab "hero" subjected his own people to a degree of oppression his "occupied Palestinian brethren" never dreamed of.

In January 1991, Israelis hunkered down in shelters and sealed rooms with gas masks, awaiting the next missile. Would this be the one with a chemical warhead, which would link our generation of Jews, born in the post-Holocaust era of a free, militarily proud Israel, with our gassed parents or grandparents' generation in Europe? With each of the 39 missiles Saddam fired, Israel relived a "mini-Holocaust" experience. In the most perverse way, there almost seemed to be poetic justice in it. After all, why did we deserve to live such protected, enriched lives or, to paraphrase the Passover Seder, what made our generation of Jews different from all others? When the war ended, we emerged from our shelters, put away our gas masks and went back to our lives. We had survived this Hitler, this pharaoh, too.

Many Palestinians rejoiced as Saddam's missiles struck Israel, the first Arab leader to give Israel a "taste of what it deserved". This Saddam, as well as the Saddam defiantly championing their cause at the gallows, is what many Palestinians will remember. Gone will be the bone-chilling image of evil incarnate, of Saddam stroking the face of a terrified young boy during the 1991 war, his and his parents' lives clearly at stake, of Saddam the mass murderer.

This "great benefactor" of the Palestinian people gave $10,000 to the families of routine "martyrs" and $25,000 to those of successful suicide bombers. It was a "blood relationship" in the fullest sense of the word. Had Saddam actually developed weapons of mass destruction we can only speculate how far he might have gone in support of the Palestinians. Fortunately, he was not given the chance.

In recent weeks, the Iraq Study Group report and others have reiterated the ostensible link between events in Iraq and elsewhere in the region and the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process". They are not the first to do so and, indeed, there is no doubt that the passions the Palestinian cause inflames throughout the Arab world complicate an already difficult situation. Beyond atmospherics, however, not unimportant in themselves, the link is fatuous. Saddam did not go to war with Iran, conquer Kuwait or oppress his people because of Israel. Indeed, 15 years of international preoccupation with Iraq, as well as the Palestinians' own never-ending dysfunctionality, merely deflected attention from their cause.

Early in its first term, the Bush administration correctly concluded that there was little prospect for progress with the Palestinians and thus that it was free to focus on Iraq. The Palestinians have no one to blame for this but themselves. Arafat's rejection of a deal at Camp David and Taba, coupled with the intifada, relegated the issue to a back burner.

If the United States cannot achieve even minimal success in Iraq—a stable, peaceful and united country—Saddam's last hurrah will be in the ensuing regional chaos. Iraq will deteriorate into ever worsening violence and may splinter, its neighbors all vying to annex parts of the loot. For Jordan, an Iranian-dominated Iraq is a nightmare, a new threat to its already tenuous stability and demographic balance. Might the "Jordan is Palestine" option result for reasons totally unrelated to Israel? Iran, with a de facto Jordanian border and no longer constrained by the need to balance Iraq, would be able to further strengthen its ties with Hamas and project an even more combustible influence over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A radical Iranian, Palestinian, Syrian and Hizballah axis could evolve on Israel's borders, the Iranian nuclear threat on its doorstep.

The death sentence is always abhorrent. Indeed, how can a force for good (the state, at least in democracies) use an inherently evil measure to mete out justice, even if Saddam's heinous crimes make it so richly deserved? As a society that sanctifies life, the hanging of even such a truly evil person is not a time for rejoicing in Israel. The world, however, is undoubtedly a better place without him.— Published 15/1/2007 © bitterlemons.org

Chuck Freilich is former deputy Israeli national security adviser. He is currently a senior fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and teaches political science at Tel Aviv and Hebrew universities.

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