Will democracy in Egypt benefit the Palestinians?

Will democracy in Egypt benefit the Palestinians?

By Alan Hart
February 13, 2011

For decades, and despite much rhetoric to the contrary, American-led Western policy has been to prefer Arab dictatorship (authoritarianism in various forms) to Arab democracy. This preference was determined by two main assessments.

One was that corrupt and repressive Arab regimes were the best possible guarantee that oil would continue to flow at prices acceptable to the West, and that there would be almost no limits to the amount of weapons that could be sold to the most wealthy Arab states. (The design, production, testing and selling of weapons is one of the biggest creators of jobs and wealth in America, Britain and some other Western nations. Were it not for Saudi Arabia’s purchases, Britain’s arms manufacturing industry might have gone bust by now).

The other main policy-driving assessment was that only corrupt and repressive Arab regimes could be relied upon to provide the necessary security assistance for identifying, locating, hunting down and liquidating Islamic terrorists. This consideration became the priority after 9/11.

Corrupt Arab dictatorships – good for Israel

In addition, there was great comfort for Western policy makers in their knowledge that a corrupt and repressive Arab order was not going to fight Israel to liberate Palestine. (As I have noted in previous posts and documented in detail in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, after Israel closed the Palestine file with its victory on the battlefield in 1948, the Arab regimes secretly shared the same hope as all the major powers and Zionism – that the file would remain closed. There was not supposed to have been a regeneration of Palestinian nationalism.)

There was also comfort for Western policy makers in the belief that their relationship with corrupt and repressive Arab regimes would mean that the Western powers would not be seriously challenged on their support for Israel right or wrong. Put another way, Western governments, the one in Washington DC especially, knew they would not be required by the Arab regimes to pay a price for doing the bidding of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress and the mainstream media.

Continued. . .