Experts Fear Israeli Design to Balkanise Arab States

Analysis by Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

"CAIRO, Jun 18, 2011 (IPS) - Developments in Libya have raised fears among Egyptian analysts and political figures of the possible break-up of the North African nation into two warring halves. To support the assertion, they point to longstanding Israeli designs - supported by the western powers - to balkanise the Arab states of the region.

"Libya could be split in two, with Gaddafi staying on in the west of the country and a revolutionary government loyal to the western powers in control of the east," Mohamed al-Sakhawi, leading member of Egypt's as-yet-unlicensed Arabic Unity Party, told IPS....

Yet the fact that NATO - despite its overwhelming air superiority - has so far failed to dislodge the Gaddafi regime has led many local observers to question the western alliance's intentions.

"The western campaign against Libya wasn't undertaken to protect human rights or foster democracy," said al-Sakhawi. "It was launched with the aim of breaking Libya up politically so as to prevent the unification of three revolutionary Arab states - Egypt, Libya and Tunisia - which together might pose a threat to Israeli regional dominance."....

Egyptian analysts point to several proposals written to this effect by Israeli strategists, the most well known of which is a 1982 treatise entitled "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s." Written by Oded Yinon, then a senior advisor for Israel's foreign ministry, the essay explicitly calls for breaking up the Arab states of the region along ethnic and sectarian lines.

"The Zionist plan to politically fragment the Arab Middle East so as to keep Arab states in a perpetual state of instability and weakness has been well known for the last three decades," Gamal Mazloum, retired Egyptian major-general and expert on defence issues, told IPS....

According to Mazloum, political manoeuvring in recent years by Israel and the western powers - both overt and covert - appears to conform to this strategy of balkanisation.

"Israel and the U.S. have both helped break up Iraq by encouraging the emergence of an independent Kurdish state and fostering Sunni-Shiite division," he said. "And in Sudan, Israel actively contributed to the war between north and south by providing the latter with weapons and military training."

Southern Sudan is set to declare independence from the northern Khartoum government next month in a move that will officially split Africa's largest country in two.....

"This conspiracy is part of a wider scheme to fragment the Arab states - as has happened in Sudan, is happening in Libya and has been attempted in Iraq - in order to render Egypt so weak that the Zionist entity will be sure to remain the dominant power in the new Middle East," Abbas was quoted as saying by independent daily Al-Shorouk on Jun. 4. "

Click Here to Read Oded Yinon's Proposal (pdf)