(Institute for Contemporary Affairs-Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Lt.-Col. (ret.) Michael Segall - Iran has been celebrating International Quds (Jerusalem) Day on the last Friday of the month of Ramadan since Ayatollah Khomeini began the observance in 1979, to express Muslim yearning for the "liberation of Jerusalem" and the "restoration of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians." Khomeini's doctrine - "The destruction of Zionism and the 'Zionist entity' (Israel) is the basic condition for solving the contemporary problems of Islam" and liberating Palestine - continues to resonate and to guide even the second and third generations of the Islamic revolution, a sort of eternal precept that brooks no deviation, questioning, or disagreement and that one must strive constantly and actively to fulfill. According to this doctrine, the ongoing struggle against Israel and the United States is not a separate phenomenon but part of the centuries-old battle against Western arrogance, domineering, and imperialism, which implanted the "Zionist entity" in the heart of the Muslim domain. Each year the repeated call for the destruction of Israel offers Iran an opportunity to project an ongoing activist approach to the Palestinian problem. Tehran contrasts this stance with the current impotence and incompetence of the Sunni Arab leaders who, in its view, are gradually normalizing their relations with Israel and thereby betraying the Palestinians and the Muslim Ummah. Iran is arming Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza and helping them with rockets and missiles to balance forces in the armed struggle with Israel. The Iranian regime is not likely to change its ideological conception of Israel as a foreign implantation and it will continue to market that concept in the region and in the international arena. The meaning of the "Iranian peace plan" - or as the Supreme leader wrote in a propaganda poster ahead of Quds Day: "Palestine will be free. The final solution: Resistance until referendum" - is Israel's eradication as a Jewish state. The writer, an expert on strategic issues with a focus on Iran, is a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Center.
2020-05-27 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive