(Middle East Quarterly) Daniel Pipes - Former Lebanese foreign minister Elie Salem wrote: "The logic of victory and defeat does not fully apply in the Arab-Israeli context. In the wars with Israel, Arabs celebrated their defeats as if they were victories." Since 1956, military losses have hardly ever scathed Arabic-speaking rulers and sometimes benefited them. Hamas and its allies agreed that it won the May 2021 conflict with Israel. Just two days after the fighting began, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah announced his organization had "achieved victory in the battle for Jerusalem." Six factors in Arab political culture help account for this attitude: honor, fatalism, conspiracism, bombast, publicity, and confusion. The writer is president of the Middle East Forum.
2021-06-17 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive