Without Mideast peace, one hand will be tied behind back in anti-terror fight — King

AMMAN — His Majesty King Abdullah has said that a solution to the Middle East conflict would free stakeholders’ hands to eradicate terrorism, while lack of a solution would cripple the efforts.

In an interview with CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS”, which was broadcast Sunday, His Majesty said: “If we’re going to have any chance of winning this generational fight, this Third World War by other means — if we can’t fix this Israeli-Palestinian problem, this ongoing situation that’s been there for many decades, then we have at least one hand tied behind our backs.”

Meanwhile, he did not expect much to be done at present in this regard, not before the Israeli elections are over.

“At this stage, nothing proactive will happen from either side, unfortunately, until we get past the elections. My hope is that once we get past the elections, there is a serious commitment from both sides to move on the two-state solution,” His Majesty told Zakaria. 

He reiterated the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands is used as an argument by terrorists to recruit new blood, citing a spike in foreign fighters joining Daesh during and in the aftermath of Israel’s offensive against Gaza in the summer last year.

“… Israelis will say that these problems [have] got nothing to do with us, and get upset sometimes when I say that all roads lead to Jerusalem. They [terrorists] use this as an argument. So we saw that the spike in recruiting in the summer when the war in Gaza happened, and 700 women and children died as a result, foreign fighters flocked to Syria and to Iraq because of what they perceive as the injustice of the Palestinians and Arab Jerusalem.”

The King highlighted a “long approach” to defeat Daesh, saying that the “earth-shattering” response to Daesh Jordan promised after the terror group brutally killed air force pilot Muath Kasasbeh is not done in an overnight.

“Earth-shattering is — from all military capabilities — not something that happens overnight. There has been a massive response from our air campaign; there are continued operations going on in Syria. We are coordinating with our friends in Iraq. And there is a long-term approach to this issue.”

His Majesty reiterated that the war against terror groups is “our war”, fought in defence of the nation and true Islam against what he called “Khawarij”, or outlaws in the eyes of Islam, stressing that Daesh has always had an expansionist ambition.

“It has been our war for a long time, against these people that, for lack of a better term, many of us are calling Khawarij. These are outlaws of Islam that have been trying to use expansionist policy the minute that they set up and tried to expand their dominion over Muslims. They try to make themselves look as the victims. That it is, you know, us Muslims picking on them. Well, what about the hundreds if not thousands of Muslims that they have killed in Syria and in Iraq over the past year and a half?”

However, King Abdullah emphasised that only Syrians and Iraqis can fight the group out of their lands, with help from the international coalition’s air power and maybe some special operations, which, he said, is under consideration. 

“The tribes that we have a responsibility to reach out to in eastern Syria, and equally as important in western Iraq, that have been executed in large numbers over the past year and a half. So this is our war. And we have a moral responsibility to reach out to those Muslims, to protect them, and to stop them before they reach our border.”

Regarding how to deal with Syria, he said there are two stories.

“There’s the issue of dealing with the regime, and there’s the issue of dealing with Daesh. We have always believed in Jordan that there has to be a political solution for Syria. What has taken prominence at the moment is Daesh, at this stage.”

He added: “We believe that there has to be a political solution that brings the moderate forces and the regime to the table because there is this bigger problem. That has not been clarified at the moment. So, coalition, Arab-Muslim-Western, so to speak, can only do so much in Syria against ISIS. But at the end of the day, it’s got to be the Syrians themselves, especially when you want to reach the heartland of ISIS, which is Raqqa up in the north.”

On the recent terrorist events in France, His Majesty stressed that there is a difference between freedom of speech and hate speech. 

“So both Rania and I were present in Paris [to attend an anti-terrorism rally] because it was the right thing to do to stand up against violence and terrorism. But we were also there in Paris to stand in the name of a young Muslim policeman by the name of Ahmed, who was the first policeman to be at the scene of that crime, who paid with his life defending the laws of France. We were there to also defend those innocents that were killed in the name of Islam, whether it was the 150 schoolchildren that were killed in a school in Pakistan, whether it was, you know, the thousands that were killed in a Nigerian village in a single day, or the thousands of Muslims that are being killed every day in Syria and in Iraq.”

On the issue of blasphemy, the King said if anybody understood the Prophet Mohammad “who always forgave” even those who persecuted him in the early stages of Islam, they would follow his example of tolerance.

“So for these extremists now to be able to be the defenders of his honour, when they don’t understand who he was, I find so insulting because he would have always forgiven. But that’s not what they want to do. They want to create that hatred.”