Pipes: 'War is Not Traditionally Conducted Like This'

Interview with Dr. Daniel Pipes 

Question: Was Israel hurt by the recent Gaza conflict beyond the PR black eye? Did Hamas gain anything from it?

Hamas and the PA both know that if Palestinians die, Israel looks bad. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are. I don't know how deep and important that PR black eye is. There's so much else going on in the world that I think this is not the most important development of late.

But there is this bizarre transformation where the Palestinian leadership wants Palestinians dead and the Israeli leadership wants them alive. It's not the way war was traditionally conducted.


Question: Getting back to the embassy move, it seemed the reaction in Arab capitals was muted compared to what it might have been in previous years?

It was extraordinary. Not a single Arab capital, including Damascus and Baghdad, said more than a perfunctory word or two about this. Instead, it was Ankara and Tehran that were exercised about it, and, to some extent, the Europeans as well.

The Arab states used the conflict with Israel, for some decades, as a way of mobilizing opinion and distracting opinion away from the current local problems. It's a tiger they want to get off of.

What's really interesting is that you see major cracks in Muslim hostility towards Israel, spectacularly in Saudi Arabia. 
[Canadian Jewish News]
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