A disparate group of Islamist clerics has been busily predicting that
the State of Israel will disappear in 2022, citing the Koran for
support.
The prediction has been circulating in earnest since March, when
Muslims around the world marked the holy month of Ramadan. According to
an article on the pro-Hamas MEMO website by Mohammad Makram Balawi,
a Palestinian writer living in Istanbul, the belief that Israel will be
removed from the map at some point this year “is widely spread by some
Muslim religious scholars, Palestinian and non-Palestinian.”
Balawi mentioned two clerics in this regard. One of them, Sheikh Bassam Jarrar,
preaches at a mosque on the outskirts of Ramallah in the West Bank. The
sheikh is apparently “97%” certain that Israel will vanish in 2022 due
to calculations based on an ancient numerical system that assigns number
values to the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet.
“According to Jarrar’s calculations, based on many Koranic texts,
2022 represents the actual beginning of Israel’s downfall,” he wrote.
“On March 5, 2022, according to Jarrar, a huge event will mark the
beginning of the ‘Israeli downfall.’ How it will happen is not yet
clear.”
Of course, March 5 has been and gone, and Israel is still there. As for the second cleric discussed by Balawi, Iraqi Sheikh Mohammed Ahmed Al-Rashed,
he provided little that would bolster Jarrar’s claims. Among
Al-Rashed’s reasons for Israel’s imminent collapse is a story about a
Jewish neighbor of his in Baghdad in 1948, the year of Israel’s
creation, when he was just a child. The woman, who was said to be
“wailing” at the time, told Al-Rashed’s mother “that Jews had declared a
state in Palestine, and there is a Jewish prophecy that stated that if
Jews established a state, it would be a sign of their destruction and
would not last more than 76 years.”
Islam is not the only faith to dress up superstition as credible
assertion. Still, the significance of such beliefs is better gauged by
measuring their popularity rather than debating their contents. Among
Palestinians, the belief that Israel’s disappearance will be a feature
of 2022 is not exactly uncommon.
We know this because a survey
conducted last week by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy
and Survey Research (PSR) included a question about the prediction. One
in four Palestinians—a sizable proportion by any standards—is certain
that the prediction will come to pass, while 63% believe otherwise. Most
tellingly, according to the PSR, a “vast majority” of 78% believe that
the Koran contains such a prophecy, while only 17% do not.
This particular response needs to be seen within the context of the
entire poll. The view of a clear majority that Israel’s demise is
religiously sanctioned, along with the view of a notable minority that
such an event is expected as soon as this year, would probably not have
registered were the Palestinians engaged in a meaningful peace process
with Israel that provided both sides with some grounds for hope.
The opposite is the case. The overall picture of Palestinian society
that emerges from the PSR poll is an alarming blend of cynicism and
extremism.
The biggest loser in the poll is the Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas,
whose personal ratings have been at rock bottom for several years now,
as he clings to the post he first won in 2005. If an election was held
tomorrow, Abbas would garner 33% of the vote, with 55% opting for his
Hamas rival Ismail Haniyeh, but the kicker is that only
49% of those eligible to cast a ballot would bother turning up. The
Palestinians, the poll demonstrates, are fed up with their leaders and
with their existing political factions.
That should not come as a surprise, given the systemic corruption and
political repression that has marked Fatah rule in the West Bank and
Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip. Still, any hope that this disillusionment
might generate a movement for a historic reconciliation with Israel is
sorely misplaced.
Just 28% of Palestinians currently agree with the two-state
solution—about the same as those who believe in the Koranic prediction
of Israel’s coming demise—while a whopping 69% oppose it. In a similar
vein, an overwhelming majority (77%) doesn’t think there is a ghost of a
chance that a Palestinian state will be created alongside Israel within
the next five years.
Separately, 55% of respondents urged a return to armed confrontation
with Israel, although support for violence is far more pronounced among
Gazans (77%) than West Bankers (46%). Asked what the immediate priority
for the Palestinians should be, a plurality of 46% answered in favor of
creating a state with eastern Jerusalem as its capital. However, another
32% expressed their backing for the scorched-earth approach to the
conflict in the form of a full return of more than 5 million descendants
of the original 750,000 Arab refugees of Israel’s 1948 War of
Independence.
There is little indication that these attitudes will shift in the
near future, deepening Palestinian frustration with the international
community even further. Their views on the Russian invasion of Ukraine—a
plurality of 42% are sympathetic to Moscow—suggest that the
Palestinians see their interests as aligned with adversaries of Western
democracy, as was the case during the Cold War.
When it comes to the issue that has bedeviled peace efforts for
nearly a century—whether the Palestinians can acknowledge and accept
that Israel’s existence is legitimate—the world is as far away from a
positive resolution as it has ever been. While it is correct that a
minority of Palestinians think that the Koranic prediction of Israel’s
collapse is accurate, a much greater number clearly wishes the
prediction was true, even if their reasoned judgment leads them to a
different conclusion. In such an environment, defined by Palestinian
incitement against Israel’s very presence, the swords won’t become
ploughshares anytime soon.
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