Danielle Pletka* says Iranian support for Hamas and Hezbollah has done little to make conditions better for those living under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority.
When newly-inaugurated Iranian President, Ebrahim Raisi (pictured) stated in his maiden foreign policy speech “Palestine has been and always will be the number one issue of the Muslim world”, some might have been tempted to pay attention.
After all, Palestine has been a touchstone for much of the Islamic world since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
However, after a string of military defeats and the loss of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, the commitment to Palestine has been rhetorical, financial, or at most via proxies.
So when Raisi mouthed the rote Palestine pieties, it was little more than a nod to an increasingly marginal fight.
In many ways, the trouble for Palestine — or more properly, the Palestinian Authority, as the recognised Palestinian Government is known — is that the cause has become increasingly detached from the actual fate of the Palestinian people.
For many, it is little more than a bumper sticker, while those more committed to at least a token effort toward a Palestinian State are, for the most part, the Islamic Republic of Iran and its friends.
Raisi’s recent election to Iran’s top political post was greeted in Europe and the United States as yet another setback in the desperate effort to coax Iran into the community of nations.
However, while Washington, London and Paris are focused on the Iranian nuclear program, Raisi made clear that his priorities are elsewhere.
On his first day in office, the erstwhile Iranian Chief Justice met the leaders of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
(Observers can be forgiven for not remembering the PFLP, the Marxist-Leninist group best known for airline hijackings, though it has claimed credit for a series of murders in and around Israel in recent years).
Raisi’s pledge that “Palestine has been and always will be the number one issue of the Muslim world” was reportedly made to Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh.
The President then echoed the same theme in his inauguration speech, announcing that “signs of the resistance’s great victory have emerged”.
The problem is, signs of the resistance’s great victory haven’t really emerged. They remain buried under what might be termed the resistance’s great failure.
The recent war between Hamas and Israel claimed lives on both sides, but did little for the Palestinian people.
Instead, it served to advance Hamas’ claims for the mantle of political authority against its main rival, the increasingly sclerotic Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah Party.
It also resulted in the death of a number of key officials, engineers, and bomb-makers.
Hezbollah has largely focused on preserving the Assad regime in Syria in recent years, although recent weeks have seen a number of rocket attacks on Israel, the first in 15 years.
Their purpose? Perhaps establishing that Hezbollah is still a potent threat against Israel, though more in service to its own reputation and Iran’s foreign policy machinations, less to the Palestinians.
Iranian cash to the so-called liberators of Palestine, similarly, has failed to deliver prosperity to the Palestinian people.
While Tehran reportedly upped its aid to Hamas to $US30 million ($A41.4 million) a month, the group’s recent attacks on Israel resulted in at least $US500 million ($A690 million) damage in Gaza, unlikely to be repaired by Iranian subsidies.
If Iranian support for the liberation of Palestine has failed to deliver, others even more florid in their claims have managed even less.
Al-Qaeda: “the breezes of the pride of faith have been blowing on our precious Ummah with an uprising and jihad of our noble courageous people in Bayt al-Maqdis [Jerusalem].”
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula: “We must rise up and confront the usurping Jews with whatever effort we can. In this statement, we declare our solidarity and our support for our brothers in Palestine. How we wish we were among you.”
Between the hot air spouted by Sunni jihadists, the empty promises of Arab leaders, the growing acceptance of Israel by once-stalwart supporters of the Palestinians in the Gulf, Iran can at least claim it’s doing something.
Or at least paying others to do something.
Of course, the best option for the Palestinian people would be to embrace a more serious democratic process, elect new leaders, renounce the extremism of Iranian-backed groups, and lean in to a real peace process with Israel.
However, that’s not what Iran and its fellow travellers are fighting for.
*Danielle Pletka is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank. She was born in Melbourne but is now a naturalised American citizen.
This article first appeared at thedispatch.com.
