Jordan paper warns that "normalization" is just another form of "occupation"

In Assabeel, writer Ahmed Shawabkeh warns that Israel's desire to have normal relations with its Arab neighbors is nothing less than a method for Israel to non-militarily occupy the Arab world.

The establishment of normal relations "between the perpetrator and the victim," allows Israel, and indeed all Western powers, to achieve what cannot be achieved by direct military occupation - and it costs less, too!

The worst types and the worst form of normalization, Shawabkeh informs us, is practiced by "the Jewish entity" against all its Arab neighbors, either through treaties and formal conventions or via vague and veiled understandings, all done forcibly against the will of the people.

This awful occupation involves Israel using natural resources of the "occupants," spying on them, marketing Israeli goods to them - many of which are carcinogenic and other items [perhaps, ideas] that kill souls and bodies. Israel also is said to have poisoned Egyptian land by planting trees and other agricultural initiatives.

Military occupation is preferable to this insidious "civil occupation," he says, because the occupant knows he is being occupied in a military occupation and can be on guard for the enemy's evil plots - but normalization is worse, because it is like a cancer spreading throughout your body that you are not aware of.

How can self-respecting Arabs establish relations with the likes of those who had spurned God and His prophets, and occupied the land and killed people and desecrated the holy places? How can they sign agreements and treaties and open their embassies and exchange visits and meetings and kisses with these Jews?

Shawbakeh concludes by saying that reconciliation and normalization with Jews should provoke anger and abhorrence and indignation.

By the way, the author is a dean of an Islamic university and holds a PhD in modern history from Ain Shams University in Cairo.