Yinon and Gelb on Iraq

Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations (!!!), is proposing that Iraq be broken up into three states, a Shia south, a Kurdish north, and those lousy Sunnis left oillessly in the middle to their own devices. Needless to say, this would be a disaster, as a Kurdish state would never be tolerated by the Turks, and such a division might lead to World War Three. Even the Kurds recognize that their best solution is as part of a federal state, with autonomy like Catalonia has in Spain, or, if they play their cards right, like Quebec has in Canada. The break-up of Iraq is part of the long-term Zionist plan to break all the states that might pose a threat to Israel into smaller pieces. The key document, 'A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s', was written by Israeli journalist Oded Yinon and appeared as long ago as February 1982, although the basic ideas are much older than that. Yinon wrote (scroll down for his essay; the explanatory material in front and after the Yinon essay by Israel Shahak is excellent, and the italics have been added by Shahak):

"Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north."

Yinon also argues for the forced removal of the Palestinians into Jordan, what is now called 'transfer'. It is amazing that such detailed plans have been published (for a highly cynical but reasonable view of why there is no danger in publishing these plans, read Shahak's section "Why is it assumed that there is no special risk from the outside in the publication of such plans?" printed after the Yinon essay). We've seen the same phenomenon with the publication of all the detailed PNAC materials, and the infamous essay "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", written by patriotic Americans Perle, Feith and Wurmser, etc., in which even more of the Zionist neocon crazed plans are set out. Besides the fact that the break-up of Iraq would be likely to lead to a massive war in which Israel would find itself, there is no guarantee that these new small parts wouldn't join into new coalitions which Israel might not like. What if the southern Iraqis decided to join Iran? Even from a Zionist point of view, the whole plan is nuts. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine how it is that the Council on Foreign Relations is parroting hard-core Zionist insanity.