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Arabs buy weapons - but won't use them
NEW YORK - The tragedy of the Palestinian conflict is that no Arab country is willing to risk a war with Israel either because it is too cowardly or far too dependent on the United States for its economic or military survival. Over a 10-year period ending 2000, the United States has provided a hefty $74 billion dollars in arms and military training just to Israel and 10 Arab nations - Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain, Lebanon, Oman, Yemen and Qatar. "Why do we pay for all these weapons if we do not use them?," asks Yussif al Qaradawi, an Islamic cleric in Egypt.

The maverick Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi says that not only should Israel's Arab neighbours open their borders but also provide some of their mostly unpacked weapons to the Palestinians. "These weapons", he said, "would perhaps be more useful if they were sold as scrap, and re-made into pots and pans." But Qaddafi, whose North African country is geographically far removed from the battle front, does not say what he has done with the billions of dollars worth of weapons from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union which has been gathering dust in his own arsenal.

Saudi Arabia alone has purchased over $33.5 billion dollars in US arms and training during 1991-2000 - more than the gross national product (GNP) of Lebanon ($18 billion), Oman ($16 billion) and Qatar ($19 billion). The arms purchases by the Saudis were way ahead of Israel ($18.8 billion), Egypt ($12.7 billion), Kuwait ($5.5 billion), United Arab Emirates ($1.4 billion) and Bahrain ($1.1 billion), according to the latest figures released by the General Accounting Office (GA0), the watchdog body of the US Congress.
These weapons, particularly the sophisticated fighter planes and missiles, were never purchased for national self-defence or to assist other Arab nations, but were part of a political arrangement with the United States.

The Arabs subsidise the American defence industry by buying billions of dollars worth of weapons which they do not use - or even know how to operate - while the Americans provide them with a defence umbrella to ensure their survival against political uprising by their own peoples. All of the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, depend on the United States for military survival.
The Americans in turn have instilled the fear that their biggest military threats are regional: Iraq and Iran.

Paradoxically, the Iraqis and the Iranians have done more for the sustenance of the US defence industry than their own government. Just after the 1990-1991 Gulf War that followed the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, Saudi Arabia alone purchased $20 billion worth of US weapons in a single transaction described as the largest in American history.
When the Saudis opened up their country to US forces to launch military attacks on Iraq, the Americans discovered large crates of US military equipment piled in warehouses - mostly unopened.

Since the attack against Iraq was authorised by the UN Security Council, the Kuwaitis reciprocated the gesture by signing military agreements with all five veto-wielding permanent members - the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia, and buying weapons from all five. Meanwhile, demonstrators have taken to the streets of Arab capitals, including Cairo, Riyadh, Kuwait City, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Beirut, Damascus, Rabat and Manama, to vent their anger not only at Israel but also against their own governments for not coming to the Palestinians' assistance.

As Egyptian security forces turned their water cannons on rioting crowds in the streets of Cairo, one demonstrator summed up the attack rather aptly: "Arab armies are good only to fight their own people, women and children. They are not fit to fight the Israelis."

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