The following article was published by Haaretz on April 17th 2022
End Times for Israel: The Apocalyptic ‘Quranic’ Prophecy Electrifying Palestinians
By Ori Nir
The most interesting finding in the latest Palestinian public opinion survey shows that 73 percent of Palestinians polled in the West Bank and Gaza Strip believe the Quran includes a prophecy regarding the demise of the state of Israel.
If you follow Palestinian social media, you’ll know that this finding relates to a popular theory devised by a prominent Palestinian West Bank Islamist scholar, Dr. Bassam Jarrar, a longtime Hamas spiritual leader and a YouTube icon, with almost 700,000 subscribers.
Jarrar bases his prediction on several Quranic verses and on intricate numerology. His theory is not new. He has been prophesizing since 1992, and in 1996 published a book that lays out the foundations for the theory. What is timely, however, about his prophecy is that we have reached the due date. Yes, according to Jarrar, Israel’s demise is destined to take place between March and June 2022.
That’s it, we are here. And many Palestinians believe in it, even if they suspect that Jarrar’s time slot may be off. Jarrar, by the way, leaves himself a narrow window for retracting his forecast. The likelihood, he says, is around 95 percent. If Israel does not collapse in the next couple of months, he says in his polemical YouTube lectures, it is only because his calculations were less than perfectly precise.
What does it mean that so many Palestinians believe in this prophecy, even though they witness very little to substantiate the downfall of their neighboring state?
Palestinians are not uneducated. Youth literacy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is almost 100 percent. Enrollment ratio in higher education is among the highest in the world. It is not a society governed by irrational notions or sentiments. And Jarrar is no yahoo. I spoke with him several times in the mid-1990s, after his return from being briefly deported by Israel to Lebanon together with 414 other Palestinian extremists. He is a highly educated, compelling, charismatic interlocutor.
Palestinians are attracted to these notions because their society and polity are so weak in comparison to powerful Israel, because they are in deep despair, having lost hope for liberating themselves from Israel’s rule and have lost hope for achieving political independence, and because they seek retribution for what they view as injustice.
Palestinians’ attempts at altering their difficult reality through sporadic acts of violence, through two intifadas, and through barrages of rockets from the Gaza Strip have failed. So they yearn for some deus ex machina, for divine intervention, some external force that will turn the tables on the occupation. Believing in this form of eschatology generates hope, and hope is in very short supply in Palestinian society.
The word for hope in Arabic, amal, sounds like the word for action, ‘amal. In one of his many YouTube lectures, Jarrar says that he hopes his prophecy would instill hope. "The presence of hope will push for action," he states.
A quick stroll through Arabic language social media demonstrates how popular Jarrar’s prophecy is. The Quranic doctrine that is the basis for his theory, known as "The Promise of the Afterlife" (wa’d al-aakhira) is a popular hashtag on Twitter. No wonder that this popular prophecy is a major source of concern for Israeli intelligence. The desired relationship between hope and action, as Jarrar put it, contributes to the current rise in Palestinian violence emanating from the West Bank, Israeli security officials assess.
Palestinians need a different kind of hope. Creating a political horizon that entails hope for ending the occupation (rather than ending Israel), for national liberation and statehood, is not impossible. It’s within reach.
Would bolstering such hope immediately reverse Palestinians’ enmity and anti-Israeli vengefulness? Of course not. Collective attitudes such as these take years to curb. But over time, constructive hope is bound to reduce zero-sum fantasies of Israel’s destruction and efforts to fulfill them, and to help pave the path for future peace.
Both Palestinians and Israelis – as well as friends and stakeholders worldwide – don’t have the luxury of giving up on such hope. What’s the alternative?
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Ori Nir, formerly Haaretz's West Bank and Washington correspondent, is Americans for Peace Now's vice president for public affairs. Twitter: @OriNir_APN
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