Good analysis of current Arab politics in Ha'aretz:
There's a more important war now - against `the ruler of the planet'
By Zvi Barel
Has anyone heard anything lately about the Saudi initiative? Has anyone heard of any other Arab initiative involving the Palestinians? When it comes to the Palestinian issue, the only item that seems to be of any interest to the Arab states is whether the Palestinian Authority will succeed in reaching a pact with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The war in Palestine has been usurped by another conflict: the war on Iraq.
"The war on Iraq" is not merely a bland expression that describes the state of affairs. Judging by the extent of Arab rhetoric and political commentaries, the war stands to go down as "the Mother of All Wars," one even more momentous - to the Arab world - than the previous Gulf War. In terms of regional significance, it even has the potential to surpass the resolution of the Palestinian problem. Because the planned attack on Iraq is the Arab war against America. "We are at the threshold of a redrafting of the map of the Middle East," wrote the political columnist Adli Sadeq in Al Quds al-Arabi, a newspaper published in London. The American plot, he writes, groups together Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Iran, and ultimately aims to redivide the Middle East into loyal statelets, or even into tribes - tribes and oil wells.
In these articles, the United States is conceived increasingly more as "the ruler of the planet," primed to wipe out the national and cultural identity of the Arab states, draw up a code of behavior and impose a new culture through threat or direct war. They no longer refer to a "single superpower" or a unipolar world, but to the "tyranny of American power" which is invariably also directed at its ally, Israel.
Saddam Hussein, like Yasser Arafat, is a marginal aspect of this argument. Nor is the future of Iraq included in the discourse that has been developing in recent weeks. "Why are the Arabs opposed to a war against Iraq?" asks conservative Egyptian strategist Hussam Sweilim, who then offers this answer: "Because this is an American war against an Arab state." In his opinion, this is the primary reason for the Arab position. Everything else is merely a tactical reason.
"The Arab approach now says that America, via Iraq, is poised to fight against all Arabs," says an Egyptian analyst. "It isn't merely a case of defining an `axis of evil' but rather all those signs that are immediately interpreted here as an alarm signal that calls on us to get into the defensive trenches. For example, the American threat to deny Egypt any additional aid funding." The reference is to President Bush's announcement that the U.S. will suspend the aid budget supplement that Egypt has received from America since the signing of the Camp David accords, as a result of a seven-year prison term meted out to human rights activist Dr. Saad al-Din Ibrahim. "On the face of it, this is an important matter - American pressure on the Egyptian regime to change its ways on the human rights front," says the commentator. But we understand it as pressure on the Iraq issue." Egypt is opposed to the attack on Iraq, and the American administration view this as a hostile position.
"Or, for example," the commentator goes on, "the announcement by a senior American official that the American administration is about to allocate $25 million for the promotion of values of democracy and education in Arab states. This is an especially painful subject. Because here it is not a question of military cooperation but of a Western worldview, of Western culture and government values that the United States is trying to force on another culture. Aside from that, if the American administration is so concerned about Arab democratic values, why is it reminded of it only when it is about to attack Iraq. Why didn't it support human rights organizations for years beforehand? Why does it wake up only when an Egyptian scholar with an American passport is arrested, and does not relate at all to the other activists that have been arrested by the government."
Making a change from within
Some Arab political commentators perceive America's threats of regime change as an opportunity to push through changes from within, before they are compelled to do so by force by the Americans. For instance, Abed al-Bari Atwan, editor of the Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, suggests in a recent editorial that the Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, begin to make changes from within. "It is unacceptable to demand that the Saudi Arabian citizen stand up against the American partition plan, against takeover of the Arab oil wells, when that same citizen does not receive even minimal health and education services; when he lives in a state of extensive unemployment and enjoys no human rights. And just as the American administration pressures the Palestinian Authority to carry out reforms, including financial transparence, genuine and not sham elections, the United States also intends to apply this model, in the near future, to all its allies, especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia, whether it attacks Iraq or not. Doesn't it make sense that these states begin to carry out these reforms as a response to citizens' demands, and not after having been forced to do so as a result of pressure from the American administration?"
In Atwan's view, the attack on Iraq is not the most significant matter at hand. Nor is Saddam's ouster. Rather, he is concerned about the possibility that a foreign, global regime over which the Arabs have no control, is about to create a new structure - one that includes diplomatic, social and ideological elements - in the Arab and Muslim world. His call for structural change from within is based on the claim that "the Americans say the Arab people hates them because they support repressive regimes that have not been elected, and which are mired in corruption." Therefore, in order to uproot the Arab hatred for Americans (the same hatred that gives rise to terror), the Arab regimes must be cast out, and this is what America plans to do.
The "democracy package" proposed by the American administration will be rejected even by those who do not, like Atwan, couch their explanations in such abstruse terms in their effort to persuade the Arab states to oppose a war against Iraq and push through changes from within so as to stand up to the enemy of the Arabs. Muta' Safadi, the Syrian-born intellectual and philosopher, has said that America's call on the Arab states to adopt democracy may be likened to the call to prayer of the muezzin. People hear it, but do not always respond to it. Safadi asserts this is because it is impossible to import a product such as democracy as if it were a can of seeds, and sew it in the desert soil. Such a change requires "a change in the social geology, a change in the flesh and bones of society." But Safadi feels America fails to understand this principle. Because it itself is nothing more than a group of people that sees society as a product of law, rather than a natural social development, and it is controlled by a group of individuals with special interests and capital, who determine - when it suits them - how other peoples are supposed to act. This "geological change" cannot come from without, even if it is necessary, Safadi feels. It can only come from the members of the society themselves.
"It is better if we determine the correct order of events," says the Egyptian commentator. "The Arab regimes are fully capable of determining the risks that the war against Iraq places at their doorstep. The threatening scenarios relate to demonstrations and protest marches by the Arab public against a regime that condones an American war against another Arab state. But the other possibility, that of an American victory over Iraq, is no less dangerous. After Iraq, it will be the turn of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Egypt and Syria. Essentially we are speaking of a diplomatic, political and cultural war of survival. Faced with these sort of risks, the priorities have to be selected very carefully."
These priorities, at least as they are reflected in the articles published by Arab intellectuals, rank the Palestinian problem in second place. First, the threat to the Arab and Islamic world must be countered, then the threat to the diplomatic stability of the regimes, and only once that is accomplished will the Arab states address themselves to the luxury of establishing a new Arab state to be called Palestine. Until a few months ago - at the time of this past March summit conference in Beirut - that is, before the new campaign against Iraq began, the Arab states felt they were at one end of a zero-sum game. Meaning that if they were prepared to act on the Palestinian front, the U.S. would leave Iraq alone.
At the time, the Saudi Arabian initiative played a much broader role than the narrow Israeli-Palestinian context. It was intended to enable the Arab world to go on living as it saw fit, without any threats that might undermine the internal order. So much so that even the contracting of a comprehensive peace agreement with Israel did not seem to be too high a price to pay for preservation of the existing harmony. Now the Arab states have figured out that what they were holding in their hands was a means of exerting pressure, not part of a zero-sum game, but a null set, and that their ability to influence the American administration through diplomatic and political clarifications is practically nonexistent.
The sole threat that might work on the Americans is the possibility that the war against Iraq would lead to a collapse of other Arab regimes whose place would be taken by West-hating fundamentalist regimes, warlords and tribal chieftains. The Saudi initiative - or any other Arab initiative - that was meant to foil this scenario, was left without any role to play.
This state of affairs is understood not only by the Arab states; the Palestinians know it too. When was the last time anyone heard the Palestinians call on the Arab states to rush to their aid? When is the last time any Palestinian leader mentioned the Saudi initiative as a lure offered by the Arabs to Israel? Iraq has stolen the Arab birthright away from them.
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