Not in our neighborhood, By Larry Derfner
Jerusalem Post Mar. 6, 2003
Palestinian democrats and liberals say dictatorship reflects Arab culture, and scoff at the idea that Saddam's fall will emancipate the region
President George W. Bush's most seemingly idealistic argument for going to war in Iraq is that it will create a chain reaction of democracy in the Arab and Muslim Middle East.
"A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions," Bush said in a February 26 address to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. The president said he saw many "hopeful signs of a desire for freedom in the Middle East," noting the calls by "Arab intellectuals" for political reform and free enterprise.
He singled out the Palestinians as likely beneficiaries of Saddam's overthrow, noting that the Iraqi dictator has provided a training ground for Palestinian terrorists and given cash gifts to the families of suicide bombers.
"Without this outside support for terrorism, Palestinians who are working for reform and long for democracy will be in a better position to choose new leaders... true leaders who strive for peace, true leaders who faithfully serve their people," said the president.
However, Palestinians who have spoken out for reform and democracy in their own land, under their own dictator - some of whom have suffered and have even been threatened with death - describe Bush's glowing vision as "a joke," "nonsense," "hypocrisy." They view the American invasion of Iraq as just another military occupation, like Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and ridicule the idea that democracy will grow out of it.
They variously predict that the war will increase Palestinian sympathy for Saddam and Yasser Arafat; benefit the radical Islamic movements throughout the Arab world; intensify Palestinian antipathy toward the US and Israel; and embolden the Sharon government to crush Palestinian hopes for independence, even though a democratic, peaceful Palestinian state is Bush's and Sharon's expressed goal.
Husam Khader, a Fatah member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, says he gets death threats "all the time from Yasser Arafat's mafia and people in his security agencies" for speaking out against the chairman and the corruption in the Palestinian Authority.
"Arafat is a failure. He has destroyed our hopes and dreams, he destroyed our society more than anyone can imagine. He cares only about himself, about being number one, and all he gives the Palestinian people are corruption and poverty," says Khader, a popular figure in Nablus.
He credits Bush with forcing Arafat to accept whatever reforms are now taking place in the PA - the upcoming appointment of a prime minister, the drawing up of a constitution, the reduction in the size of the cabinet.
"Bush achieved what all the Palestinian democratic movements and the PLC failed to achieve. I'm not ashamed to say this because it's the only way we could change our situation. Nothing can be done today without George Bush," Khader maintains.
But for all the welcome effects of Bush's pressure, Khader insists the president's intent is only to "distract" the Palestinians from their "rebellion against Israel," and that this is what Bush is doing now as the US prepares to invade Iraq.
"His talk about democracy is like giving morphine to the people of the region," Khader says, maintaining that Bush's true goals are to take control of Iraq's oil and bolster Israel against the Palestinians and other Arab countries.
"I think the invasion of Iraq will destroy our dreams and hopes for a peaceful future," he says. "The benefits of the invasion will go to Israel, not the Palestinian people. The new arrangement in the region will [allow] Israel to become the real terrorist police state in the Middle East. From this right-wing government we expect anything."
The political beneficiaries on the Palestinian side, Khader predicts, will be the "Islamic extremists, especially Islamic Jihad, because the Palestinian people will believe even more strongly in struggle as the only way."
OTHER ARAB and Muslim societies will react the same way, he says.
Prof. Ali Qleibo, an artist and anthropologist who heads the Department of World Civilization at east Jerusalem's Al Quds University, is a practitioner of Sufism - a particularly liberal stream of Islam. He is a fellow of Jerusalem's Hartman Institute, run by liberal Orthodox Rabbi David Hartman. After 9/11, he wrote to the US consulate in east Jerusalem on behalf of the fine arts faculty at Al Quds, saying the attack on the World Trade Center was "an attack on the key symbols of free enterprise and democracy, which we consider the main elements of humanism."
Qleibo says the American invasion will have a "paradoxical" effect on Saddam's image among Palestinians. "It will turn Saddam into a victim," he says. "He will immediately be seen as a victimized Arab; all his negatives will be overlooked, and he will be turned into a martyr. It's a matter of Arab pride and dignity."
This, he says, is precisely what happens to Arafat, the object of widespread Palestinian discontent, every time Israel bombs his Mukata headquarters in Ramallah. "The parallels are too obvious," Qleibo notes.
Qleibo, who lived in the US for 14 years and taught at Philadelphia's Temple University, says the Bush administration "presumptuously" equates the Palestinian call for reform and democracy with a conciliatory, compromising attitude toward Israel - a harbinger of an end to the "Al Aksa Intifada," and a peace settlement closer to the Israeli government's terms. Yet when the US invades Iraq, he expects the militant Islamic groups to be the most "outspoken" on the Palestinian street because "they will be expressing what the masses feel at the moment. Of course [the war in Iraq] will not stop terror."
Bassem Eid is considered the premier Palestinian human rights investigator, having made enemies in Israel for his exposure of IDF abuses in the territories, as well as in the PA leadership for his exposure of Palestinian security agencies' abuses of their own people. He was kidnapped by Arafat's elite guard, Force 17, after criticizing Arafat for monopolizing Palestinian television in the 1996 election, then released a day later after Israeli and foreign media figures protested on his behalf. Two years earlier he traveled in Iraq for six days, then wrote a harsh report on internal repression in that country for Reporters Sans Frontiers. (See box.)
Eid predicts that the US campaign in Iraq will be "a classic occupation, an American occupation of Iraq with American officials on the ground and 200,000 American soldiers remaining in Iraq for years. I will never believe that any occupation will implant democracy."
He says that to some extent he shares Bush's opinion that Arafat should be "kicked aside, and that Palestinians should find a better leader to run their affairs." But he thinks that Bush's stated goal for the Palestinians - an independent, peaceful democratic regime - will become that much harder to achieve after US troops enter Iraq. At that point, he says, the US will be seen as an occupying force acting on behalf of Israel - America's ally and the Palestinians' enemy.
"I see no sign that the Palestinians will react as the Americans want them to. Unfortunately, there will be Palestinian demonstrations in support of Iraq, and we will be condemned for this," Eid says.
As for the chance of an American invasion jump-starting the peace process, Eid fears the opposite - that Israel will use the Iraqi war as a diversion allowing it to crack down even harder on Palestinians. "Israel will no longer be under the microscope of the world media. All attention will shift to Iraq," he notes.
As for their opinions of Saddam, Eid dismisses him as a tyrant, Qleibo calls him a "pathetic tyrant who sees himself as a benevolent dictator," yet Khader rates him above many other Arab leaders because he has built a largely secular, relatively modern Arab state. "Like all Arab rulers, he does not value democracy. Despite this, I respect him. But I do not support many of the steps he's taken against the Kurds and others who oppose him."
Asked if he would support a home-grown Iraqi democratic resistance against Saddam, Khader replies: "Yes, if the people favored a different leadership, I would support it. But America does not care about democracy for the Iraqi people; it only wants to further its own interests."
This cynicism about American intentions is voiced by Eid and Qleibo as well as by Khader. Eid points out that the US supported Iraq after it invaded Iran in 1980, starting a war that cost an estimated 500,000 lives. Khader notes that the US never made a fuss about Arafat's corruption as long as Israel considered him a political partner. Qleibo says Bush is looking for accommodating Iraqi functionaries, not democratic leaders.
"He wants people who will play his game. He can just as well send an American general to be the new leader; he doesn't need an Arab. This is just patronization," says Qleibo. Eid says the Americans have the same aim in the West Bank and Gaza. "They're looking for a Palestinian Karazai," he says, referring to Hamid Karazai, the US-backed leader in Afghanistan since American troops toppled the Taliban.
So if an American overthrow of Saddam won't encourage democracy for the Palestinians, what will? The answers are pessimistic. Qleibo notes that in the 1890s, there was a movement of liberal intellectuals based in Cairo that began the "Arab Renaissance" - an attempt to adapt democracy to Islamic culture. It failed, he says, because the Arab world remained impoverished, and democracy can only take root in societies where there is a strong middle class.
Today, he says, the Palestinians and other Middle Eastern Arabs live in societies comprised of tiny economic elites and masses of uneducated poor "who are fed with rhetoric." Meanwhile, Qleibo notes, much of the middle class, in the territories as well as in the Arab states, have moved to the West. Until Arab societies develop productive economies that can give rise to a politically moderate middle class, he says, "The idea of democracy is not relevant."
Asked why, for instance, the Palestinian people had put up with an anti-democrat like Arafat for 34 years - and even elected him in pretty free elections in 1996 - Eid replies: "Why Arafat? Why Saddam? Why Hafez Assad? Why King Hussein? Why Gaddafi? The answer is that this is our culture - to turn our leaders into holy figures, and to be ruled by them forever. People fear that if they show any sign of opposition to the leadership - well, we know what happens to Arab opposition movements. And I see no sign of that changing in the Arab world. I only hope that the Palestinian people learn to behave differently."
Gag order
Over the years Bassem Eid, 44, who lives in east Jerusalem's Shuafat refugee camp, has augmented his work as a human rights investigator by publishing articles on human rights abuses in both Palestinian and Israeli newspapers. He's traveled the world for the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontiers, bringing back stories about suppression of the news media in Sarajevo, Yemen, Philippines and other difficult regions.
In April 1994, he spent six days in Baghdad. In the evenings, assisted by a well-connected, well-tipped taxi driver, Eid met in public parks with five Iraqi journalists. They told him that all they were allowed to run was praise of Saddam - something Eid had deduced from newspaper, radio and TV reports.
The Iraqi Information Ministry stonewalled him for five days, and after Eid mouthed off to a ministry clerk about the kind of report he'd like to write on Iraqi press freedom, a Palestinian he met in Baghdad "told me to hire a cab right away and get out of Iraq, or I would be in jail in a day or two."
Bribing the captain of the Iraqi border guard with 10 cartons of cigarettes to let him out - he'd already given the captain a week's Iraqi salary to let him in - Eid came back to Jerusalem via Amman and wrote the report he warned the clerk about.
This article can also be read at jpost.com |
