(SWEIMEH, along the northeast Dead Sea coast in Jordan) Are the Arabs politically angry or docile? Eager to embrace or chastise the United States? Ready to promote or resist reform? Is there a single prevalent sentiment that accurately describes the Arab people today?
The answers to these questions were evident at the three days of private meetings and public discussions among the nearly 1000 participants at the World Economic Forum (WEF) that just took place here along the northeast Dead Sea coast in Jordan.
The participants predominantly reflect the government, private business, banking, and mass media sectors of society. Absent for the most part were Arabs from low- and middle-income, Islamist, and leftist quarters. Yet it provided valid insights into the conditions and sentiments of today¹s Arab World.
The most important aspect of this peek into the Arab condition is that there is no single condition. This is a region of great variety and disparity. We Arabs are defined by intense contradiction and some confusion in the political and economic arenas, amidst emerging pockets of clarity and dynamic modernization. Three main tensions that dominate the Arab world repeatedly reared their heads here. They can be summarized as the three Ps of Palestine, Powell and power.
Academic research, polls, and media reports repeatedly stress how intensely the plight of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation impacts on both ordinary and ruling Arabs. I was struck by how often the Palestine situation emerged here as a major deterrent to change and progress in Arab countries. I must have had 150 conversations with people and attended at least 20 panels and lectures for three days. Only once in the panel on private equity investment were the Palestine and Iraq issues not mentioned.
The WEF meeting coincided with an ongoing Israeli assault on the Rafah region in the southern Gaza Strip of occupied Palestine, where (American) bulldozers smashed a wide swath of homes in order to allow Israel easier military access for its (American) tanks. Israel in Rafah is conducting the equivalent of Sherman¹s March through Georgia in the American Civil War. The most reliable and up-to-date United Nations data shows that the Israeli armed forces have destroyed 2018 homes in Rafah in recent years, leaving 18,382 people homeless. Israeli bulldozers and bombs destroyed an average of 11.6 homes per month in Palestine in 2000; that figure has increased steadily, to 25 homes per month in 2002, and 104 homes per month in 2004 to date.
Like Arabs all over the world, delegates at the WEF in Jordan watched these scenes every morning and evening. Once again, as in 1948, 1967, 1982, and other times, Arabs passively watched fellow Palestinians being killed and made homeless.
Over and over again, Arab speakers said that we want to tackle the challenges of reform and modernization, but it is very difficult to embark on this process while the Arab region is emotionally and politically devastated by Israeli military assaults against largely defenseless Palestinian refugees. The world ignores this issue at its peril.
Therefore when US Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the gathering, his well-intentioned words were not well received. I asked perhaps 100 fellow Arabs what they thought of his remarks, and all but one said they were disappointed, even insulted and offended.
Powell spoke passionately about bringing peace, prosperity and hope to Palestine and Iraq and the entire Arab region; but his words were buried beneath the images of Israeli bulldozers destroying thousands of Palestinian homes. He symbolized the fact that most Arab participants at the gathering desire to work closely with the US for Arab political reform and economic change, but feel repulsed by the US for its very late and soft criticism of Israel¹s assault on Rafah.
I sensed that most Arabs at the gathering were pleased with the removal of the former Baathist regime in Iraq, but dismayed by Washington¹s messy, confused, and violent policy in Iraq today. Powell was a cruel and paradoxical symbol of the global values we wish to embrace to live life to its fullest, and of the pro-Israeli American policies we abhor because they promote death and suffering in different Arab lands.
The third dominant issue that manifested itself at the WEF gathering was the reform of political and economic power in the Arab world. The participants here strongly support reform, and many are pioneers in those pockets of reform that are underway throughout the region, especially economic reform. Yet here also, the political tensions that plague the Middle East tend to deter decisive movement on the reform front.
Three reasons seem to explain this, two of which are the negative consequences of the Palestine and Powell factors mentioned above. The third is the engrained resistance to change by power elites or dependent citizens who benefit from the existing Arab system (a system which was succinctly if somewhat narrowly described by a French scholar as ³Arab governments that trade oil for armaments²).
All the key actors in the Arab reform process seem to be moving in different directions. Arab governments both promote and resist change. The Arab League speaks of change but rejects a foreign role in this, while some Arab governments expect change to happen only with prodding and assistance from abroad. The Arab private sector includes great reform leaders and success stories, alongside forces that wish to maintain the existing protected, often monopolistic systems. And civil society organizations especially political parties, think tanks, and professional associations remain weak and marginal, beyond the useful role of articulating broad goals and advocating reformist values. Arab governments that speak of political reform and democratization are not widely believed by most of their own people, who assume that ruling elites will not voluntarily share or relinquish power.
The Arab condition is volatile, contradictory, and impassioned, deeply defined by the clash and interaction of domestic, regional and global forces that at once push for change and simultaneously promote stagnation and regression. If anyone tells you the entire Arab world is uniformly stagnant or changing, or all Arabs hate or admire America, or wish to coexist or destroy Israel, just ask them to live in the real world, and to ponder the realities of Palestine, Powell and power.
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Copyright © 2004 Rami G. Khouri/Agence Global
Released: 19 May 2004
Word Count: 1,036
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