It would be hard to argue that the rioting which erupted in British cities this month was ofexactly the same nature as the ongoing revolts across the Arab world or the massive social protests which have rocked Israel, Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and other countries. Theindignados – the angry ones – in each country have their own reasons to rebel. Yet they do all seem to have some things in common, even though the mix of economic, social and political causes is clearly not the same everywhere.
Youth unemployment, social injustice, police brutality, the excesses of unregulated capitalism, the arrogant consumerism of the rich and the misery and helplessness of the poor, the widespread sense that the country’s resources are in the wrong hands and are being spent in the wrong way, the alienation of much of the population from the centres of power – most of these factors are present, in one form or another, in the various places where protesters have taken to the streets.
Almost everywhere, a single incident has been the spark that set fire to the tinder lying about. As is well-known, in Tunisia, it was the self-immolation of an unlicensed street vendor, the 26 year-old Muhammad Bouazizi, who was struggling to feed his family. When a policewoman confiscated his cart, he set himself on fire. Very soon, the whole country was up in arms against the corrupt autocratic rule of President Ben Ali and his family.
In Israel, Daphne Leef, a 25 year-old video editor, grumbled on Facebook that she was tired of spending half her salary on rent. Her moan was heard: Tent camps sprang up across Israel, including on Tel Aviv’s glossy Rothschild Boulevard, in protest at the price of housing, the soaring cost of living, and the ten or twenty billionaires whose family-owned businesses control banks, insurance companies, cellphones, supermarket chains and media companies.
In Syria, a nation-wide rebellion was triggered when the police brutally manhandled children who had scrawled anti-regime graffiti on a wall in the southern city of Daraa. When angry parents protested, live fire was used to disperse them – the regime’s fatal mistake.
In Britain, a security operation against West Indian gangs in the poor London suburb of Tottenham turned violent when the police shot dead Mark Duggan, a 29-year old black man. He was in illegal possession of a handgun, but he had not opened fire nor threatened to do so. His killing sparked an orgy of rioting, arson and looting which spread to Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Nottingham and Bristol. Bands of masked and hooded marauders torched buildings and pillaged stores.
In the Arab world, youth unemployment has been the main motor of the revolution, itself the product of the demographic explosion of recent decades. When Nasser and his band of Free Officers seized power in Egypt in 1952, there were 18 million Egyptians. Today there are 84 million, increasing by close to a million a year. In almost every Arab country, over-crowded schools and colleges turn out half-educated youths for whom there are no jobs. In Spain, youth unemployment is said to be as high as 45 %; in Greece it is 38%. Little wonder that mass protests have erupted in both countries. In Britain, too, one million young people, aged 16 to 24, are officially unemployed, the greatest number since the deep recession of the mid-1980s.
In Germany, there have been no riots. Youth unemployment is under 10%. Israel, too, has low unemployment, but it has one of the largest gaps between rich and poor in the industrialized world. One in four Israeli families lives below the poverty line. Hundreds of thousands have now taken to the street to demand social justice. The protesters are aiming to assemble a million people on 3 September at a giant demonstration — the biggest ever seen in Israel.
According to a poll in the Jerusalem Post, if the leaders of the tented revolt were to form a new political party, they could win 20 seats in the Knesset, becoming the second political force in the country behind the right-wing Likud and ahead of the centrist Kadima. In the words of the Israeli writer David Grossman, “The state has betrayed the people.”
The fragmented Syrian opposition, too, would be well advised to form a political party. Rather than seeking to overthrow the regime by force — probably a doomed enterprise — it should hold the government to its promises of reform and challenge the half-century rule of the Ba‘th party at free elections. Israelis protest against the monopolistic tycoons that control large swathes of the Israeli economy. Syrians protest against the small group of big businessmen, close to the ruling family, who have grown immensely rich while the middle class grows ever poorer and the masses struggle to survive. Some 35% of Syrians live below the poverty line.
In Britain, there was shock and outrage at the riots. The right wing of the Conservative Party called for the use of water cannon and rubber bullets against the rioters. There is pressure for the police to be armed, and for the army to intervene if need be. Half a dozen people lost their lives in the four days of riots and 1,800 people were arrested. What if a full-scale rebellion had broken out against the government? Decent, well-behaved, democratic Britain might not have responded all that differently from the autocrats in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen.
In Syria, there are said to have been some 15,000 to 20,000 arrests over five months and about 2,000 deaths. When allowance is made for the different levels of development, and the very different political traditions, there seems little room for Western complacency or the facile condemnation of others.
Arab governments have been much criticised for shutting down the internet and social networks to prevent protesters gathering. But is not this exactly what David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, has demanded? “When people are using social media for violence we need to stop them,” he said. “We are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these Websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder a criminality.” Criminal gangs, he added, had been behind the wave of arson and looting. Is not this the very same language used by President Bashar al-Asad of Syria? He, too, has spoken of criminal gangs which have to be crushed.
In all the countries where the people have rebelled, the social contract has been broken and needs repair. A common sense of nation needs to be fostered. But Britain’s leaders speak only of punishing the hooligans. In Syria, the regime is stuck in the criminal folly of killing demonstrators daily. In Israel, the protesters have not yet focused on the real problem undermining their country: the occupation, dispossession and oppression of the Palestinians. In every country, the underclass needs to be given hope or even greater violence is inevitable.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 16 August 2011
Word Count: 1,163
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