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Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 February 2000 Issue No. 467 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 February 2000 Issue No. 467
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Special Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The stuff of dreams
By Ibrahim Nafie
Parties to the Middle East peace process may entertain any number of illusions regarding the role they would like to play. But when fancy begins to manifest itself in political statements delivered in international forums anxiety is justified.
Israeli Minister for Regional Cooperation Shimon Peres's announcement in Davos that his "dream" is to change both the economy and education in the Middle East gives cause for concern. Israel, he claimed, does not want to be a wealthy nation in the midst of poverty. It does not want to be a "clean" country surrounded by "squalor." Peres, apparently, is seeking to promote himself as an instrumental figure in the peace process, even though Barak has excluded him from bilateral negotiations.
The problem, of course, is that Peres might just believe in his illusions. This is, after all, not the first time he has voiced such wild absurdities. In the early 1990s, when the peace process was just taking off, he met with a number of Egyptian intellectuals and revealed his dream of a new Middle East based on Egyptian labour, Gulf money and Israeli technological know-how. Not long afterwards, in The New Middle East, he expanded these ideas and subsequently aired them at the Casablanca MENA conference. With an audacity that other participants could only envy, he invited the countries of the region to follow Israel's leadership.
Foreign Minister Amr Moussa has already responded directly to Peres's comments in Davos. Here, I intend only to rectify his delusions with a more accurate reading of the facts.
The Middle East is not an area of poverty and backwardness, as Peres stated. Nor is Israel the oasis of prosperity, somehow sanctioned by divine grace to lead the entire region out of the quagmire.
What Peres appears to overlook is that the people of the Middle East existed thousands of years before Israel was created, and that fact notwithstanding managed to create civilisations that have had a profound and lasting impact on the history of humanity. Furthermore, the more recent post-independence history of the region would, in spite of some mistakes, have resulted in a thriving community of nations had it not been for Israeli warmongering over the past five decades.
Peres appears not to be aware that there are over 15 million Arab university graduates, that Egyptian university graduates alone are equivalent to the entire population of Israel. Egypt's GNP is twice that of Israel, and over the past four years Egypt's annual growth has exceeded that of Israel.
Without denying Israel's considerable achievements in the technological and economic fields, no one in their right mind would argue that these are on a par with the development engineered by the tiger economies of Asia.
Economic progress, unfortunately for Israel, is not measured solely by per capita income, or on technological prowess. It is measured, too, on the effective use of national resources, which would preclude the massive and unprecedented amount of aid on which Israel's economy is based.
Israel's achievements are the result of quite exceptional circumstances. Technical competence was founded on an influx of engineers and scientists trained elsewhere, its technological growth fuelled on occasion by espionage.
Israeli progress, quite clearly, and despite Peres's claims to the contrary, can hardly be viewed as a result of the exercise of purely Israeli efforts or ingenuity. Indeed, one of the major challenges now facing Israel is whether or not it will be able to prosper once the generous props that have supported its economy are removed.
And let us not forget that 15 per cent of Israelis -- excluding Arab citizens -- are effectively disenfranchised, forming an underclass in their own society.
Whatever Israel's actual achievements, they hardly support Peres's claims that Israel alone can lead the region towards a more prosperous future. What, perhaps, we all need, is a little more modesty in our self-appraisal.
Even more important, though, is to overcome the obstacles placed in the way of securing a just and lasting peace, for only when this is achieved can the true potential of the entire region be realised. The resources currently channelled into armaments -- including, in Israel, weapons of mass destruction -- could then be used for the good of all peoples.
If this were to happen the region would find itself on the threshold of a new epoch, an new era characterised by mutually beneficial cooperation across numerous fields, that cooperation being based on principles of equality and fair play. Such cooperation, moreover, would preclude any single party assuming the upper hand and pretending to play the role of munificent patron distributing largesse.
Peres is suffering from quite a remarkable level of delusion if he feels he can shape the future of the Middle East. For once peace and stability are established, it will be up to all the countries of the region to determine their communal future, in accordance with their specific circumstances, resources and culture.
Economic cooperation, though, is one thing, education another. Why, precisely, we might ask, does Mr Peres feel the need to regale us with his wild imaginings that Israel could somehow assist in revamping the education systems of its neighbours?
Education is the foundation on which national cultures rest. Does he somehow imagine that Israel's neighbours will willingly rewrite their own histories to erase their struggles against aggression and to reclaim their territory? He would do better to concentrate on how Israel might capitalise on the opportunity to add a new chapter to our history books by fully withdrawing from all occupied territory, on demonstrating in the future that Israel is capable of impacting positively on the region rather than squandering its energies in a destructive arms race.
He could, more usefully, spend some time considering how Israel's own education system might be profitably reformed, so that it reflects the real history of the Arab-Israeli struggle rather than the viciously distorted version that Israeli children are now spoon-fed in textbooks, particularly those used in religious schools where the blatant racism propagated furnishes the perfect breeding ground for future anti-Arab terrorists.
It is really all quite simple: Peres cannot impose Israel's will on countries with which it is seeking to cooperate. Nor is the international community going to be convinced that it should fund attempts to realise his impossible dreams.
