 |
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 23 - 29 November 2000 Issue No.509 
| ||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 23 - 29 November 2000 Issue No.509
| ||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Meditations on rage
By Salama Ahmed Salama
Have the Arab governments lost their ability to be enraged? Nothing remains, it seems, except vapid applause for the martyred stone throwers and poems idolising the dead and bereaved. Is there any other way in which the Arabs express their position in relation to the world community's acquiescence with Israel's systematic murder of the Palestinian people?
The recent increase in oil prices -- a consequence of the failure to refine and distribute oil efficiently enough within European markets, of high taxes on petrol and of the consequently lower supplies -- drove the major industrial countries to demand an increase in production even though production levels are currently ideal for the market. Such a move would cause a decrease in oil prices and reduce the revenues received by oil-producing countries. This is why OPEC has refused to increase production levels. Yet representatives of the Gulf Arab states have rushed to Washington to affirm their willingness to increase production levels. And production levels were increased -- to appease the masters in America and Europe by effectively helping factories and companies there to go on working. The Riyadh energy conference now taking place is thus a way of milking the oil-producing Arab world even further.
It is to such companies, ironically, that the sophisticated modern arms with which America continually provides Israel free of charge are due. These allow Israel to shell Palestinian towns, occupy Syrian territories and hit Lebanese villages. They make the Arab sky perpetually overcast with Israeli planes.
In the mean time, a massive proportion of the American and European economies relies on arms exported to the Arab World. International strategic centres report billions of dollars worth of arms funneled yearly into the Gulf, and the arms marketing tours undertaken by the American, British and French defense ministers continue. The Arab states import more arms than any other part of the world, but these weapons -- if they exist at all -- have done little to empower these countries' positions on the most significant issues pertaining to them.
Notwithstanding their massive expenditure on effectively non-existent, or at least perpetually unused European and American weaponry, the Gulf states support several thousand American soldiers, a number of war ships and air bases that make it easy for the US armed forces to crush the neighbouring Iraq and impose an air embargo on it -- all of which is undertaken on the premise that Gulf Arab states need protection against possible attacks by Iraq or any other terrorist threat.
Arab states prove remarkably gullible regarding European claims to a role that Europe might play, whether in procuring a comprehensive and just peace settlement in the Middle East, or in an effective partnership with the Arab Mediterranean. All that Europe is concerned with, in reality, is the building up of effective barriers couched in the terminology of pacts and procedures, that prevent the black and the unemployed from flooding into Europe as immigrants. To prevent the emergence of large foreign communities in Europe, European states enter into partnerships that have security, military and cultural dimensions. The economic dimension, on the other hand, will remain the same whether or not Europe enters into any such partnership: it is a function of the European need for raw materials procured in these countries, but very little else.
It was only natural, therefore, that France should insist on holding the Euro-Mediterranean conference in Marseilles at a time when the peace process has failed. Europe has declared its inability to do anything, and refused to condemn Israel's policy of genocide. What might be expected of this humiliating Arab demise? No one is calling on Arabs to enter a war for which they are not equipped, but the degree of acquiescence is such that even the most enthusiastic activists no longer have any enthusiasm. Words -- vapid words that change nothing -- are all that remains.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
