Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 30 Nov. - 6 Dec. 2000 Issue No.510

Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters

What is to be done -- now

By Hani Shukrallah

One of the surest indications that history has turned a corner -- that a profound rupture with the immediate past has in fact taken place -- is that the foreseeable future becomes extremely unsure. Dynamic stability gives way to tumultuous instability; almost everyone recognises that a new historical conjuncture is in the making, but no one, except the very dull or very (ideologically) devout, can predict with any degree of confidence the direction in which current developments will unfold and the shape they will ultimately take. At times such as these, only one thing seems quite certain, and that is that there can be no going back to the status quo ante, the situation as it stood before history made its dramatic swerve into uncharted territory. As every student of history knows, even periods of "Restoration" actually restore very little.

It has been so with the second Intifada, which, as it was entering its third month, saw only Bill Clinton still apparently entertaining hopes of winding the clock back to 28 September -- an understandable if evidently sterile ambition, given that the out-going American president is out-going, having lost forever his claim to the designation (however spurious) as the man who ended the 100-year Arab-Zionist confrontation, and, naturally, the inevitable Nobel Peace Prize.

But beyond that assertion, everything appears extremely fluid. Thus, we know that the American-sponsored "Oslo process" is over and done with. Not only has the Palestinian Authority declared that process moribund, but this week, Foreign Minister Amr Moussa went on record as asserting that there can be no going back to the Oslo formula. We know that the Palestinians will not accept anything even remotely similar to what was being offered at Camp David, and that rather than battering them into submission, Israel's crazed war (Barak boasted a few days ago that "never has an Israeli government used such great force against the Palestinians, such as using rockets and tanks") has only hardened their resolve. This is so despite a death toll of over 300, close to 10,000 injured (many with permanent disabilities) and a criminal blockade that, according to Graham Usher's report in this week's issue, has driven the number of Gazans in need of food assistance up from eight to 85 per cent of the sector's 1.5 million population, creating "a severe humanitarian crisis" in the words of UNRWA commissioner-general Peter Hansen (see: Walking in Gaza, p.4).

We know, too, something about the prospective regional architecture crystallised in Peres's "New Middle East," once enthusiastically hailed by the Americans and Europeans and their respective media as a regional "peace in our time," pursued actively by many Arab regimes, "realistic intellectuals" and hungry businessmen, and dreaded (but no less believed in) by many others as the dawning of an age of Israeli imperial hegemony. This much-anticipated New Middle East has been consigned to the dustbin of history, if it was ever anything more than the self-seeking mirage that Chamberlain's earlier version so devastatingly proved to be. (The Palestine solidarity movement in the Arab world may have lost some of its early steam, but observe the almost desperate daily pleadings by Egyptian businessmen and their many official and media backers -- that they have no dealings with Israel; that American brand names are Egyptian produced by Egyptian labour -- and you should have no difficulty in discerning that the radically new mood and awareness, fervently expressed during the early weeks of the Intifada, maintains a strong hold on the Egyptian and Arab "street.")

We know, in short, what has bitten the dust, is finished and done with. We do not know, with any certainty, what will come to replace it. For instance: How long can the Palestinians maintain the Intifada, and what shape will it take in the longer term? What effect, if any, will the current diplomatic efforts to "end the violence and revive peace talks" have? More specifically, will diplomacy once again undermine Palestinian resistance? Barak has called early elections in Israel; these will most likely produce either a Likud or a national unity government -- i.e. an even more right-wing and extremist government, which is almost impossible to imagine, given that Barak's has been Israel's most extremist and militaristic government to date. What implications will this have for Israel, Palestine and the region? Will Israel, which is already waging a totally disproportionate, if hitherto futile, assault on its subject population, resort to its time-honoured recipe: when in a fix, make war? Where would such a war take place? Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel, and which has repeatedly asserted that war "is not an option", nevertheless reveals signs of being seriously worried by such a prospect. What of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, up in Washington? What kind of American policy in the region can we anticipate, with either the American Rifle Association or the AIPAC representative sitting in the Oval Office?

The real question, however, is not what might happen, but what we should be doing to influence the course of events. Once again, we come face to face with the question of strategy. I believe that in Palestine today, the subtle beginnings of a new strategy can be discerned, one that is not caught up in the futile and ultimately destructive pincers of the humiliating capitulation of the "realists" and the absurd war "against Jews and Crusaders" called for by "militant Islamists." Submission and human bombs are not our only options.

© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg