28 Dec. 2000 - 3 Jan. 2001
Issue No.514
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 28 Dec. 2000 - 3 Jan. 2001 Issue No.514 |
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Year of the Intifada
The West, and those few who could afford it elsewhere, had better and bigger New Year's Eve parties. In Egypt, the turning of the millennium was largely perceived as an opportunity to give a much-needed boost to the tourism industry, which had suffered drastic beatings at militant Islamist hands during the outgoing decade. The New Year's Eve party held at the foot of the Pyramids, co-sponsored by the ministries of culture and tourism and a host of local businesses (in line with the free market spirit of the '90s), and designed and presented by French composer and multi-media artist Jean-Michel Jarre, triggered a half-hearted debate, both before and after the fact -- on religious, socio-economic, nationalistic and artistic grounds: it was Ramadan, alcohol was being served publicly and, no doubt, plentifully; it cost too much ($9.5 million); only the super-rich could afford it (ticket prices ranged from $150 to $400, with special five-star tickets going for $4,000); the show was trite, even banal, and why have a Frenchman do it, when many Egyptian artists could have done as well, or even better? An estimated 10,000 people attended, most of them opting for the Pyramids Plateau equivalent of an opera house's public gallery -- in which there were no seats or sheltering tents, and you brought your own food and beverage, for a reasonably priced ticket of LE50.
For the majority of Egyptians, however, the "Twelve Dreams of the Sun," as Jarre's so-called electronic opera was titled, was yet another Ramadan TV feature, to be watched as they ate Suhour in the privacy of their homes. And like most Ramadan TV shows, it delivered less than it promised; a heavy fog had all but obliterated the "spectacular" laser show the gala's promoters had been hyping for weeks. TV dish and cable owners had the option of turning to CNN for its round-the-clock pursuit of the millennium's setting sun, and the multi-ethnic parties bidding it adieu.
The year 2000 may have been short on earth-shattering events. The Intifada -- Al-Ahram Weekly's choice for the year's top event, bar none -- may not be on the scale, say, of the fall of the Soviet Union nine years ago, the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa in 1990, or even the East Asian financial collapse of 1997-98 -- in terms of decisive change or local and global effects and ramifications. It was, nevertheless, happening where it all began -- in Palestine. Children were once again being put to the slaughter. In Bethlehem, Jesus's birthday was being celebrated, not in pomp and circumstance, but in bloodshed and pain. Gold and frankincense are in short supply this Christmas -- myrrh, symbolising death and suffering, was in abundance, however. The crib, as Pope John Paul told Palestinians during his millennium visit to the Holy Land in May of this year, remains in the shadow of the cross.
Ironically, the Year of the Intifada was supposed to have been the Year of Middle East Peace. The Arab-Israeli conflict, now described, rather arbitrarily but no doubt in a millenarian spirit, as the 100-year conflict, was to be brought to a final and allegedly lasting resolution. Peace, goodwill and euros were to prevail where bloodshed, hatred and hardship had reigned supreme. (In America's grand design for the region, Europe was assigned the task of financing a "new Middle East," based on economically integrating Israel and the Arab states.)
David and Goliath continued to face off in the land of Palestine. Al-Ahram Weekly's choice for photo of the year
(photo: AP)During the month of July, the US presidential retreat at Camp David resembled a kidnappers' den more than the site of the history-making peace conference that was supposedly taking place there under an iron-clad media blanket. The victim, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, accompanied by a handful of advisers, was denied all communication with the outside world, and repeatedly ordered to sign on the dotted line. Apartheid, the dismantling of which in South Africa had been celebrated by the world a decade earlier, was to be instituted in Palestine under a massive smoke screen of rhetoric and fanfare. The Palestinians were to be denied sovereignty over East Jerusalem and its holy places, concede the right of return of over four million refugees and sign away all future claims against Israel. Arafat could not sign. He would have been signing his own death warrant, he told his American "hosts."
And if anyone at Camp David or elsewhere had entertained any doubts as to the accuracy of the Palestinian leader's assessment of his people's mood, these were to be dispelled dramatically and almost immediately. Arafat returned to a hero's welcome in the Palestinian territories; two months later, the Intifada erupted.
The Palestinians' will to struggle, never in short supply, had earlier in the year received a powerful and inspirational boost. The Lebanese resistance, led by Hizbullah, had achieved a first in the Arab-Israeli confrontation -- an Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab territory with no strings attached. Nor did Israel succeed in executing the orderly and dignified withdrawal it had hoped for. Its proxy militia, the South Lebanese Army (SLA) collapsed, and the withdrawal was a humiliating shambles, highly reminiscent of the American withdrawal from Saigon a quarter of a century before.
The American-led peace process, in fact, was collapsing on all fronts during the year. When Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad died in June, his last will and testament was one of defiance, and one which his son and heir to the presidency, Bashar, could not ignore, at least in the short term. At a meeting with US President Bill Clinton in Geneva in March, Assad rejected out of hand the offer of an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights (in return for a peace treaty, normalisation and security arrangements) that fell short of full withdrawal from Syrian territories occupied in the 1967 June War.
Nevertheless, against all odds, the last weeks of 2000 witnessed an intensive attempt to revive the process many had deemed moribund. The signing ceremony of a final Israeli-Palestinian peace with which Clinton still hopes to crown his political career may yet take place -- sometime during the first 10 days of 2001. The rhetoric will be lacking, however, and not just because the leaders and the attendant swarms of reporters and commentators will have been denied the chance of injecting a presumably solemn performance with a millenarian note. The lofty mountain of the peace process has already been exposed as a molehill -- nearly 400 dead and 10,000 injured in Israel's most brutal war against the Palestinians since 1948 have seen to that.
Yet the most profound and lasting effect of the Intifada may well prove to be intangible, for it can be felt only in the mood of the Palestinians, both in Palestine (on both sides of the Green Line) and the Diaspora, and of the Arab peoples throughout Arab land. Invariably, intangibles such as these have a way of leading -- in due time -- to often surprising, but almost always devastatingly tangible, results.
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