17 - 23 May 2001
Issue No.534
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 17 - 23 May 2001 Issue No.534 |
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Killing public support
Popular shows of support for the Palestinians have almost vanished. Why, asks Mohamed El-Sayed Said
Following a television talk show I attended immediately after the eruption of the Intifada, a Palestinian viewer commented as follows: "I would have really wanted to throw stones at Arab leaders who showed such total indifference towards our suffering." This sentiment, in the early days of the Intifada, was common among Palestinians. Now, though, one might think, the target of the stones could well be expanded to include the Arab masses.
For the last four or five months, as far as the Palestinian national struggle is concerned, Arab political and civil arenas have been shrouded in an eerie silence. So what happened to that spectacular show of public support, across the Arab world, that was evident in the first few weeks of the Intifada? Does its absence indicate that public support for the Palestinians is waning?
Ask people yourself, ask them in Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, even in Kuwait, and the answer will be an unequivocal no. And in the vehemence of the answers you will detect, too, a bitter rejection of Israel, and frustration over the positions taken by Arab leaders. You will find, in short, an almost exact replication of the feelings of the Palestinians.
What is happening then? Why is the massive rejection of Israeli brutality that is felt across the Arab world not registering itself in collective actions?
Let us examine a number of possible explanations. One self-evident cause is that demonstrations are not allowed in the overwhelming majority of Arab states. Police in Jordan and Egypt have disbanded some demonstrations, as recently as last week. Yet this ban on such a collective shows of support is not in itself enough to explain the notorious silence of the Arab masses.
The reason why public will is never fully articulated in such collective forms as demonstrations could be as easily explained by the growing belief among the populations of the Arab world that such shows of solidarity provide little, if any, practical help to the Palestinians. When Palestinians demonstrate against Israeli brutalities they are driven by the feeling that by throwing stones against the occupation army they are doing something more than shouting slogans. The populations of other Arab countries cannot do the same.
Demonstrations that lack any real agenda for action cannot go on forever. People can demonstrate a few times, for a few weeks. But months have already passed since the Intifada started. But is this any real explanation for silence? Not really, given that when people demonstrate it is because they are driven by anger and moral fury, not by expectations of victory or reward.
So should we argue, then, that when people are as incensed by the brutality of occupying armies, when they are as fully aware of the cost in lives, livelihoods, basic human rights, as the Arab peoples are, they assume that the only effective response has to be substantial, has to be taken by states and governments? And while the Arab masses and their civic leaders may differ as to the precise nature of such response -- whether it should be a new war of liberation or something else -- a consensus has emerged that it is the duty of political leaders to formulate the necessary strategies and actions.
If this argument may sound plausible at first on closer examination it does not hold much water. It is by now more than obvious that Arab governments are doing extremely little in the face of the qualitative increase in the terror inflicted on the Palestinians in recent months. That inaction, one might argue, should have induced the Arab masses to take the matter in their own hands by making public displays of demands for a more powerful response to the Israeli challenge.
The point, though, is that the Arab masses are now so thoroughly familiar with the workings of their regimes that they do not expect the slightest parallels between public opinion and government action. The Arab masses, constantly suppressed by their own regimes, hardly expect their governments to rebel and retaliate against the repression of Palestinians at the hand of Israelis.
The most plausible explanation of the absence of popular displays of sympathy towards the Palestinian Intifada, in the end, is that it reflects the almost total desperation that has overcome the populations of the region with regard to both domestic and pan-Arab issues. The fact is that expectations for internal reforms are receding. Hopes for a firmer and more effective policy towards Israel and the US have evaporated. Worse still, people are increasingly less likely to believe that civil and political opposition can provide an alternative leadership.
The cessation in Arab popular displays of support towards the Intifada is, in short, simply a reflection of the systematic erosion of the institutions of civil and political mobilisation.
Tellingly, differences in the level of actual material support for the Intifada provided by Arab countries reflects the disparities that exist between the various states' institutions for mobilisation and the ideologies such institutions profess. Yet even where national committees in support of the Intifada have been formed and have been allowed to launch their programmes, they continue to face difficulties in formulating workable strategies and plans of action.
Those Arab intellectuals who feel disconsolate because of the recession in popular displays of moral fury against Israel should perhaps face up to what, in their hearts, they already know -- that the murder of democracy, even at the hands of nationalist leaders, is the real explanation behind the weakness of Arab societies and their continued failure to act in conformity with their feelings and interests.
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