Of walls and triangles
The Separation Wall in Palestine and continued resistance to the US occupation of Iraq preoccupied the Arab press this week, writes Amina Elbendary
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As Hani sees it in Al-Hayat, Liberty has packed her stuff and left Iraq; for Emad Haggag in Ad-Dustour, the Separation Wall that Israel is building is Abu Mazen's own Wailing Wall
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What Abu Mazen and the Governing Council in Iraq have in common was the riddle with which Hazem Saghiya began his column in the London- based Lebanese daily Al-Hayat on 5 August. The answer was that they both enjoy American support, or that they were both American-made, or even, Saghiya argued, that they both announced the end of an era, one in which politics was characterised by violence. However, no one in the Arab world had had the courage to admit the end of this era, which would have been seen as tantamount to "surrender", Saghiya said.
The Separation Wall that Israel is building in the West Bank, and not within the limits of the Green Line, not only jeopardised the so-called roadmap to peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, but also the peace process itself, wrote Moussa Hawamdeh in the Jordanian daily Ad- Dustour on 31 July. It is an "Apartheid Wall", he argued, meant to isolate the Palestinians in disconnected areas. Had President Bush agreed to Israel's building the wall, he would have announced the death of the roadmap and granted Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Israeli extreme right carte blanche to carry out whatever atrocities they chose against the Palestinians, Hawamdeh argued. This would in turn have driven the Palestinians to resist using whatever means necessary.
Mounir Shafiq, writing in Al-Hayat on 4 August, argued that there were many reasons behind Israel's building the wall, including its attempt to monopolise water resources and to grab more land. The wall was about more than apartheid, he wrote, for Israeli racism aimed at more than just isolating the Palestinians; rather, it also aimed at uprooting and transferring them.
Abdul-Rahman Al-Rashed, writing in the London-based Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat on 5 August, lamented the traps Palestinian negotiators had fallen into in their dealings with the Israelis, arguing over small details at the expence of larger issues, such as land, refugees, and an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Israel had revelled in igniting Palestinian differences, Al-Rashed wrote, especially in the light of the recent interest shown by the Bush White House in the conflict. Palestinians, he argued, should learn lessons from their Israeli counterparts and join together, even if they continued to differ over issues like reform.
The blame game played by the Iraqis and other Arabs over the present situation in Iraq continued unabated this week. Just what catharsis will come out of it remained unclear, since present circumstances have rendered the argument redundant. Yet, among the slurs a thin line of tolerance could be seen to emerge.
Writing in Ad-Dustour on 3 August, Bater Mohamed Ali Wardam argued that both sides were right, but that neither had seen the whole picture. Wardam was particularly critical of attacks on Kurds and Shi'ites by non-Iraqi Arab journalists, and by "Islamised intellectuals" who often perceived them as collaborators, or elements that had acquiesced in the US occupation.
Wardam argued against a sectarian analysis of the current state of affairs in Iraq, seeing this as one that would only serve the interests of the occupiers. However, he acknowledged that the Kurds were a "special case" and that they had enjoyed a special relationship with the US since the Second Gulf War. Without denying the atrocities committed against the Kurds by the previous Iraqi regime, Wardam faulted their leaders for being too willing to "sell the Iraqi state to the American occupation at the cheapest price", just to get rid of the Ba'athist regime.
However, he was apologetic on behalf of the Iraqi Shi'ites, a recurrent motif in Arab commentary, since the Shi'ites are expected eventually to rise up against the American occupation. That the Iraqi Shi'ites could now breathe and carry out their rituals unimpeded was understandable in accounting for their present lukewarm stance regarding resistance to the US occupation of Iraq, Wardam said, but this should not discredit their patriotism.
In fact, it was not the case that only the Iraqi Sunnis were resisting the US occupation, argued Abdul-Ilah Balqiz in the Lebanese daily As-Safir on 1 August, saying that this was an American version of events that the Arab press had parroted. Such arguments aimed at causing sectarian strife in Iraq, he said, by convincing the Sunnis that the Shi'ites were dragging their feet where resistance was concerned, and convincing the Shi'ites that the Sunnis were keeping them from achieving a balance of power where they would have a numerical majority.
Balqiz pointed out that the claim that the resistance was "Sunni" in origin aaing Ba'ath Party, scaring some people about the possibility of the former regime returning to power should the resistance succeed in driving out the Americans. The claim also "de-nationalised" the resistance movement, he said, by presenting it as a form of sectarian violence and not as resistance to occupation.
Balqiz said that the claim that the resistance operations were concentrated in a particular geographical area was also inaccurate. These areas -- including Baghdad -- also had Shi'ite and Christian populations, he pointed out, and the Shi'ite south had been the first to resist the original US-led invasion before the fall of Baghdad. The Shi'ites were no less patriotic than other Iraqis, and the fact that some exiles who happened to be Shi'ites, had returned with the occupying forces and were now seeking positions in the new order should not be used to discredit the whole Shi'ite population, he said.
Taher Al-Odwan stressed in his editorial in the Jordanian paper Al-Arab Al-Yom on 2 August that the image of the American occupiers was deteriorating by the day, and they were increasingly resented by the Iraqi population. Moreover, the acts of "resistance" to the occupation appeared to be organised by professionals and not by members of amateur militias, as the Americans had claimed.
A typical exchange occurred between the Lebanese writer Iyad Abou Chakra and the Iraqi Ali Al-Khafaji on the pages of Asharq Al-Aswsat on 3 August. While Abou Chakra criticised Iraqi attacks on fellow Arabs, he seemed to understand that their wounds would take time to heal, urging them nevertheless not to delude themselves. For Al-Khafaji, on the other hand, it was the Arabs, not the Iraqis, who were not being realistic in failing to appreciate the extent of the horror the Iraqis had experienced under the Saddam regime.
Former Iraqi diplomat Maged Al-Sammara'i, writing in Asharq Al- Awsat on 31 July, argued that responsibility now fell on the shoulders of the Iraqis themselves to get their country out of the current impasse. Much needed to be done, he said, including building an army, drafting a constitution, and launching a national campaign of psychological rehabilitation after decades of oppression and violence.
However, he said, it was too early to carry out the prerogatives of an independent state in matters such as foreign policy before the evacuation of the occupying forces had taken place. One unanswered question remained as to who would represent Iraq at the Arab League, as George Alam pointed out in As-Safir on 4 August. Would it be a member of the Governing Council appointed by US Administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer?
Though the television interview given by the daughter of Saddam Hussein, Raghd, made the front pages this week, the fate of her brothers, Uday and Qusay, killed by American forces last week, continued to inspire commentary. For Dalal Al-Bizri, writing in Al-Hayat on 3 August, the question had to do with the character of Arab republican regimes, which had now sometimes become "hereditary republics". The root of this, she argued, went back to the regime of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, which had subordinated the state to the president. Nepotism was only the logical extension of such a development, she said.
While Iraq and Palestine continued to monopolise press attention, Algeria had receded into the background, wrote Amir Tahri in Asharq Al- Awsat on 31 July. Tahri analysed the Algerian political scene in the light of the elections scheduled for April 2004. The main factions vying for power were the ruling clique, which opposed change and was represented by the army and the bureaucracy and controlled the country's economy and oil revenues, the opposition groups that labelled themselves "Islamic", and the liberal and democratic forces that represented the middle classes and elements of the working classes.
Tahri argued that the Algerian political scene was exhausted after years of conflict. Furthermore, in past elections none of the candidates had been truly representative. This time round, however, Tahri expected three serious contenders: Bou Tefleka representing the ruling elite; Belhaj representing the Islamist FIS; and Ben Felis representing the democrats, liberals and reformists.
Elections to the head of the Egyptian Press Syndicate, which saw Galal Aref win over Salah Montasser, also received coverage in the Arab press. In Asharq Al-Awsat, Samir Atallah wrote that these elections had shown that the Egyptian government had not intervened in support of its candidate, Montasser. The elections had been an opportunity for journalists to prove themselves and to voice objections at being kept out of the decision-making process, he said. However, the elections had not solved the "real crisis" of journalism, he argued, linked to the crisis in reading.
For Sati Noureddin, writing in As-Safir on 2 August, journalists were a microcosm of Egyptian society. The message they had sent by the election result had been a clear one: a call for long-awaited change, heralded by the rejuvenated judicial authority that had ousted the former chair of the syndicate and that had involved free elections resulting in a leftist chairman and Islamist board members. This result had not been a revolution or coup, he said. Rather, it had been a "natural return to the rule of law" and a sign that change was about to occur.
For Fahmi Howeidy, writing in Asharq Al-Awsat on 4 August, the message was an even clearer one: opposition to the government and a refusal of normalisation with Israel. Howeidy analysed the reasons behind the unexpected result, including the blatant support of the government for Montasser by promising financial benefits in the event of his success, Montasser's lack of history within the syndicate, his repeated visits to Israel despite the syndicate's ban, his defensiveness when confronted with this, and the growing dissatisfaction with the hegemony of Al-Ahram in Syndicate affairs.
All these reasons had benefited Aref, a Nasserist and a long-time employee of Akhbar Al-Yom having a history of service in the syndicate, who had come across as the independent candidate. However, the main message of the election, Howeidy stressed, was that genuine democratic processes were sure to bring about results different from those wished by the "hegemonic currents" in the Arab world.
