Murders, they wrote
The bombing that killed 23 people at the UN headquarters in Baghdad and the other that killed Hamas leader Abu Shanab, definitively ending the cease-fire, made for a particularly bloody week that the Arab press struggled to take in stride, writes Amina Elbendary
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Amgad Rasmi in Asharq Al-Awsat depicts the cease-fire on its death bed; Haddad in Al-Hayat draws missiles falling before, during and after the cease-fire
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"The murder of the cease-fire" was the headline to Abdel-Wahab Badrakhan's editorial in the London-based Lebanese daily Al-Hayat on 22 August. Just as the Palestinian cabinet was discussing ways to curb the influence of Hamas and Al-Jihad, Israel assassinated Ismail Abu Shanab thereby putting an end to the Palestinians' plans.
The twin bombings were also the focus of Saleh Al-Qallab's article in the London-based Saudi Arabian daily Asharq Al-Awsat on 21 August. The world reacted to both operations as if they were equal, he wrote, and as if the perpetrators were the same. It is obvious, argued Al-Qallab, that the organisers of the UN attack meant to expose the power vacuum in Baghdad and to demonstrate that the occupation forces are incapable of providing security even for the UN headquarters, making the Iraqi people feel insecure and stressing that life will not get back to normal as long as the occupation forces are still on Iraqi soil. The goal of those behind the Jerusalem operation is to reply to the constant Israeli incursion and punish Israel for not abiding by its side of the cease-fire deal, thereby reminding Sharon and his generals that there are conditions to the cease-fire and to peace and that the Palestinians are capable of responding. But there are other viewpoints, Al-Qallab pointed out. Some will link these two operations with recent developments in southern Lebanon, arguing that a certain power player outside Lebanon and outside Iraq and Palestine, is behind all this to force the US to deal with it as the real power in the region. Some will say that Hamas resorted to the Jerusalem operation to demonstrate that the Palestinian Authority is impotent and that the real decision making on the Palestinian front is in the hands of Hamas not Abu Mazen, Arafat, Dahlan or the PLO. Some will say that the goals of the perpetrators coincide with those of others who do not want the roadmap to work out. Even though the Jerusalem operation was a response to continuing Israeli aggression, the writer argued, it is certain that the US and Israel will use it to pressure Abu Mazen, the PA and Arafat to dismantle what they term the networks of terror in a clear reference to Hamas. The Palestinians could hardly rely on steadfastness in the face of such extreme pressure. It is pressure that could at any moment lead to the eruption of a Palestinian civil war; Hamas would then bear the historical responsibility and stand accused of pushing the Palestinians into the situation they have long avoided and refused and labelled treason.
Writing in the Lebanese daily As-Safir on 23 August, Joseph Smaha analysed the relationship between the roadmap and the cease-fire, and like Al-Qallab, he pointed out the looming spectre of civil war. The roadmap demands that the PA dismantle terrorist organisations which is why the cease-fire came as an embarrassing compromise to the US and Israel. Israel ignored the cease-fire, continuing to insist on its demands knowing full well that their implementation would trigger civil war. Israel also knows that despite the differences in strategy, Abu Mazen has the same goals Arafat has, the difference over how to achieve them could however place him in opposition to another Palestinian camp. Just as Abu Mazen may have been on the verge of taking action against Hamas and Al-Jihad, Israel cut the story short and assassinated Abu Shanab thereby causing a clash between the moderates and radicals since, from the Israeli viewpoint, they both agree on the same goals. Sharon, argued Smaha, is after a new Palestinian formula that accepts the expansionist Zionist project, or, quoting an Israeli minister, "the Palestinian authority has to take a strategic decision: to kill Palestinians to save Jews." Abbas's only mission, from the Israeli point of view, argued Smaha, has become to inaugurate the Palestinian civil war.
But from Smaha's point of view Abu Mazen has already made grave strategic mistakes. The first is his simplistic beliefs not befitting a leader, and in denial of harsh realities, mainly his argument for winning public opinion as a condition for building a sovereign state and counting on US pressure on Israel. Abu Mazen, explained Smaha, belongs to the school of thought that sees every Arab weakness or defeat before Washington as a positive point for the Palestinians and a negative one for Israelis, a school of thought propagated by the Arab right. This premise, Smaha wrote, led him to the mistake of accepting the position of prime minister thinking that the prize of Palestinian moderation after the occupation of Iraq would take the shape of a punishment to Israeli extremism. He failed to realise that Washington will in fact ask such moderation to reward Israeli extremism. Besides, what public opinion is he counting on, Smaha asks rhetorically, when even the Israeli Labour Party's current leader, Shimon Perez, realises the party needs major reconstruction and has no real weight in political life. Powell's call on Arafat to help Abu Mazen shows that the US insists on fighting the manifestations of terrorism not its causes. The roadmap is thus like the Oslo Accords, preoccupied with practicalities instead of tackling real substance. This is why the coup in the Palestinian Authority and even in Palestinian society at large was doomed to failure.
Also on the Palestinian front, Abdel-Gaber Udwan in Asharq Al-Awsat on 21 August wrote that the Palestinians had not made the best use of the cease-fire. Israel, he argued, refused to be officially part of the cease-fire since it insists on destroying the resistance movement whether directly through military aggression or indirectly by using the PA as a proxy. Israel has refused to uphold the cease-fire even under international pressure, but waited for weeks for the Palestinians to break it and finally resorted to direct provocation to force the Palestinians to end it. Israel will undoubtedly argue that cease-fires allow militant groups to reorganise and prepare for upcoming battles but Udwan questioned whether in fact they have. After six years of peace there was no real resistance standing up to the Israelis as they destroyed Palestinian military institutions. Superior weapons that could be used in military confrontation have not found their way to Palestinian areas and have not been manufactured inside the occupied territories. The limited weapons at the disposal of the resistance cause psychological rather than any physical or strategic damage. With the exception of suicide attacks, wrote Udwan, Palestinian military institutions have failed to develop any serious pre-emptive weapons. Suicide operations have slightly changed the balance of victims on both sides and have greatly altered the balance of fear and psychological insecurity, since before them Israelis could live blissfully unaware of what was happening a dozen miles away from their luxurious lives. The only security Palestinians now have is in international diplomacy which seeks to quiet the situation and does not even threaten to use the economic boycott weapon. Yet, the writer went on, just as Palestinian difficulties continue to increase, so too do Israeli economic, psychological, military and democratic losses. The occupation has once again become blatant and full-scale. However, Palestinians need to develop their practical and propaganda strategies, to change their political outlook seeking more comprehensive and democratic solutions, and to improve their diplomatic performance. They also need to develop peaceful resistance tactics that aim at isolating the right both in Israel and the US.
In his editorial in Al-Hayat on 26 August, Hazem Saghiya forcefully called for the removal of neo-cons such as Wolfowitz and Perle from the current American political scene. They should be made to pay the price for the current chaos in the Middle East and the failure of US policy in both Palestine and Iraq. In Palestine the roadmap inherited the worst of the Oslo Accords, with Israel continuing to alter the status quo through settlement and assassinations while Hamas and Al-Jihad try to change it through terrorism. The alternative is to pre-conceive the end result and force all parties to accommodate to it, so that Abu Mazen can offer the Palestinians something concrete in return for dismantling Hamas and Al-Jihad. This, the writer went on, is of course against the firm convictions of the neo-cons and their blind belief in the unity of the American-Israeli or, more accurately, Republican-Likudian battle. In Iraq, the simplistic vision of the neo-cons was that removing Saddam Hussein and isolating Iraq from the influence of neighbouring countries would automatically lead to the eruption of liberal democracy and modernity in Iraqi society. In fact, it is Iraq that is exporting ethnic tension to Turkey. The neo-cons could not recognise the depth of problematic tribal and ethnic divisions in Iraq. But in contrast to the spring of democracy there seem to be two choices now, argued Saghiya: either a moderate secularism that cannot tolerate democratic elections or absolute fundamentalism that reaches power through elections. The neo-cons should pay the price for taking 11 September as the launch pad for their coup. Instead of taking it as opportunity to review America's relationship to the world, they were obsessed with a short-sighted interpretation of national security that took Iraq as its main stage. Compounded failure will have its effects on the US too, Saghiya pointed out, possibly leading Bush to defeat in the 2004 election due to the issues of Iraq and the ailing economy. And what if the US simply evacuates its soldiers and aid workers from Iraq after the elections? In that case, if the American were to sneeze, the Arab world would need an intensive care unit. To avoid such catastrophes, Perle, Wolfwoitz and all the civilian generals who announced their first manifesto on 12 September 2001 have to go, concluded Saghiya.
Perhaps inspired by the recent exchange of articles on the pages of Al-Hayat between Raghda Dergham and Saadeddin Ibrahim, although not in direct reference to either, the Saudi Arabian writer Ibtisam Abdel-Rahman Al-Bassam wrote on 25 August arguing that it is the Arabs who are refusing to change. "Who is using double standards? Us or the West?" she asked. The writer does not argue against the widely-felt perception that the West has used inconsistent moral standards according to its varying interests. So too have Arabs in a way, she went on, for they have used other people's ethical scales for themselves, preferring the terminology and the values of the Other over their own.
