Bridling the fantasies

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As we stand on the threshold of a new year the Arab scene remains captive to two hypotheses.

The first sees a great colonial assault against the Arab world, led by the US, in collaboration with the UK and Israel. The goal of this assault is not just to topple the region's regimes but to lay open their lands and wealth.

The second hypothesis claims to be more realistic, asking us to wait for the changes that American policy will bring. The US set the cat amongst the pigeons in the Arab world. By attacking Iraq, threatening Iran and Syria and setting out the roadmap it has announced the end of one stage and the start of another. Those who espouse this view refuse such old-fashioned words as imperialism, colonialism and economic looting, just as they reject old- fashioned values such as justice, Palestinian rights and international law. They call for a neo-liberal revolution that will establish democracy in the Arab world, propel it into the global marketplace and free it from militarism and fundamentalist thought.

It seems as if the Arab world is suffering from a severe case of schizophrenia: it says the obvious then rushes to abdicate all responsibility, handing itself over either to its own dictatorial regimes or else to the US.

Those who take the first point of view call for resistance, led by regimes that have made it clear that their only goal is to remain in power, whatever the cost to their peoples. Those who take the second view choose to ignore the fact that the US and Israel has one vision for the Arab world -- complete surrender.

The first fantasise that they are confronting the invader, the second imagines that they are starting anew. Both are weak, frustrated, dishonest and deceptive. The Arab world's neo-liberals swallow insults and avert their eyes from the truth. They are the guardians of the American plan, though guardians of which the Americans have no need.

These two elites have become faces of a general collapse that stretches in an arc from Iraq to the Levant and Egypt, bordered by the Gulf.

Our only hope lies in freeing Arab societies from their feeble fantasies. This a cultural, not a political dilemma, and we can only begin to grope towards a solution when we free ourselves of the one opinion and one mentality.