Still shaken

There is little to indicate that the Arab world has truly risen from the ashes of the 1967 War. Dina Ezzat reads how defeat persists

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It was probably for purposes of euphemism that Egypt, Syria and Jordan called the military defeat by Israel in June 1967 the naksa, or setback. At the time, the word was meant to avoid the more shocking hazeema -- defeat -- and to indicate that what happened was a mere and temporary deviation from a path of development and independence that the Arab world has been taking since the 1952 Revolution in Egypt.

Today, it seems that the Arab world has not yet recovered from the naksa. As the Arab press offered a timid tribute to the 39th anniversary of the 1967 attack, it provided ample evidence that the course of development and true independence is still to be recovered.

In the daily Al-Bayan of the United Arab Emirates on Saturday, Syrian commentator Hussein Al-Ouidat argued, "The 1967 defeat was not at all a mere military crush. It was really a total declaration of political, economic and social failure of the Arab regimes at the time... and 39 years later the Arab nation is still living with the results of this defeat and the situation is simply worse."

Al-Ouidat needed not offer examples. On the same day, most Arab dailies carried enough material to testify to his argument.

In a sign of a flagrant declaration of continued intransigent military power, Israeli border soldiers killed two Egyptian border policemen "in uniform", as the London-based daily Asharq Al-Awsat noted. The shooting happened less than 48 hours before Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert arrived in Sharm El-Sheikh for talks with President Hosni Mubarak.

Meanwhile, there was news about the continued construction of the Israeli separation wall that is eating up Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in 1967 and, as noted by Al-Quds, another London-based daily, is forcing the Arab-Israeli population opposed to this wall into a confrontation with their government "in what may open the door to further anti-Arab discrimination".

Moreover, there was the flow of stories on the stifling economic sanctions imposed by Israel and the West on the Palestinians to avenge the democratic election of a Hamas government and the failure of almost every Arab attempt to persuade Israel, or for that matter the concerned Western capitals, to reduce the pressure in order to avoid an explosion.

The Palestinian territories may offer the most shocking signs of a persistent sense of defeat that has befallen the Arab world for almost 40 years, but it is certainly not the only one. Iraq has recently evolved as another lost soul, especially following the atrocities being committed by foreign troops in Iraq, mostly American, that are now being published in the Arab press in a timeline format. In one timeline printed this week by the UAE's Al-Ittihad (off the Agence France Press service), the reader is offered a stunning account of endless target-to-kill and arrest-to-torture exercises that, according to Al-Quds, are likely to be further perpetuated as Israeli special forces send their agents to Iraq to offer their expertise to foreign troops in their confrontation with Iraqi militant groups.

More shocking still is that criticism of these crimes is coming mostly, as the Arab press indicates, from Western, including American, not Arab quarters. Arab criticism was mainly expressed in the press in op-ed and editorial pieces, including that of Al-Bayan on Saturday that argued, "The American crimes in Iraq are simply unaccountable and mostly unaccounted for... The blood spilled in Iraq will only dry when the occupation forces leave this country."

Still, the manifestations of persistent defeat, be it in Palestine, Iraq or any other Arab country, is far from being a mere outcome of the foreign occupation or for that matter intervention.

Iraqis are killing each other in scores, as the front pages herald every single morning. And as the Jordanian daily Al-Dustour announced on Tuesday, the visit of Arab League Assistant Secretary-General Ahmed Ben Heli to Iraq to prepare for an Iraqi accord conference, scheduled for later this month, is expected to stumble over serious inter-Iraqi conflicts.

Meanwhile, as prominent commentator and founder of the Lebanese daily An-Nahar Ghassan Tweini lamented in an article titled "On war, peace... and full independence", the Lebanese are still finding excuses in the Palestinian cause and inter-Arab and other conflicts to fight one another . "The international game that has found many ways in the past to be part of our internal wars is now being played at a higher and more complicated level," Tweini warned.

Inter-Palestinian fighting (and sadly enough killing), which has become another daily feature of the front pages of the Arab press, is yet another sign of self-inflicted Arab grievances. In the daily Lebanese Al-Mustaqbal on Tuesday, prominent Moroccan commentator Abdelilah Belkaziz warned Hamas not to allow its dispute with Fatah over state control matters to divert attention of the Palestinian people away from the single fight they all need to join ranks to win: independence. "It will be a very serious development if Hamas allows its urge to have a big share of running political life in Palestine without sufficient political and national reasoning. This would wrongly give the impression that Palestinians are done with their battle for independence and are now into the battle for state building."