Sound and fury
Whose future? What future? Azmi Bishara* strains to find an answer
We must strain to understand the political muddle in which the Arabs find themselves: it is not, after all, the product of some epic helplessness, nor is it destined by fate.
Arab regimes are incapable of confronting, as a single body, the new challenges posed by the US administration, the international situation and the current phase of economic and cultural globalisation in general, nor by the mounting criminal practices of Israel in whatever neighbourhood you choose in Gaza or Nablus. There is no Arab opposition equipped with an alternative programme and poised to reach power and run the country in a different way. There is no organised grassroots movement pushing for true reform and eager to reach an understanding with the government over ways to institute it gradually, in accordance with an agreed upon aim. Consequently all initiative for reform remains in the hands of the regimes, to be rationed out carefully to ward off an impending explosion of suppressed popular anger or to be applied too late, in the wake of an actual popular uprising that quickly fizzles out anyway due to its lack of either programme or direction. Or, it might arise naturally with the passage of time, with shifts in cultural and political mood and the appearance of new individuals in power, although it still emanates from above.
One of the symptoms of the current state of Arab helplessness is that responses to it come in curses, howls and wails. The elegiac diatribe that has dominated the mood of the Arab "street" since 1967, apart from some brief interludes of hope and accompanying supplications for a hero-saviour, is an integral feature of the current condition and also part of its cause. People who have an alternative and set to work to achieve it do not sit around and bemoan their fate.
The Arab lament has evolved into a culture, an ethos, a school of poetry. And, more recently, a school for television appearances: the speaker, addressing the camera, thunders against the Arabs, bemoans the Arab condition and scoffs at any speech or statement as idle words except, of course, his own which are to be taken as action. In the end he excuses himself from offering an alternative or defending the alternative advocated by someone else. That is not his function. This school further exempts itself from establishing a common basis of values on the premise that we all agree to damn even if we do not agree on the aim. Indeed, it has become hard to tell whether the hand-wringing critic supports the American solution (whatever that is) or supports the "Islamic solution" though after the Taliban, Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and others, God alone knows what that might be. Is it one solution or many? And if many, solutions to what? Frequently, too, "we" are in the dark as to whether he is a hired propagandist whose admonitions are directed against all Arab regimes except the one that pays, or whether he truly has in his heart the interests of all Arab regimes which remain unaware that it may, in fact, be in their interests to heed his exhortations, unaware that their turn might come after Iraq.
The fact is we simply do not know. For the moment it is perhaps best to dismantle this school of polemics altogether and stop listening to any more diatribes on the Arab condition until we have first agreed with the speakers' common values and aspirations.
"We" have yet to agree upon what the Arab nation should be like, let alone reach a consensus on where it should go after the invasion of Iraq. Of course things will change radically, so much is obvious. But then what? Because apart from the US and Israel there is not a single power with an agenda or concrete conception of the future. How, then, can we talk about what to do rather than wait to see what happens before first addressing the questions who precisely "we" are and what precisely "we" want?
"We are Arabs" -- this assertion can give rise to a number of projects and agendas, including that nationalist agenda that believes in a single Arab "we" as the fundamental platform for action. But action towards what end? What is the Arab nationalist programme? There has never been a systematic attempt to formulate a conception of the Arab future as it should be and to propose the instruments necessary to promote and sustain the practical struggle necessary to realise that aim.
Aspirations for a better life, for prosperity, happiness, freedom and the right of the individual Arab to pursue such ideals, presupposes a different kind of political programme for realising Arab cooperation and integration, one that espouses a democratic agenda. But such a programme cannot be achieved through preaching and proselytising, let alone haranguing. Rather, it requires political forces capable of organising and equipping themselves to fight towards a desired end and capable of formulating an alternative conception for the running of society, beginning with national economic systems and social policies and ending with a system of government, or vice versa. This is the challenge: hic Rhodus, hic salta! -- or roughly: Put your money where your mouth is!
There is nothing on the scene that merits the name alternative, whether in terms of a political programme or in terms of political forces. Meanwhile existing regimes, in the very best of cases, espouse a programme for the preservation of order and for administering the state and society in a manner that promotes a conception of the welfare of the regime which is equated with the welfare of the wider society.
All else is pure diatribe, the sources and aims of which remain obscure. Perhaps, too, the speakers themselves are unaware that people are as fed up with their invective as they are with the existing regimes and the current Arab condition, which breeds their school of elegiac diatribe just as it breeds the fundamentalism and Arab nationalist demagoguery which they deride, just as it breeds a mentality common to them all, a mentality that despairs of everything but words and show. This mentality, and the type of criticism it feeds, have worked to obviate the coalescence of any organised political alternative emanating from enlightened values and founded upon a conception, and the practical skills necessary, for running societies and their decision making processes.
* The writer is a leading Palestinian political activist and member of the Knesset.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 6 - 12 March 2003 (Issue No. 628)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/628/op57.htm