Roads to the map
The Arab press this week covered the fall-out from a week of summits, writes Amina Elbendary
After a week of summits and high-profile visits, the Arab press this week covered the fall-out, as the Arab world attempted to deal with not-so-new realities on the ground. The roadmap continued to inspire many opinion pieces, and negotiations between the Palestinian government headed by Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and the various Palestinian factions were the subject of many articles, especially as the negotiations continued to fluctuate dramatically between "success" and "break-down".
In the London-based Lebanese daily Al-Hayat on 8 June, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) Secretary-General Nayef Hawatmeh wrote that "among the stations on the roadmap is a station for dialogue," concluding by stressing the importance of closing Palestinian ranks and ensuring the success of dialogue, in order to come out with a comprehensive political programme that would unite the people, factions and institutions of Palestine and defeat the spectre of civil war.
It was this spectre that worried Ghassan Tueni in his editorial in the Lebanese daily Al-Nahar on 9 June. He also worried about the prospect of an inter-Arab civil war championed by the party of "steadfastness" against Israel and led by Syria. Tueni compared the Israeli and Palestinian scenes and concluded by urging the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Yasser Arafat, to bring together the pieces of Palestine into what he termed the "constitutional temple" and to ensure that Abu Mazen receives democratic monitoring.
Tueni also pointed to the stress on the Jewishness of the Israeli state that had emerged from Sharon's recent speech to the Israeli Likud Party and urged the Palestinian leadership to alert the Muslim and Christian worlds to the dangers of such claims. This stress effectively meant denying Palestinians the right of return, a point which inspired many opinion articles in the Arab press, including Selim Nassar's in Al-Hayat on 7 June.
Also in Al-Hayat on 9 June, Abdel-Wahab Badrakhan wrote that Abu Mazen's government knew that it faced a complex situation, and though it was betting on dialogue with its opponents, believing that it could reach an understanding with them, the Israelis and the Americans wanted it to take their advice without undertaking the kind of palpable actions that would make the Palestinians feel some differences in the unjust reality they were living under.
In fact, Badrakhan pointed out, the Israelis were continuing to demolish Palestinian houses and to abduct people from their homes and the streets, and they were continuing their campaign of bombings whose only aim was killing and destruction.
Thus, he concluded, the Israelis were aiming at causing internal strife in Palestinian ranks that would eventually be used to "excuse a Palestinian demand for the intervention of a third [Israeli] party to resolve it. Such a strategy means keeping the Palestinian government impotent. It is showing every good intention and a willingness to stop the Intifada, without the Israeli side showing any understanding of its position. It was expected that Hamas would stop the dialogue after the Aqaba summit and the stupid American proposals on issues that are important to all Palestinians. Yet, the dialogue will resume because pressures have taught all parties that they must stick to their interests".
In the Lebanese daily Al-Safir on 6 June, Joseph Smaha analysed the speeches given at the Sharm El-Sheikh summit and the devils that lurked in their details. The Israelis had insisted on Palestinian recognition of Israel's "right to exist" and not just on "its existence". This, argued Smaha, would force a re-reading of the Palestinian struggle for independence, altering the meanings of wars such as those in 1948 or 1967. Thus, 1948 would no longer be viewed as a "nakba" (catastrophe), which was part of the Palestinian narrative, since it would now be seen as part of the Israeli people's carrying out its "right" to self-determination. According to such a re-reading, all Israel's wars against the Palestinians would also become defensive wars against Arab aggression.
Smaha also criticised Abu Mazen for urging the Palestinians not to ignore the historical suffering of the Jews, because this would refer to the Holocaust and create a misleading correlation between what the Jews had suffered at the hands of the Nazis in Europe and Palestinian resistance operations against Israeli occupation in Palestine. Finally, Smaha drew attention to the distinction Ariel Sharon had made between the Palestinians, who might have a right to rule themselves, and Palestine, which was not mentioned, the land which the Palestinians are not acknowledged to have a right to.
In the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat on 8 June, Bilal Al-Hassan drew attention to "the achievements of the Intifada that have escaped the Aqaba summit". The Intifada, he argued, had taken its military and economic toll on Israel, as statements by Israeli officials had attested.
Yet, Al-Hassan wrote, "it seemed as if the Arabs were apologising to Israel for resisting its occupation and asking it gently to stop its violence and destruction so that the Palestinians could breathe some air. No one made it clear that Israel needs peace as much as the Palestinians do, and no one made it clear that the Palestinians, despite their great weaknesses, are capable of hurting Israel despite its strength. Since such a clear political position, based on the facts and on Israeli admissions, was absent, it looked as if President Bush was imposing conditions on the Palestinians and Arabs, while Israel looked as if it was accepting these, condescendingly and against its will, only for the sake of the American president."
Meanwhile, stories from Iraq receded from the front pages of many Arab dailies, though Al-Hayat has begun publishing the serialised memoirs of the former Iraqi defence minister and member of the Revolutionary Command Council, Ibrahim Al-Dawoud.
Al-Sharq Al-Awsat's Editor-in-Chief Abdel-Rahman Al- Rashed wrote on 7 June that the Americans indeed have a lot to be proud of since entering Baghdad. So far, there has not been civil war, or sectarian strife, or wars with Iran, Syria or even Saudi Arabia. They have not hung their enemies, nor placed (except for a few) opponents in jail, and, despite internal and foreign pressures, they have not forged evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. In fact, all the Americans have done in Iraq, Al-Rashed wrote, is to excavate mass graves, showing the world that human rights were the best reason for the invasion and the toppling of Saddam.
The US administration had not yet been able to announce a new Iraqi government, Al-Rashed argued, because they had discovered that it was not easy to form a government in a country torn by external allegiances because of an absence of domestic political forces. The fallen regime was a paper tiger, and its army a mirage, he said, but that regime had managed to put its people under "psychological siege", turning Iraq into one vast prison. The Americans should manage the political situation by establishing an Iraqi civilian and military administration.
However, the Americans had erred, Al-Rashed believed, in disbanding the Iraqi army, for the army was "a big home for the children of Iraq, in which they had been forced to live". Abolishing it now without giving people alternatives was no less cruel than what Saddam had done in expelling or transferring whole sectors of the Iraqi population.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 12 - 18 June 2003 (Issue No. 642)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/642/pr2.htm