The Arab Autumn
By Israel
Shamir
Autumn in the Middle East hasn’t the
melancholy connotations you attach to it in the North.
For you, this is the season of dying; maple leaves turn
purple and geese fly south. For us, this is the jolly
season of awakening after stupefying summer heat; grass
hatches again on the burned-to-reddish-brown lawns and
trees are heavy with ripe figs and pomegranates.
Arab Spring, as the wave of
spectacular February risings was called, gave way to
Arab Summer, that hot and meaningless season of vainly
seeking shade or a cool dip under a mercilessly blazing
sun. In Egypt, the military junta continued Mubarak’s
policies; in Libya, armed gangs prowled the desert under
the expensive parasol of the NATO Air Force; in Syria,
mythic adventures of a Damascus Lesbian Blogger
unfolded, penned and composed by a middle-aged American
ex-intelligence agent from his Scottish retirement.
Palestine was easily forgotten, and a neocon observer
happily and hastily
reported that “the Arab Spring has rendered the
Palestinian issue irrelevant”.
Autumn came, and the summer haze
dissipated. The first fruits sown in the spring budded
forth: the Israeli Embassy fortress-on-the Nile was
stormed, Turkey recalled last year’ s insult, and the
Saudis threatened the US for the first time ever.
Palestine is center stage again, and the UN application
for Palestinian statehood of Mahmud Abbas is the
centrepiece of the new mosaic. Now we can reassess the
evidence and finally begin to understand what is
actually happening in the Middle East: is it an
authentic drive for liberalization and democracy, a
credit card revolt, a carefully orchestrated plot? And
where is it all leading to? Apparently our region is
being re-formatted just like the hard drive on your
computer, and at the end of this brief process, a
long-forgotten Caliphate will rise again, as we shall
further explain.
Why Palestinians are applying for
UN recognition
Palestinians are tired of
never-ending negotiations. They were promised speedy
independence in long-gone 1993, the year Mandela got his
Nobel Peace Prize and Jurassic Park was a box office
hit. The Oslo Agreement between Yasser Arafat and
Yitzhak Rabin was expected to solve the whole problem
very soon after a brief autonomy interlude. It didn’t
work out: Arafat was poisoned, Rabin was shot,
consequent Jewish governments played for time and
intermittently massacred the impatient Palestinians. The
negotiations went on, nevertheless. . . and on, and on .
.
The Palestinian people got tired of
and lost faith in the negotiations long time ago: in the
first free democratic elections in 2006 they voted
against Fatah, the party of negotiations. Now, five
years later, Mahmud Abbas and his Fatah party have also
gotten tired of wasting their time, and fear the
possibility of losing everything in the end. Abbas has
lost a lot of face. His adversaries consider him an
Israeli puppet sitting on Israeli bayonets. They say
that he has no mandate to rule. He is worried that the
next intifada wave will sweep him away like another
Mubarak, and the Israelis would not -- will not -- save
him. His only other option is to become irrelevant to
the great new reformatting of the region. That is why he
has made peace with Hamas and applied to the UN for
recognition, while
at the same time ordering anti-riot equipment --
just in case!
Unless he and his Fatah plan to
cultivate an orchard and sell olive oil in retirement,
they need to show some results, but the time – and the
reformatting – make Abbas’ position precarious. Fatah
belongs to the vaguely socialist nationalist Arab
movement, that of Baath and Nasser, and this movement is
dying. In Iraq it was destroyed by the US invasion; in
Egypt, it was wasted by Mubarak’s policies; in Libya, it
was bombed out of existence by NATO and in Syria it is
being severely undermined. These Arab socialists have
made too many compromises with the neoliberals,
encouraged their new super-rich billionaires, taken too
many bribes and have lost public support to a great
degree. Like salt that has lost its savor, they have
lost their meaning. They are suffering the fate of the
US trade unions, the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary
Party and the European social democrats, while their
inherent post-revolutionary inflexibility did not allow
them to change.
Mahmud Abbas understands as well as
anybody that the UN resolution will not give him a
viable state, but he will regain some annoyance value
vis a vis the Israelis. He is very pro-American, his
security forces are trained by the Americans, and he was
hoping that his bid will be accepted. This would be a
reasonable hope in light of Obama’s Cairo speech, and
indeed Obama would like to play along. However, US Jews
are too powerful and too proudly nationalist to give him
some leeway. They prefer Netanyahu with his silly
intransigence. The US political class has accepted this
as a given, and Netanyahu was greeted by ovations that
would make even Comrade Stalin or Colonel Qaddafi proud.
The unexpected loss of Weiner’s seat in the Congress,
and the fear of Jews derailing the President’s
re-election, compelled the Obama administration to
promise a veto in the UNSC.
It is a forced decision, but not a
wise one, for the
Uniting for Peace process allows an override of the
US veto, and apparently this Doomsday weapon of
international politics may soon be employed for the
first time since the Korean war in 1950, this time
against the US. In a way, by thus demonstrating its
submissiveness, the US has disqualified itself from
ruling in the Middle East.
Who will rule the Middle East?
No one can rule (let alone reformat)
the region after the defeat of Arab nationalism unless
he enjoys popular support. People should like their
political direction. And there is no better puller in
the Middle East, from Athens to Cairo, than giving fight
to the Jewish invader. The reason is not some kind of
prejudice or a mythical anti-Semitism, but rather, a
pervasive love for the Holy Land, and its native
inhabitants so terribly mistreated by the Zionists.
Proverbs (30:22) explains: “Under [this] the earth
trembles: a servant who becomes a king”; and an Israeli
writer has argued that this applies to the Jews in his
country. Used to serving other rulers, they have not
developed sufficient charity, compassion and moderation,
they mistreat the natives cruelly and unfairly, and as a
result, they succeed only in uniting the Middle East in
rejection of their enterprise.
The acid test for a ruler in the
Middle East is his attitude towards the Holy Land. Our
people are concerned with its fate more than they are
concerned with elusive democracy and liberalism -- more
than they are interested in Facebook and Twitter. In
February we wrote: this is the end of the
Israeli-American order established by the Camp David
Accords. Now we begin to see a new order coming.
Whoever wants to rule the region
should think of Palestine. Moreover, demonstrating this
is the prerequisite for a leadership bid. It was done by
Turkey: After long wait, the Erdogan government made a
few striking moves: it sent Israeli ambassador home
packing, it stopped military cooperation with and
military purchases from Israel, and Erdogan promised to
come in person to Gaza on board of his navy’s protective
fleet. The results were impressive: upon his visit in
Cairo, this heir to the Sultan was called “a new
Saladin”, after the Sultan who defeated the Crusaders on
the battlefield of Kurun al Hattin above the Sea of
Galilee in 1187. He was treated by the people as a
liberator and saviour. If this was the reward for his
words, what will be his reward for his deeds?
Egypt is ripe for a new revolution:
Egyptians tore down the wall around the Israeli embassy
and stormed the building. They expressed dissatisfaction
with the ruling military junta for its lack of action
and for its continuation of Mubarak’s policies sine
Mubarak. Indeed the Egyptians have precious little to
show for their February uprising and its thousand
martyrs. General Tantawi had been chosen by Mubarak
himself to become his successor years ago. The political
regime has not changed, elections are being postponed,
the Gaza blockade goes on, and even the killing of
Egyptian soldiers by Israelis did not disrupt normalcy.
Turkey has the legitimacy to provide
the new order, call it a Caliphate, for Caliphate is
another name for the Ottoman Empire, the equivalent of
the EC or of NAFTA. Istanbul (Constantinople) was the
last seat of the Caliphate till WWI, and the natural
capital of the Middle East since the fourth century. The
end of violently secular Kemalism and the rise of the
Islamic AKP have opened gates for Turkey’s bid for the
resurrection of the Caliphate. Turkey is a natural
leader, and should Syria fall apart, Turkey will be able
to reintegrate it within the Caliphate.
Second force
But Turks are not the only claimants.
A new force has arisen meanwhile in the Middle East. It
is led by the Saudis and their close allies, including
Qatar. They have plenty of money, and they have a most
powerful media tool, al Jazeera. They are fervent
Muslims, strictly anti-socialist, and they plan to
reformat the region according to their tastes. They are
the main beneficiaries of the NATO attack on Libya, and
they have invested a lot of resources in the
destabilization of Syria. Until recently, they remained
almost invisible and did not show their hand. It is the
issue of Palestine that brought them out into the light.
Prince Turki al Faisal
wrote in the NY Times: Saudi Arabia will part with
the US if it vetoes the Palestinian bid. This is not
only done out of sympathy for the people of Palestine,
but is also an apparent bid for regional supremacy. The
Saudis are contesting for the crown of the Caliphate, no
less -- they want it for themselves. To this end, they
have spent a lot of money over a long period of time;
they destroyed Qaddafi and are undermining Assad. They
have good working relations with the Turkish AKP;
Erdogan and Gul are familiar with the Saudis, spent some
time in that desert kingdom, and have benefited from
Saudi support. If the Saudis want to be top dogs,
however, they are going to have to put more effort into
Palestine.
Probably Turkey is the more realistic
claimant: it is a big, prosperous, modern country; its
orthodox Islam has a strong touch of Sufism (think of
Rumi, the greatest Sufi poet and saint adored by the
Turks). Saudis with their Protestant-Puritan branch of
Islam (Salafist or Wahhabist) have less chance to
succeed. Historically, the holy cities of Mecca and
Medina were unable to keep the seat of Caliph to
themselves; probably they will fail this time, too,
unless they are willing to moderate their goals and play
second fiddle to Turkey.
The UN bid
The US has some hard choices to make.
Vetoing the Palestinian bid will be an empty gesture,
but a vivid demonstration of the Americans’ bias.
Europeans will not help them: they did not bomb Libya in
order to pass the gains on to Zionists. The US
administration can’t get out of the Jewish embrace.
Perhaps Israel will come to its
senses and relax about the UN vote, as proposed by
Kadima leader Tsipi Livni . Even if the Palestinian
resolution should carry the day, Israel still has the
most powerful army in the region and enjoys unqualified
US support. Israelis can ignore the resolution just as
they have ignored hundreds of GA resolutions, repeating
Ben Gurion’s maxim: “Who cares what the Goyim say?
What’s important is what the Jews do”. American-Arab
philosopher Joseph Massad
wrote that Israel will win anyway: if the
Palestinians win their bid they will have a small
Bantustan, if they fail, they will lose momentum.
Ali Abunimah
has listed many reasons against the bid. Indeed, the
independence of the PNA (Palestinian National Authority)
is not the ideal. It will not solve the problems of
refugees, of separation between the West Bank and Gaza,
of discrimination within Israel proper. But don’t worry:
Mahmud Abbas’ bid will not create an independent
Palestine. It will pull the Palestinian train out
of its sidetrack, it will wipe the snide smirk off
Netanyahu’s and Lieberman’s faces; it will undermine the
US hold on the region. More importantly, it will support
a new dynamic, extremely negative for Israel, even if
this straw does not break the proverbial camel’s back.
Anyway, the Palestinians can’t solve this problem all by
themselves: the elimination of the apartheid regime in
Israel/Palestine will ultimately be effected by the
future Caliphate, a feat sure to enhance its legitimacy
and popularity.