It is two years since the start of the revolutions in the Arab world, which began in January 2011 with the flight of President Zain Abidin Bin-Ali of Tunis to exile in Saudi Arabia. Following that, another three rulers were toppled one after another in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. A fifth, the president of Syria, is fighting for his position, and perhaps for his life. This year marks a decade since the war in Iraq, and the removal of a sixth dictator, Saddam Hussein.
None of these rulers would have been removed from power were it not for the elites that surrounded them, or incomparably stronger outside forces that combined to oust them. Bin-Ali and Hosni Mubarak were removed in military coups. Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen was forced to depart "willingly" following Saudi-American pressure, supported by the security establishment in his country. Saddam and Gaddafi fell victim to military campaigns by Western armies. The street, even if its role was less critical than seemed at the time, suddenly got to breath pure air. And at these moments of liberation, all those whose spirits were depressed and whose stomachs were revolted during decades of repression, came in through the door. Islamists, liberals, provincials, intellectuals, and exiles.
The Arab world is changing, but the change is also changing. It is sharper and more rapid, surprising and destructive. This is the polar opposite of the way in which life was conducted in these countries in the decades since the Arab dictatorships arose out of the Ottoman Empire and French and British colonialism. The goal is a democratic order, but there is still a long way to go. The striving towards it, accompanied by hurts and blood, will be region's lot in 2013 too.
The Iraqi chaos model
Many believe that the coming year will be the last for Bashar Assad in power. The crisis in Syria is too complicated and involved for sweeping assumptions. With Iranian and Russian help, Assad still retains a small chance of holding his capital and a few isolated enclaves, and to fence himself inside little Syria, and a mini-state consisting of Damascus plus.
The problem with the Syrian crisis is that several conflicts are bound up in it at the same time. It is a popular uprising against a repressive regime, a social struggle between poor provinces and an affluent center, and also an ethnic conflict between a minority comprising the Alawites and their supporters and a Sunni majority, one that regional forces are stirring up. It is also a struggle between religious and secular.
If the regime collapses and the Ba'ath party is scattered to the winds, the Iraqi chaos model is liable to take over in Syria. Remnants of the old regime, Alawites with military know-how and access to stores of weapons and ammunition, will wage a vengeful campaign against their Sunni supplanters. Iran and Saudi Arabia, which each separately supported its sympathizers in Iraq in order to gain influence, will continue to stoke the anarchy in Syria.
The appointment of Mohamed Morsi as president of Egypt was, from a symbolic point of view, the outstanding event of 2012. Morsi did not get there on his own merit, and therein lies the importance of the appointment. He achieved the presidency thanks to a behind-the-scenes agreement between the military establishment and the Muslim Brotherhood on how to divide up power and gradually form a new order. The generals, who had run Egypt since the officers' coup of July 1952, realized that they could no longer battle their religious opponents, and decided to co-opt them.
If there is a political thread connecting events in Syria and Egypt, it is the strengthening alliance between Hamas, Qatar, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo. After Hamas divorced itself from Syria and cut its ties with the Shi'ite axis, its path to the Sunni camp was clear. Today, Qatar is Hamas's largest financial supporter. The Muslim Brotherhood is its ideological mother, and, in contrast to the past, when the Brothers sat shamefaced on the opposition benches, today they can make their sponsorship of Hamas mean something.
Israel will have to monitor this strengthening coalition closely. Hamas and Qatar, which were untouchable in the days of Mubarak, now enter Cairo by the front door, undercutting the senior standing that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas used to have. The Qataris set up for the Muslim Brotherhood the news channel "Al-Jazeera Egypt", an offshoot of the most popular television channel in the Arab world, and have started to invest in real estate and infrastructure projects in the Land of the Nile.
We have seen, and will continue to see, the influence of Qatar in Gaza. Qatar gives the Gaza Strip aid with money, construction materials, and diplomatic support. In sharp contrast to the days of Mubarak, who stymied development of the Gaza Strip for the sake of relations with Ramallah, now nobody stands in the way of the Emir of Qatar, or bars Khaled Mashal's entry into Gaza. In this triangle, you find money closely linked to power and brute force (and to ideas and television), in a way that very much appeals to the masses.
The two great struggles that existed even before the disturbances broke out will continue to dominate the Arab world. The first is between the individual and his rulers. The second is between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Both are culture wars. The first is between obsolete, despotic regimes and their subjects, who aspire to freedom and look to the future. The second is between Persians and Arabs, between Sunnis and Shi'ites, between two oil powers, each of which has pretensions to leadership of the nation of the believers.
A bird's eye view of the Arab world on the brink of a new year leaves one's head spinning from the multitude of events. Egypt and Syria will continue to attract the most attention, but it is worth also shifting one's gaze elsewhere: to the budding Shi'ite rebellion in Eastern regions of Saudi Arabia, suppressed by force and kept away from the eye of the media; to the explosive tension between the palace and the traditional elites in the Kingdom of Jordan; to Tunisia, which sought freedom and economic stability with Bin-Ali's departure, and finds itself in a fierce conflict between religious and secular; to the Palestinians, who also want a slice of the liberation cake, and so will not cease to challenge their neighbors, Egypt, Jordan, and Israel.
The Egyptian constitution approved last week at the ballot box, is the first in the era of liberation to have been drafted by elected representatives and brought before the voter. The propriety of the process that led to its approval is open to question, but, although it was rejected by a third of the public, it is a balanced legal document. For the first time, a bill of rights has been presented to the Arab voter that puts him at the center.
The 2012 Egyptian constitution is one of the outstanding legal achievements of the Arab freedom revolution, even if its main significance lies in the future. In the formation of it, the subject disappeared, and the citizen was born.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 31, 2012
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2012