LONDON, 24 May 2005 — This is a time of great uncertainty in the Middle East — and it is deeply worrying. The uncertainty is in a small part because there is change in the air, notably democratic change. Last week’s decision to give women in Kuwait the vote is but the latest milestone in an evolution that, were it not for the regions’ other problems, would be cause for widespread jubilation. Jubilation for many — but not for all. There are always people who will be opposed to change. Change can be very unsettling. For some it is too much of a threat — to their comfort, to their power, to their way of life.
The swing toward democracy has not so far ensured peace or stability. There have been elections in Iraq, but Iraq is anything but stable or peaceful. The Palestinians, too, have been to the polls, not once but twice this year, first to elect a new president, then this month for local elections; they will go back again on July 17 to elect a new Parliament. But the Palestinian issue is no more settled or stable than it was when Yasser Arafat was in charge. The picture is just as hazy in Lebanon where, despite the people’s revolution that brought down the government and forced a Syrian withdrawal and despite next week’s general elections, there is no sign as yet that the country is united in where it wants to go or even in knowing where it is going.
For several countries in the region, there is, of course, an economic boom, thanks to high oil prices. That also masks a wider sense of frustration over the region’s general political situation, of suspicion that the Middle East’s place in the political sun is again about to be ripped away just as it is being so tantalizingly offered. It has happened too many times before.
On the big political issues, nothing positive or encouraging seems to be happening. Every day brings reports of yet more violence and chaos in Iraq. There are fears that Iran or Syria might be the next country to be attacked. The continuing Darfur conflict in Sudan seems unending. And on the main issue, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the momentum seems to have been lost altogether. There is stagnation. Ariel Sharon says that he will pull Israeli troops out on Aug. 17 but he has announced one delay already, for supposed religious reasons, and some Israeli military commanders have now demanded a further six-month delay. Few Palestinians or Arabs have any confidence that it is going to happen. They do not trust Sharon anyway. They will only believe it when they see it. What they do not see at present is any pressure on the Israelis from anyone, in particular President George Bush, to make them pull out. The world’s attention seems to have been diverted — to Uzbekistan, to the French referendum on the European Constitution, to Chancellor Schroeder’s domestic unpopularity, to the British political scene. Palestine hardly gets a mention at present in the international press. Middle East interest is limited to carnage in Iraq.
It is hardly surprising that, as a result, there is in the region an ever-deepening distrust and resentment of the US in particular and the West in general. The latest stories of prisoner abuses in Afghanistan — even though not part of the Arab Middle East though very much a part of the Muslim world — have only served to fuel that distrust and unease.
That is because the resentment is not simply a Middle Eastern thing; it is also a Muslim thing. Across so much of the Muslim world, the US is perceived as being at worst anti-Muslim, at best profoundly ignorant of Islam and totally antipathetic to Muslim views and Muslim lives.
But the Middle East is central to that resentment. If Washington was seen to be actively pressuring Israel into concessions, it would be a very different picture. Fix the Palestinian-Israeli problem, and a good deal of anti-Americanism would vanish like a mirage. That resentment was evident so graphically the other day in a photo shot of two young Arabs standing side by side with placards protesting against the reported Qur’an abuse story at Guantanamo Bay, although Newsweek had by then retracted it. One placard demanded that Newsweek be punished (presumably for reporting the story so wrongly and so insensitively); the other demanded that President Bush apologize for the sacrilege. The two placards were a contradiction. But to the two young men holding them, there was no contradiction. As far as they were concerned, the US was wrong, whatever it does.
The region is beset by uncertainty as to where it is heading. There is little optimism around. It is a dangerous state of affairs. It is not just that resentment at unfilled expectations provides a wellspring which nourishes the would-be terrorist; the inaction on the Israeli-Palestinian front makes for a political vacuum, and politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. It would be so easy for a small handful of militants to fill that vacuum.
A suicide bomb in a Tel Aviv bus, another attack on tourists in Egypt, or perhaps elsewhere in the region, could do it. The awful thing is that it all comes down to numbers. If one or two people were killed, it would have a minimal political effect. But if 30 or 50 people were killed on a Tel Aviv bus, Sharon would use it to stall the peace process yet again. Likewise, 30 or 50 Western tourists killed somewhere else in the Middle East would have Washington and the international media screaming about Middle East terrorism. The Palestinian issue would be on ice.
The advent of democracy will change minds and hearts in the medium term, but it is the immediate term that is at risk. What is needed is a shot of optimism — optimism that the Israelis will pull out of Gaza — and all Gaza — in mid-August; and optimism that Washington will make sure it happens. There can be no more delays. The Bush administration has to crank up the momentum again. No one else can do it.
But that is just the beginning. What the Middle East needs most of all, what would build a new confidence between the West and the Arab world, is the knowledge that the West sees it as a respected partner that is listened to, rather than a minion that is told what to do.
With Washington still announcing what is going to happen in Iraq or making pronouncements about the changes it wants to see in the Middle East, that seems a long way off.
