Saving the Arab Levant
by
Dr. Zogby
Monday July 29, 2013
Anyone who cares about the Arab World has to be
profoundly shaken by the unraveling that is taking place across the
Levant. Reviewing events unfolding from Iraq in the East to Lebanon in
the West can give one the distinct feeling that the region is on a path
leading to self-destruction. What, if anything, can be done to reverse
course?
Syria is committing suicide—tearing itself asunder in a
civil war that, with the support and prodding of outside forces, has
increasingly become an exercise in sectarian blood-letting. American
combat forces may have left Iraq, but the country has not found a way to
make peace with itself. Daily terrorist bombings are killing scores of
civilians, while a dysfunctional sectarian government appears to be
focused more on prosecuting and persecuting its opponents, than
providing for the needs of its people.
Speaking of dysfunction—Lebanon, reeling from the
pressure emanating from Syria next door, is once again teetering on the
brink of civil conflict. Meanwhile, the conflicts raging around Jordan
are having a destabilizing impact with that country receiving yet
another massive influx of refugees—its fourth in the past six decades.
And poor dismembered Palestine and its dispersed people are suffering
from new and old tragedies. Palestinian refugees from Syria have flooded
into Lebanon's already congested and impoverished camps creating new
tensions. Despite the news that another "peace process" might be
underway, the Palestinians in the occupied territories see what remains
of their lands being chewed up by settlement construction and a barrier
wall that snakes deep into the West Bank, while Gaza continues to be
strangled by a cruel blockade.
It was back in 2002 that then British Foreign Minister
Jack Straw noted that many of the "problems we [the United Kingdom] are
dealing with [in the Middle East] are a consequence of our colonial
past". Straw was referring to what he called his country's "not entirely
honorable past"—its betrayal of the Arabs in the post-World War I
period and its imposition of the Sykes-Picot Agreement on the region.
Straw was right. By denying Arab aspirations to
establish a unitary state in the Levant; by carving the region up into
British and French spheres of influence and imposing their colonial
authority and regimes of their choosing in each of these newly created
"states"; by pitting sect against sect and paving the way for the loss
of Palestine—the British and French laid the groundwork for many of the
problems the Levant is confronting today.
One might be tempted to ask what the Levant might look
like had US President Woodrow Wilson been able to win the day and secure
the "right of self-determination" for the Arabs who had just come out
from under the Ottoman yoke? And what if the world had paid heed to the
findings of the Wilson-authorized King-Crane Commission survey and
granted the Arabs the unitary state they so overwhelmingly desired?
We can indulge in such speculation, but, in the real
world, politics is a function not of "what if" but "what is". And so
despite Straw's lament, the way forward is to be found not in looking
back at what might have been, but in an honest assessment of what can be
done to address current realities.
During the past century, there were many attempts by
Arabs living in the Levant to redress their aggrieved history. Refusing
to succumb to the efforts of outsiders who sought to exploit their
religious diversity, in an effort to "divide and conquer", they
developed "Arab" nationalism—fostering an identity that would transcend
both religious sect and the mini-states that had been the legacy of
Sykes-Picot. It remains a tragedy that this Arab identity movement was
exploited by military regimes who manipulated its emotive power to
support their rule. In the end, the idea of "Arabism" became
discredited, not on its merits, but because of the brutal regimes that
had embraced it.
Another approach was found by those who accepted the new
reality of Sykes-Picot created sub-national identities. These stressed,
for example, the uniqueness of being "Lebanese" or the differences
between being "Palestinian" or "Jordanian". It was important to note
that even within these state-based nationalisms, religious divisions
were transcended.
What I have always found to be among the most intriguing
results in the polling we have done during the past decade is the
persistence of an Arab identity and a sense of a common destiny among
the people of the Levant. While sectarian wars raged in Iraq, or while
Lebanon's political system remained grounded in a system of
sect-privilege, the principal identity of most Iraqis and Lebanese
remained not their sect, but being both "Arab" and "Lebanese" or
"Iraqi". And when we asked the publics in all of the countries of the
Levant why what happened to Palestinians, Syrians, or Iraqis was
important to them, the most common response was "because they are Arabs
like me".
It is for this reason that I cannot accept that it is
inevitable that the Levant drown in the blood of sectarian conflict. Nor
can I imagine that the people of the region desire their fate to be a
checkerboard of "cleansed" sectarian cantons. It makes no sense that
Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood should be driving the Levant's agenda
when the region's people, despite their religious diversity, express an
attachment to their common bonds born of history, culture, and
blood-ties.
Egyptians have demonstrated their rejection of religious
sect-based government. Syrians are now waging an anti-sectarian
rebellion within their rebellion against the regime. And polls show that
Palestinians in Gaza, despite having voted for Hamas in 2006, are now
rejecting this movement's divisive rule.
What the Levant needs today is a unified revolt against
sectarian division and recognition of the futility of its
self-destructive path. It can be done. I have seen the seeds of the way
forward in the young Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian
entrepreneurs—Muslim and Christian –working together to create
innovative businesses in the Arab World's "Silicon Valley" of Dubai. I
have seen much the same in gatherings of Arab business leaders hosted by
the World Economic Forum. It is their experience, and not that of their
contemporaries, inspired by hate and armed with guns, that represents
the most promising future for the Levant. The notion that this region’s
people share common bonds and have a common destiny cannot be rejected
because this idea had once been abused by brutal regimes. To borrow an
American expression “one shouldn’t throw the baby out with the Ba’ath”.
New life needs to be breathed into this region to save it before it
drowns in its own blood. It can be done. The region can be saved, but it
will take leaders with vision and a determination as strong that being
demonstrated by those who appear hell-bent on destroying it.
