Opinion

The Arab world in the 21st century: actions that speak louder than words

photo_camera Palestine

The recent news of the administrative blockade by Israeli authorities of a consignment of vaccines in transit from Beitunia to south Ramallah in the Gaza Strip is a good example of the trend towards dehumanisation that has characterised the Middle East for the past 75 years. That leaders on either side of the border find it acceptable to place bitterness above the health of Palestinians highlights the toxic mix of intransigent mystification to which those who refuse to admit the collapse of the old order in the region cling in their eagerness to avoid adapting to change. 

And yet, as if it were a congenital myopia - something we might come to believe if we let ourselves be swept along by prejudice - neither Arabs nor Jews seem to have realised that the pandemic was the straw that broke the camel's back in the Arab world, resentful of the accumulation of crises, from the uprisings of the Arab Spring to the protests in Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon and Iraq, to the collapse of oil prices and the displacement of refugees from perennial armed conflicts. These problems should be shared solutions to move towards greater stability on which to build greater prosperity, rather than trying to contain the inevitable wave of change in the making by creating watertight political silos in which to drain dissent, rather than channelling legitimate social demands.

This time, however, it does not seem that the old autocratic formulas will be useful to the cause of immobility. On the one hand, it is hard to deny that the Palestinian cause has ceased to be the main unifying element of the Arab political world, the factor that served as an alibi for assigning an exogenous Arab-Israeli dimension to the stagnation of Arab societies. Suddenly, the Trump administration's diplomatic swansong disrupted this illusory state of affairs by reaching unprecedented diplomatic agreements between Arabs and Israelis which, on the one hand, relativised the impossibility of dialogue, and on the other, served to confirm that the Middle East is no longer a priority for the United States, whose public opinion is exhausted from decades of counterproductive interventions in the region, in which expansionist Turkey and its partner Iran have emerged as regional powers, to the detriment of Arab nations, where COVID has collapsed the regime-providence model, the compromise whereby authoritarianism was accepted in exchange for stability and social spending financed by oil revenues, a model that has collapsed as the oil era has come to an end, with oil-producing countries no longer able to sustain the Arab version of the welfare state. And with it in tatters, the social impact of the pandemic has been calamitous, stoking the embers of civic uprisings on which radical groups feed.

Thus it is not surprising that the most astute leaders among the Arab nations have opted for a pragmatic understanding with Israel, so as not to become hostages to the rhetoric of Hamas and Hezbollah, that is, to Gazan fundamentalism and Shiite fundamentalism. Underlying this decision is also the tacit admission by Arab leaders that the foundations of the old Arab order, based on oil autarky, no longer exist, as well as the reluctant acceptance that the price to pay for retaining at least some power is to open the door to political cooperation and lay the foundations for regional economic integration, which in the medium term will force a moderate opening of their respective political systems, allowing for inclusive, participatory and representative governments that respond to the aspirations of the new Arab elites, which represent new demographic dynamics characterised by a reduced appetite for sectarianism, and which consequently expect reforms of electoral laws and freedom of the press and the right to information.  

Without this social regeneration, the conditions cannot be met for a transformation of the productive fabric that would allow Arab countries to stop being the red lantern of inequality in terms of both income and opportunities: sustaining a social state, arbitrated by an independent judiciary, requires the existence of an adequate tax system, whose legitimisation requires plural and inclusive political participation, following the famous slogan of the American Revolution of 1789; 'no taxation without representation'.

The scope and depth of the changes that Arab countries must undertake in order to reconcile playing a role on the global stage with maintaining domestic stability are so far-reaching that cannot be carried out without the collaboration of international actors, who must overcome the outdated dichotomy between giving people fish and teaching them how to fish: in the global world of the 21st century, prosperous societies manufacture fishing rods together, and market the fish they catch with them to each other. This paradigm shift will be particularly relevant with regard to Palestine, a problem that cannot be solved by Arab material aid to keep the Palestinian Authority inoperative, as Trump's 'Peace Plan' envisaged.  

Although the Palestinian issue has apparently taken a back seat to the international situation during the last year of Trump's term in office, and although there is no shortage of people in Israel who would like to believe that the establishment of diplomatic relations with a number of Arab capitals has set in motion the countdown to the expiry date of the Palestinian conflict, it is unthinkable that the political weight of the Palestinian diaspora in Arab countries will cease to be a political factor in states such as Jordan and Egypt, which cannot be ignored.  In Jordan, for example, the Palestinian community is already in the majority, allowing it to lobby for linking the future of the West Bank to that of the Hashemite kingdom, creating no small amount of unease among Jordan's pro-government sectors. 

While the number of Palestinian refugees in Egypt is much smaller than in Jordan, Gaza's shadow over Egyptian affairs holds strategic importance for the country, especially in terms of the direct relationship of security in the Sinai Peninsula to the antagonism between the Salafists and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. What this implies, in practical terms, is that the fate of Palestine is inescapably intertwined with the role of Egypt and Jordan in the region, thereby conditioning the economic progress of the Arab sphere as a whole; Maghreb, Levant and Persian Gulf.

Consequently, the old economistic formulas promoted with empty slogans such as 'economic peace' and 'peace dividends', sponsored by each and every US administration since the 1980s, from Ronald Reagan's 'quality of life' programme to Donald Trump's 'peace to prosperity' plan, are inadequate today, as their application presumes the prevalence of an Arab order that is actually on its way to extinction, overlooking the impact on the regional landscape derived from China's interests in the region, whose investment greed offers Arab actors alternatives to traditional Western actions:  China has welcomed the 'Abraham Accords' because, its strategy being more commercial than political, stability takes precedence over other considerations. Chinese initiatives in the Arab region such as the 'Digital Silk Road' are based on the premise that long-term geopolitical stability will make inter-regional connectivity viable through the implementation of technological hubs and infrastructures such as the 'Red-Med Railway Network'. For the first time in decades, the Arab world is presented with a real opportunity to leave behind its secular stagnation by initiating a gradual process of opening up that will allow for socio-economic modernisation, rendering obsolete the discourse of radicalism that continues to tie the Arab world to the past.