One Arab World

Update:

Radio Open Source, doing a piece on Hamas tonight, is looking to “gather opinion before the show and then introduce it to the guests on-air.” Get on over there and say your piece.

Just yesterday I copied a piece by Guy Raz of CNN that argued an interesting flip side of the “dreaded outcome” we now face. Correlating that Israel’s promotion of Arial Sharon in 2000 to the top job despite his “eating Arabs for breakfast” appalled the Arab world yet yielded some of the most significant steps towards peace (for a fairly typical Arab perspective click here). Steps none of the Israeli “doves” could have taken.

The situation in Palestine and, subsequently, the choice of the people, have another more obvious parallel; the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt - Both evoking the emotions of a people in dire straights, benefiting from the gravitation of people in those circumstance to ideologies, and representatives of the only viable alternative to a corrupt government. Hamas builds schools, clinics, and shelters. Hamas is intertwined in the people and amongst them. More importantly though, Hamas will not bend to others will; and that image is an opportunity. As only Sharon could have pulled off Gaza only Hamas can accept it.

Whatever Hamas the bad ass, accepts in terms of negotiations, the majority of the Palestinians on the ground will accept.

The terrorist organization has become the government. They can no longer hide under the pretence of splinter guerrilla factions. The next attack will be a formal declaration of war between two nations. Any advantage Hamas may have had under those pretences are now gone. Their old methods don’t stand a chance in this new paradigm shift.

I have warned before that now, with the Israelis out of Gaza, the casualties in Palestine could be much higher. Also, depending on how Israel votes a couple of months from now could mean the reoccupation of Gaza (under a Netanyahu lead “security” agenda of course) and from there an inevitable third Intifada with another decade until the next chance.

Will the outcome of Palestinian policy be a preview of coming Egyptian theatrics? Can a radical theological party with roots in terrorism be brought into the mainstream as the real voice of the people or is a good example.

This issue is a central tangent I have been in pursuit of for as long as I can remember. An example of this is well illustrated in the first question I recently put to Professor Noam Chomsky in an interview I gave him for the January 2006 issue of Egypt Today:

“Many feel that the first true democratic election in will be its last. This is on the bases that though a democratic process can help a group running on a religious platform attain power, the resulting conflict between said group’s baseline and democracy will prevent it from continuing such a process further than the election it just won. How does one deal with such a predicament or, as some see it, paradox? Also, since this all done under the strife for democracy, is there a democratic, “democratic process” that can prevent such an occurrence? And with that in mind, how do you feel about the Muslim Brotherhoods recent growth in the Egyptian Parliament?”

How does one balance between desire for socio-theocratic desires and the twenty-first century’s crucial economic secularism? Elitism? Autocracy? Parasitic lopsided quasi-democracies that serve world powers? More importantly how or should one go about implementing policy that is for the good of the people but against their aspirations?

Start your rants.