Being Arab. Samir Kassir
developments know that they cannot count on any internal or regional assistance, only on their adversary’s democratic capacity to affect policy. The nationalists therefore acknowledge that the occupation’s outcome cannot ultimately depend on Arabs overcoming their own powerlessness.
As for those who were in favour of the war, powerlessness for them is a fundamental given. Whether complicit, opportunistic or a matter of their biding their time, their stance on American intervention arose from the conviction that the change Arab societies so badly need will not come from the people of the region: it can only be brought about with foreign assistance. But once provided, this assistance will not necessarily be empowering. Only those deluded enough to think that they are influencing events in their capacity as Eastern ‘experts’, or local informants, can fail to acknowledge that for better and for worse it is the victor, and the victor alone, who makes all the decisions. And in practice the successive haphazard decisions taken by America’s imperial proconsul in Iraq can have only intensified Arab frustrations and aggravated their sense of impotence.
There’s no doubt either that America’s barely democratic actions have swelled the ranks of those who prefer the struggle against foreign domination to the fight for democracy, especially since the ‘colonialist’ critique of American domination in Iraq is underpinned by a general sense that the Americans were already working ‘against us’ anyway. We didn’t have to subscribe to Islamist ideology to feel this: the United States’ unwavering support of Israeli extremism was reason enough.
The American occupation of Iraq was by no means the first time Arabs have been beset by a feeling of impotence. Impotence has characterized the Palestine question at every turn, an impotence that has been all the more undermining because even the most knowledgeable of military experts cannot help setting it against the disproportion in size between the Israeli and Arab populations. There’s no need to recite the commonplaces about the 1948 disaster, which was in fact far less unexpected than people make it out to have been. British general staff predicted it as early as 1946, because they knew, unlike the leaders of the semi-autonomous Arab states, that the Zionist Haganah outnumbered the entire Arab armed forces. One need not wax lyrical about Israel’s exploits in 1956, which were only a qualified achievement that depended on the French air force and Nasser’s shrewd decision to pull his army out of Sinai to defend Cairo, the real objective of the British, French and Israeli attack. Nor does 1967, which was an unqualified Israeli achievement, have to be a paradigm that damns Arab powerlessness as some sort of genetic or cultural flaw.
There was a strong vein of resistance and a determination to redress the situation during each of these episodes. The war of attrition waged by the Egyptian army after 1967 and subsequent crossing of the Suez Canal not only expunged any shame – to use a common register of Arab rhetoric – but also proved we Arabs could take our destiny into our own hands. Something we have never done since. After the half-victory – or half-defeat – of 1973, Israel has reigned supreme over the Middle East. Undeterred by Egypt since Sadat’s peace, convinced of America’s unfailing support, guaranteed moral impunity by Europe’s bad conscience, and backed by a nuclear arsenal that was acquired with the help of Western powers and that keeps growing without exciting any comment from the international community, Israel can literally do anything it wants, or is prompted to do by its leaders’ fantasies of domination.
The ultimate expression of the Israeli supremacy now dictating Arabs’ perception of the world and of their place in it was the siege of Beirut in the summer of 1982. In their first attack on an Arab capital, the Israeli air force put on a special show. They carpet-bombed the city, hitting Beirut’s synagogue, which was protected by Palestinian fighters, throwing their planes through stunt routines and even attempting to assassinate Yasser Arafat. On one occasion they destroyed an entire apartment block in a single strike with a vacuum bomb. In a tactic from another age, the city was subjected to a total blockade and deprived of food and water. Nobody in the world, neither ‘Arab masses’ nor oil diplomats, could stop this humiliation. When the city eventually gained some respite – of the most basic sort; the water was switched back on – the negotiating process by which it was secured was even more indicative of Arab helplessness than the siege itself. Petitioned by prominent Lebanese, the Saudi king had to call the American president persistently before he could get him to speak to the Israeli prime minister on their behalf, which in turn more often than not came to nothing.
These telephone calls are a good metaphor for the effectiveness of Arab diplomacy in the Arab—Israeli conflict, at least in the aftermath of the 1973 war. Powerless to change the status quo, the Arab leaders have gone to the United States to ask it to moderate Israeli extremism, and have met with practically no success, except in very circumscribed areas. Even on those rare occasions, America has conceded solely out of a desire to avoid aggravating what, from its point of view, was a critical international situation. This, needless to say, does not include the everyday realities of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, nor the constant colonization by Israeli settlements since 1967. As long as the status quo is unaffected, the United States isn’t concerned that international law is permanently being flouted, as one can see from the number of draft resolutions it has vetoed on the UN Security Council. As for the resolutions that, when they have finally been watered down enough to get past Washington, quickly become meaningless documents – to say nothing of the countless futile resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly – these are even clearer proof of American indifference. Such diplomatic ineffectuality naturally intensifies Arab feelings of powerlessness. The more that’s written taking Israeli policy to task or condemning it – the literature would run into volumes by now – the more starkly Arab helplessness is thrown into relief by the reality. The annexation of East Jerusalem, the constant chipping away at areas surrounding the city, and the settling of the West Bank and Gaza Strip: all have continued unabated since the signing of the Oslo Accord.
Faced with this degree of ineffectuality, neither the conviction that you are in the right and backed up by international law, nor the expressions of solidarity from all corners of the world, can compensate for the frustration you feel. The fact that you have all these advantages and yet cannot use them ends up transforming your feeling of impotence into some sort of destiny, as the business of the Israeli separation wall has once again shown.
Despite their apparent destinies, however, there are at least two peoples, the Palestinians and Lebanese, who have chosen to resist. The Lebanese can even pride themselves on achieving one of the rare Arab victories in the long history of the conflict. Achieved in two stages, their victory was all the more unexpected because theirs was one of the weakest countries in the Arab world and at its lowest ebb. Initially a broad front, in which the left played the most active and effective part, the resistance quickly forced Israel to give up Beirut – the birthplace of opposition at the start of the occupation – and then, after three years’ constant fighting, to evacuate the main towns in the south of the country. Once Israel had abandoned its plans to make Lebanon a satellite state, the occupation began to take its toll. With the revival of the resistance at the end of the 1980s this became too heavy to bear, although it took Hezbollah, who had the monopoly on resistance from then on, over a dozen years to liberate the country. But it also took its toll on the Lebanese – having been in control of their resistance to the Israeli occupation, they allowed themselves to become subservient to Syria’s tactical manoeuvrings – and on the Arabs as a whole. From then on resistance was an Arab totem, conceived of and advocated as an end in itself, distinct from politics. Resistance became a model to be exported regardless of circumstances, with Palestine its first destination, although the balance of power there was quite different and the occupier far more prepared to make sacrifices to maintain the status quo.
The Palestinians’ predicament is therefore far greater than that faced by the Lebanese and yet nothing seems able to reduce them to despair. Their capacity to endure hardship and always bounce back could be an example to all Arabs. But the Arab ideology of resistance can’t envisage everyday heroism of this sort. Despite a political elite that has become very skilful in balancing international affairs with the regional status quo, the perception of Palestine – by the Arabs more than by the Palestinians – remains unaltered. The Palestinian movements may have been responsible for the call to ‘total guerrilla war’ at the end of the 1960s. However, it is the opinion-makers of the other Arab countries who have imposed