The Middle East Conflict after the Arab Spring: The Case of Palestine

Abstract

The Arab Spring offers uncertain promise for effective action on Palestine. While the mobilisation of civil society throughout the Arab world cannot but give voice to popular support for Palestine, continuing strategic weaknesses may well limit the effective translation of these sentiments in the political, diplomatic and indeed military landscape.

Introduction

During a recent visit to Cairo, I asked a top advisor to one of the leading Egyptian candidates to succeed Hosni Mubarak as president of Egypt about the prospect of a new Egyptian attitude towards Gaza, and in particular about the operation of the joint Egyptian–Palestinian border crossing at Rafah, where severe restrictions on the movement of people and an outright prohibition on trade have long been in place. ‘Nothing will change’, he declared, not even if his candidate wins.

To those who have observed the events known as the Arab Spring with a combination of wonder, enthusiasm and trepidation, continuing Egyptian participation in what has become known as the ‘siege’ on Gaza and the prospect of its continuation long after deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's departure offers a cautionary example of the limits of change in the new era now unfolding across the Arab world, and not only concerning Arab policies towards Palestine.

The story of the Arab Spring is still unfolding. Some regimes have been discredited, having turned their guns on their own people (Syria); others have been overthrown (Libya); and in some the institutions that supported autocracy remain, embattled but intact, an unsteady bulwark against broader institutional and even social revolutionary disintegration (Egypt). The scope and intensity of these dislocations is unprecedented in the region, and promises an extended period of instability and unpredictable changes as old governing and institutional forms adapt or die and new ones are created.

This upheaval, and the uncertain promise to empower Arab civil society that it symbolises, may make for a stronger Arab voice in international affairs and more effective mobilisation in support of the creation of a Palestinian state, but such an outcome is not at all preordained.

The strategic equation

The Arab world today is weaker and more divided than at any time in recent memory. This weakness is not solely a result of the Arab Spring. In recent decades the Arab world has been divided by the war between Iraq and Iran, and three Arab capitals (Beirut, Baghdad and now Tripoli—the latter with the critical blessing of the Arab League itself) have been occupied by, or with the critical assistance of, foreign armies. An unprecedented Arab peace initiative, endorsed by the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and led by Saudi Arabia, offered Israel peace and recognition, but its implementation has languished for almost a decade. Arab leaders with close ties to the US and Israel—notably Hosni Mubarak and Mahmoud Abbas, but also Bashar al-Assad—have been unable to translate their support from Washington and Europe and their desire for a diplomatic solution to Israel's occupation of lands captured in June 1967 into a peace agreement. Will the Arab leaders who emerge from the Arab Spring fare any better?

The domestic dislocations of the Arab Spring have, for the time being at least, exacerbated Arab weakness; further reduced the prospect of effective, concerted Arab action on behalf of Palestine; and rationalised ineffective international diplomacy. This is a strategic weakness, in the sense that it shows an inability to articulate policy and to amass the instruments of power to promote or achieve it. Today, for example, it would be virtually impossible to produce an Arab consensus in favour of the Saudi Peace Initiative in the model of the one announced in 2002. Similarly, it would also be impossible to organise a united Egyptian–Syrian military attack such as the one mounted in October 1973, or to bring Israel and Syria together to discuss peace as US President Bill Clinton did in 2000. The revolutionary ferment that now dominates much of the Arab world simply does not permit power on this scale—whether benevolent or malign—to be exercised.

Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Mahmoud Abbas could be said to be the very model of the kind of leader the Arab Spring should produce—a leader elected by and beholden to his people, who is committed to a peaceful resolution of the conflict with Israel. For Israel, however, he remains a weak adversary—‘a chick without feathers’, in former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's dismissive words—whose preferences can be ignored [3]. In another respect, however, Abbas is one of the last of the secular nationalists whose political movements came about after the collapse of the colonial order and whose current leaders are now paying the price for their serial failures.

Will the Arab Spring produce nothing but a new era of regional instability and a new rationale for legitimising armed intervention? Or, by empowering public opinion and acknowledging and honouring the dignity of its citizens, will a new Arab policy on Palestine be more effective than its predecessors?

Weak states and Palestine

The Arab Spring is first and foremost a social upheaval—demanding that rulers respect and honour the dignity of every citizen. The signs of revolt and its imagery are essentially tied to domestic issues. Palestine is not an important motivator in the regime change now sweeping Arab countries, certainly not as much as it was in the aftermath of the defeat (Nakba) in 1948. Palestine's power to mobilise the public remains, but Palestine is not as compelling a reason as the long list of domestic grievances.

However, it would be a mistake to suggest, as many have done, that public antipathy towards Israel or the West is peripheral to the Arab Spring. To the extent that the Arab Spring aims to empower civil society and create governments responsive to the wishes of their people, the strong popular consensus in Egypt and elsewhere in favour of Palestine cannot be easily ignored. However, it is also true that historically, Arab parliamentary systems were unable to respond effectively to Israel. It was this failure in the years before and after Israel's creation that largely precipitated the end of parliamentary systems created under colonial auspices and the creation of the military regimes that are now breathing their last.

Gaza offers an instructive case in point. There is virtually no public support among Egyptians, or Arabs generally, for Egypt's continued support of the siege on Gaza. During the Mubarak era, Egyptian policy took note of this consensus by tolerating the creation of a tunnel economy that enabled the smuggling of everything from vehicles to RPGs in tunnels linking Egyptian Sinai to Gaza—even as Egypt maintained draconian restrictions on the formal operation of the border for the transit of people and banned all trade. The official policy better reflected its own interests as well as those of Israel and the West. Mubarak's departure has not resulted in a meaningful change in this policy. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has not changed its long-standing view of Gaza as a security threat, even though Egyptians are demanding a change to an open border for free trade and transit to signal a new kind of Egyptian leadership. In this important respect, Egypt's policy towards Gaza can be viewed as a barometer of the Arab Spring, the ability and commitment of Egyptian civil society to mobilise effectively for Palestine, and its power to prevail over the weakened, but still strong, pillars of the ancien regime.

In an effort to harness the Arab Spring to his policy objectives, Abbas has called for a ‘Palestinian Spring’ in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem to mobilise the Palestinian public in favour of his effort to win UN recognition [2]. In doing so, he has turned the central idea of the Arab Spring on its head. At its best, the Arab Spring has been a revolt against the excesses of the regime, not a celebration of the policies organised by the regime. Abbas demanded the latter during his UN appearances in September, to no great or lasting effect. The UN campaign has not been accompanied by efforts to challenge the occupation or to assert Palestinian sovereignty on the ground. There has been no challenge to Israel's control of Area C (comprising almost 60% of the West Bank), settlements or borders. There has been no move by Palestinian security forces into Area B.

Challenges to cold peace

The Arab Spring has not only empowered civil society. By challenging and weakening the security arm of the state, it has created a power vacuum that is destabilising Arab borders with Israel.

Ironically, however, it is the weakness of Arab regimes in the face of the revitalised power of Arab, and particularly Egyptian, popular opinion that has demonstrably constrained Israel. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reported to have limited its military response to an August 2011 cross-border attack by Palestinians from Sinai because of concerns about the impact of an expected popular Egyptian outcry against the beleaguered SCAF. Gone, it appears, are the days when Israel could depend upon the Mubarak regime to tolerate and contain public opposition to outsized Israeli military assaults against Gaza. While Mubarak's benevolence and the iron grip of his security forces on Egypt produced decades of peace between Israel and Egypt, his departure, and the accompanying breakdown in government authority that has yet to be reversed, has created an opportunity for all manner of smugglers, revolutionaries, malcontents and jihadis to open a new front against Israel in Sinai.

The Sinai Peninsula is now all but out of the control of the capital, creating opportunities for mayhem and direct attacks by Palestinians, Egyptians and others against Israel across the joint border. The risk in this case is not simply the creation of a new security challenge for both Israel and Egypt and new opportunities for Palestinians and others to harass Israel: it is a far broader undermining of the alliance sealed between Israel and Egypt, with US support, at Camp David more than three decades ago.

In Syria, as in Egypt, the Arab Spring not only complicates the conditions for effective diplomacy to end the conflict, it also risks up-ending the cold peace relationships created in recent decades. For the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, the most pressing question is not how a change in leadership would affect Syrian policy so much as whether an embattled regime will embroil Israel as domestic challenges to its power persist. On 15 May 2011, the famously secure Golan Heights border separating Israel and Syria was breached by Syrian demonstrators. Another incident occurred in June. The decision to tolerate, if not instigate, these events highlights the regime's cynical and destabilising use of the Israel ‘card’ in a failed effort to defuse and deflect popular opposition to the regime itself. More recently, Assad has threatened to attack Israel in the event of external support for an armed insurrection [1].

Syria's internal problems have also had a material effect on Palestinian fortunes. In one instance, Syrian forces targeted a Palestinian refugee camp as part of their counter-revolutionary operations. This event, plus the sharpening of sectarian sentiments, has forced the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Organization (Hamas) to all but close its offices in Damascus.

In a region embroiled in a cascading series of challenges to government authority, the prospect of an effective diplomatic effort to end Israel's occupation and create a Palestinian state at peace with Israel—the foundations of the international consensus—has receded. In place of a conflict between strong states and unchallenged leaders, a complex and often maddening diffusion of power is well under way. This does not increase the prospect of war between Israel and its neighbours, but complicates the chances of a negotiated settlement, particularly during a period when the US and others in the international community have lost any appetite for concerted and energetic diplomacy.

Conclusion

The Arab world is weaker today than at any point in modern history. Its capitals have been sacked or occupied by rivals. Its regimes have been undone by their own excesses and the demands of a revitalised civil society. If the experience of other societies, for example, the demise of the Soviet bloc, offers any insight, the Arab Spring marks the beginning of an extended period of social and governmental dislocation that will reduce the ability of states to establish unified policy priorities and mobilise to implement them.

As the Arab Spring unfolds, the challenge for all parties is to embrace change as it moves societies away from autocracy, regimes of emergency rule and the crushing of civil society towards democracy and the creation of national political and governing institutions that derive their power from their citizens.

Chronic Arab instability offers no solace to Israel and its continuing occupation of Palestinian territories. Even in the best of times, the all-too-evident political shortcomings of Israel and its Arab neighbours failed to end the occupation and create a Palestinian state at peace with Israel. Notwithstanding the tumult in the Arab world, the international community retains a vital interest in resolving the antagonisms posed by the continuing stalemate.