The Arab Spring is better understood as a ‘Second Arab Awakening’ that has the potential to build a political culture and political institutions that promote checks and balances on government power, diversity, toleration, human rights and economic growth, writes Marwan Muasher.
By GLENN C. ALTSCHULERA site hit by what activists said was shelling by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar Assad in the al-Myassar neighborhood of Aleppo this week.(photo credit: REUTERS)
Ignited in December 2010, when a Tunisian man set himself on fire, the Arab Spring spread to more than half a dozen countries in the Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. Writing about it, however, is a perilous undertaking. In each of these countries, and elsewhere in the region, the Arab Spring remains a work in progress, proceeding in fits and starts, with movement sideways and backward as well as forward, and threatening to render a book on the subject out of date as soon as it is published.In The Second Arab Awakening and the Battle for Pluralism, Marwan Muasher – a vice president at the Carnegie Endowment and formerly Jordan’s ambassador to Israel, ambassador to the United States, foreign minister and deputy prime minister – tries to take the long view. Acknowledging that he runs the risk of accusations that his book is based on “a naïve, almost romantic view of an Arab world that does not exist, a mirage in the desert, totally detached from reality,” he argues that with its implication of a rapid transition from autocracy to democracy, the term “Arab Spring” is misleading. The popular protests are better understood as the beginning of a “Second Arab Awakening,” which has the potential – if a “third force” can break through the duopoly of entrenched elites and Islamists – to build a political culture and political institutions that promote checks and balances on government power, diversity, toleration, human rights and economic growth.Even under the most favorable circumstances, Muasher emphasizes, “this profound socio-political process... will take decades to unfold.”The author’s “big picture” analysis is filled with provocative – and controversial – claims. The uprisings, he writes, shattered the myths that peaceful change was not possible in the region; that the term “moderation” should be applied to regimes that support peace with Israel, regardless of their domestic politics; and that any change would inevitably bring radical Islamists to power. Political Islam, Muasher insists, isn’t monolithic. Violent, exclusionist movements are small and have little credibility among Muslims. The moment they enter the political arena, moreover, Islamists begin “losing their aura of holiness” and are judged by people who, in overwhelming percentages, support democracy, women’s rights, and freedom of speech and religion, people who want better lives for themselves and their families.Although the Arab Spring was not directly related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Muasher predicts that elected regimes, more responsive to their publics, will be more aggressively hostile to “the occupation and the settlements” – and less likely to rest content with quiet diplomacy.If Israel really wants peace, he suggests, “rather than unwisely trying to run out the clock on a twostate solution,” it should act now, when “the situation is in flux” – not with incrementalism, but by fundamentally shifting the goal posts.The best starting point, he believes, is the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which former prime minister Ariel Sharon rejected outright.It promised peace with Israel, normalization of relations, security with all Arab states, a mutually acceptable solution to the refugee problem, and an end to all territorial claims, in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines and the creation of a Palestinian state.If coupled with a timeline and arbitration, Muasher maintains, this proposal could meet the needs of both parties.“The key obstacle,” he says, is Israel. The Netanyahu government “appears uninterested in accepting a historic settlement that would end its ideological insistence on keeping the entire land.” Convinced that such an agreement would leave Hamas and Hezbollah without “any reason to exist,” Muasher warns Israel that time is running out. Support for a one-state solution is growing; demographic realities threaten to change the dynamics on the ground; and the international community and the United States might well force Israel to the table in the wake of an intifada that resulted in a significant number of casualties.Muasher understands that “a commitment to pluralism is a prerequisite for sustainable” political change in the region.Without education for pluralism, which at the moment is at the top of the list of failures in virtually every country in the region, he adds, “the hope of a Second Arab Awakening will be lost.”He is right, of course, that because there are no shortcuts to democracy and prosperity and because a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, the sooner reforms begin, the better. Less certain, however, are the implications of the long reform time frame he posits for substantive and sweeping political and economic renewal in the Middle East, and, by implication, for creating the conditions on all sides for a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.Less clear as well is whether, as Muasher devoutly hopes, a third force, willing and able to eliminate exclusionist, absolutist and authoritarian practices, will emerge before it is too late.The writer is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin professor of American studies at Cornell University.
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