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THE ARABS ARE THE MOST WRETCHED PEOPLE IN THE WORLD TODAY, EVEN IF THEY DO NOT REALIZE IT

DO WE NEED to describe the Arab malaise? A few statistics should be enough to convey the seriousness of the impasse in which Arab societies find themselves: chronic rates of illiteracy, inordinate disparities between rich and poor, overpopulation of cities and desertification of land. You might say that this is the shared plight of a large proportion of what used to be called the Third World, and that, in any case, there’s considerably greater poverty on the streets of Calcutta, for instance, or inequality in Rio de Janeiro. No doubt you would be right. Yet there’s more to the Arab malaise than simply persistent under-development, nor is it tied in with social class or even lack of education.

What’s distinctive about the Arab malaise is that it afflicts people who one would imagine would be unaffected by such a crisis, and that it manifests itself more in perceptions and feelings than in statistics, starting with the very widespread and deeply seated feeling that Arabs have no future, no way of improving their condition. Faced with the protean and apparently incurable evil eating away at their world, the only remedy would be individual flight, if such a thing were possible. But the Arab malaise is also inextricably bound up with the gaze of the Western Other – a gaze that prevents everything, even escape. Suspicious and condescending by turns, the Other’s gaze constantly confronts you with your apparently insurmountable condition. It ridicules your powerlessness, foredooms all your hopes, and stops you in your tracks time and again at one or other of the world’s border-crossings. You have to have been the bearer of a passport of a pariah state to know how categorical such a gaze can be. You have to have measured your anxieties against the Other’s certainties – his or her certainties about you – to understand the paralysis it can inflict.

Still, you could conceivably overcome, or even simply ignore, the Western gaze. But how can you avoid returning it, and measuring yourself against its reflection? You don’t have to go so far as to draw a comparison with a West that, while still the dominant global power, is based on a citizenship that is grounded in habeas corpus and human rights, and open enough to question and oppose periodic attempts by the state to control it. Nor need you despairingly contemplate that gulf between a civilization that constantly generates technological revolutions and your world, in which large numbers of people are still living in a preindustrial age, while the elite merely consume the innovations of other societies. More modest comparisons are astonishingly enough – with Asia, for instance, where economic growth has spawned a multitude of’ Tigers’ and ‘Dragons’. Or Latin America where democratic change appears to have acquired an unstoppable momentum. Or even Sub-Saharan Africa where, against all the odds, experiments in democracy coexist with traumatic civil wars. These regions, which until recently seemed to share with the Arab world a common fate of underdevelopment and authoritarian politics, are far from achieving parity with the industrial, democratic North, but they at least offer compensations which militate against despair. Some are making genuine steps towards democracy, others show economic growth or a degree of technological accomplishment that is the envy of Europe, others still are taking the initiative in international affairs – sometimes all of the above at once. By contrast, the Arab world suffers from a thoroughgoing lack of achievement in all these areas.

When you are thrown off course by the Other’s gaze, or by the comparison of yourself to the Other, self-awareness is not a great help. The Arab sense of self has become so undermined that the slightest thing is enough to distort it. In some cases – and this is perhaps the Arab malaise’s cruellest characteristic – one can feel innately deformed, without access or reference to anything outside onself. Admittedly, the deep sense of powerlessness at the malaise’s core seems to be fuelled by unassuaged grief for past splendour. A historical paradigm appears to be invoked: Arabs’ current impotence is all the more painful, the logic seems to be, because they have not always suffered from it; or, more precisely, the Arabs’ malaise stems from their inability to regain the power and global status they once possessed. But unfortunately this doesn’t accurately describe what Arabs feel anymore. Mourning past glories, which played such a part in modern nationalism and liberation movements, has ceased to be a spur to action. The Arab malaise has had such a debilitating effect that Arab history has been entirely hollowed out. What remains is a state of permanent powerlessness that renders any chance of a revival unthinkable.

The Arab people are haunted by a sense of powerlessness; permanently inflamed, it is the badge of their malaise. Powerlessness to be what you think you should be. Powerlessness to act to affirm your existence, even merely theoretically, in the face of the Other who denies your right to exist, despises you and has once again reasserted his domination over you. Powerlessness to suppress the feeling that you are no more than a lowly pawn on the global chessboard even as the game is being played in your backyard. This feeling, it has to be said, has been hard to dispel since the Iraq war, when Arab land once again came under foreign occupation and the era of independence was relegated to a parenthesis.

It’s not important here whether you were for or against the war. For those who were against the American war on nationalist grounds – not to be confused with the millions of people who came out on the streets of Europe and America to publicly reject the United States’ diktat – powerlessness is self-evident. It can be summed up in the simple, yet nonetheless bitter, acknowledgement that there was nothing they or anyone could do to prevent a foreign power – the greatest in human history though it may have been – deploying its troops thousands of miles from its borders to intervene as a policeman in your homeland, and in a matter of weeks put paid to a state that was much feared, at least by its own citizens and neighbours. Further proof of Arab impotence lies in the even more mortifying realization that if any opposition could have delayed the American occupation, it wouldn’t have come from the ‘Arab masses’ but from the international civil society being put in place by the antiglobalization, or alterglobalization, movement, in which Arabs have only a very minor role. And even if the difficulties the American occupation is encountering have rekindled a certain nationalist fervour, those gratified by these 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 ‘total intifada’ on the Palestinians since the great uprising of 1987–89, so that they end up being treated as a people of professional revolutionaries whose courage consoles and cathartically appeases the consciences of those who watch from afar, applauding in front of their TV sets.

But whether Lebanese or Palestinian, resistance serves only to highlight overall Arab powerlessness. The second intifada, which started in September 2000, bears this out day after day. The hold of the concept of ‘total intifada’ is such that any analysis lays one open to accusations of treason. The idealization of resistance per se, based on a misunderstanding of the situation in Lebanon, prohibits any debate on the means that should be employed and so gives precedence to the most spectacular. Even if, like the suicide attacks, they are the most counter-productive. The Islamization of the Palestinian struggle, despite yielding sporadic gains that flatter the Arab public’s wounded pride, hardly arrests feelings of Arab powerlessness or counters the overall impression of general malaise. It has had quite the opposite effect in fact: the blurring of Palestine and Iraq has been of no help to either, and merely swamped the self-image of the Arabs of the Middle East – and the image the world has of them – in a tide of blood.

It has to be said that this powerlessness is not a cause of despair for all Arabs. There is an active, and apparently growing, faction that regards it as a secret cause for exultation, and as legitimizing acts of apocalyptic or at best Samsonian violence. The adherents of radical Islam are not really worried at all, in fact. Even the denunciation of the Western ‘crusade’ has for them the merit of confirming the superiority of the victims; all the latter then have to do is claim their victimhood and thus ascend to paradise.

This religious reflex is itself a sign of the Arab malaise. Of course, considering political Islam as one factor of the Arab impasse may be seen as fanatically secularist. If they have changed, there’s no need to insist on judging the Islamists by their past conduct, and by the fact that they played the Americans’ game, and in Palestine the Israelis’, for far too long. Everyone is entitled to change and one should no doubt concede the possibility that the Islamists’ transformation is permanent and their stand against foreign domination sincere. But this is still not enough to make one accept Islamism as the only possible way. For whether if is or is no longer a foreign agent, Islamism still reinforces the Other. In justifying, or enacting, the clash of civilizations, it gives supporters of the crusade their rationale and enables the West to use all the means afforded it by its technological capabilities to maintain its supremacy over the Arabs, and thereby to perpetuate Arab powerlessness.