Not 'orange' enough

At a meeting at which Natan Sharansky spoke last night in Ra'anana, which
I helped to organize, he described how the policies of several Israeli
Governments conspired to help bring about the current situation. First, the
US forced Israel to make agreements with the PA, when it was still an Arafat
dictatorship, and they specifically undermined Israel's position by persuading
Israel to "empower" Arafat, and not to do anything to weaken him, while he was
to their knowledge using terrorism against Israeli civilians. They didn't
want him to be weakened in case Hamas took over, but that is precisely what
they got by supporting Arafat and not the small democratic opposition to him.
Sharansky, who is no. 10 on the Likud list, was very critical of Olmert's plan
for the Kadima Government, of phased withdrawals from the West Bank over
the next four years. He said that Hamas won the election in the PA by
claiming that 1,000 Jewish casualties forced Israel to give up Gaza, so that
was a disaster for Israel, and that was why he resigned from the Sharon
Government.
Now Hamas claim that 2-3,000 dead Jews will get them the West Bank, but
they don't even have to do that, because Olmert will give it to them
unilaterally, on a plate. Then they claim that 3-5,000 dead Jews will be
enough to get them Jerusalem and cause the whole Israeli State to collapse
altogether. Make no mistake this is their intended policy.
In a recent article, Sharansky wrote that an election doesn't make a
democracy, and that he had previously proposed a three to five year lag
between starting to develop a democratic system in the PA and any subsequent
election of a Government. His rationale was that the degree of brainwashing
in the PA for support of violence and terrorism to solve their problems
requires time for re-education before any election could be meaningful. But,
there are some who are skeptical that even such a period of re-education and
re-programming could now bring about such a change. The culture of the
Palestinian Arabs is saturated with the idea of "armed struggle" and martyrdom
(shaheed).
Consider the argument used by the two suicide bombers in the film "Paradise
Now," and by the leader of the 7/7 bombers in London, that persuades
them to become murderers of Israelis. The Israelis have tanks, the
Palestinians have no tanks, therefore they have to use their bodies as
weapons. But, this presupposes first that armed struggle is worthwhile and
will gain them something, and second that their deaths will in some way be
meaningful. Whatever happened to dialog, negotiations and compromise as
a means of solving problems. In fact, after killing 1,600 Israelis and losing
ca. 3,500 themselves the Palestinians are no further ahead than they were, in
fact they have gone backward, because Hamas, one of the most dedicated
terrorist organizations, is now in charge of the whole PA. Abbas is not even
a shadow of an opposition to Hamas. So we can expect more of the same, or
worse. There is no way that terrorism can be combined with a peaceful
democratic system in the PA.
Under the circumstances, the outcome of the democratic elections is not likely
to improve anything. Time is simply not the issue, what is needed is a
change of heart. How did things in fact change in authoritarian countries,
ranging from dictatorships, such as the Marcos' Philippines, to the Communist
countries, such as the USSR, Ukraine, etc. What happened is that a large
group of people, not necessarily a majority, put their lives on the line to
demand a change to democracy.
In the Philippines, there was the "people power" movement in which ca. 1
million people stayed in the streets and faced down tanks, until Marcos was
forced to flee the country, and only then could free and fair elections be
held. The same thing happened in Romania, when the Ceaucescus were nabbed
in their flight and executed, and in Russia, when Yeltsin finally used force
to break the control of the Communist forces, and in Ukraine, when a million
people in the "orange revolution" braved intense cold to stay in the streets
and caused the overthrow of the Communist based Government. In perhaps
one of the first such counter-revolutions in modern times, the Polish Army
when ordered to fire on the Solidarity demonstrators refused. This also nearly
happened in China 20 years ago, but the regime there had no qualms about
ordering the so-called "People's Army" to fire on the unarmed demonstrators
in Tiananmen Square, and the Army obeyed.
So this is the lesson, if you want to overthrow a dictatorial regime of any
kind, the first requirement is that there is a large core of dedicated
citizens who are prepared to die to bring about this fundamental change, and
the second requirement is that either the Government decides not to order
the Army to fire on the unarmed demonstrators or the Army refuses to obey
such an unlawful order. This is the lesson of modern times, played out over
and over again around the world.
So what is the problem in the Arab/Muslim world? The fact is that sadly there
is not a solid and large enough core of people who are committed to democracy
and freedom of choice to go out and demonstrate, and they know that the
Armies of the rulers will not hesitate to fire upon them and kill them. I
have to amend this statement somewhat, such a thing is possible, and it
happened recently in Lebanon, where the population were finally incensed by
the assassination by Syrian agents of the very popular former PM Rafik Hariri.
Crowds of people of most ethnic groups challenged the status quo and with
international support, forced the Syrian Government to withdraw its forces
from Lebanon, thus leaving it free to have democratic elections. However,
one must note that this Arab country is the only one with a large Christian
minority, that undoubtedly fueled this reaction. Notably absent from the
anti-Syrian demonstrations were the minority Shi'ites from south Lebanon.
In most Muslim countries, specifically including the PA, the chance of such
an "orange" movement is highly unlikely. There is in addition to the reasons
given above, of insufficient devotees to democracy and tendency to violence
of armed forces, a third reason, the nature of Islamic society that requires
"submission" to the religious/ political authorities, and this militates
against any internal upheaval and overthrow of the prevailing system. So
what is needed is not merely a period of re-education, but a basic change
in culture of the people. Unfortunately in Iraq there is no such large scale
public commitment to democracy, and so the insurgency and sectarianism
are growing.
It is unlikely that we shall see any real internal movement for democracy
anywhere in the Arab world in our lifetimes. Meanwhile women continue
to be second class citizens and almost the whole Arab/Muslim world
remains backward.
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