|
*
The End of an Arab Year: A Country without a President and a
Nation without an Impact
Al-Hayat, UK, December 31,
2007
By Mohammed Salah
The day before
the last of 2007 doesn't seem to be much different from that
same day last year. The same files remained open and
unsolved. The Arab situations are getting worse and thereby
do not call for welcoming the New Year with optimism.
Moreover, it is no longer pessimistic to say that the
situation is prone to deteriorate more on the Arab front in
the year that will begin after tomorrow. In fact, this is a
mere reading of reality. Indubitably, these files will
become more burdensome, as new dilemmas and crises, and may
be disasters, add up to the list. Annapolis conference and
the US vow to proclaim the Palestinian state before the end
of 2008 did not alleviate the prevailing sense that this vow
will not become a reality and this is mere talk, even if the
American President George Bush and his administration are
convinced otherwise.
The days that
preceded the convention and their happenings, the incidents
on the Palestinian scene, and the preoccupation of the Arab
states with internal files that could threaten their regimes
and people at once…All these facts have reinforced the
conviction that the media that usually tracks the events of
every year will report at the end of next year that the
Palestinian file hasn't been solved and that the new US
administration is getting ready in the upcoming year to
review it and prepare the necessary vows for it. The
situation is not much different for the rest of the Arab
files, which are nearly similar. The facts on the ground in
Iraq do not presage an imminent pullout of the US forces
despite the US pledge too.
The situation
in South Sudan and Darfour has probably calmed down as a
result of painkillers but it is prone to flare up once again
next year because the causes of the flare-up are still
reacting. The situation in Somalia doesn't bode well.
The Arab summit
scheduled to take place next March in Damascus will not be
different from all the former summits and it is unlikely
that solutions will be put forth for all the Arab dilemmas.
It is also unlikely that a new era will set off, wherein the
Arabs will be involved in solving their problems, which are
being tackled on the tables of the international
organizations and the great powers.
The year 2007
is leaving the Arabs and the Arab-Palestinian-Israeli
conflict turn into a struggle between two movements on the
Palestinian scene. The New Year is here and Lebanon is
without a President and the Arab nation without an impact.
The rallies and conflicts have cancerated more than one Arab
country. They spread, metastasized, infiltrated, and scoffed
the bodies of Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Sudan, and Somalia.
People grew to have one hope: that the cancer of the
internal Arab conflicts will not scoff another country.
The New Year is
here and most of the other Arab countries are going through
various dilemmas. These range from the decrease in the
standards of living, the deterioration of the economic and
social situations, the flare-up of conflicts between
political and religious elites, all the way to the depletion
of efforts and money on issues that no longer top the
priorities of modern world countries. Between the conflicts
of the Arab regimes among each other and the struggles of
the Arab forces and movements inside a single Arab world,
and the confrontations between government systems and the
political opposition forces, the Arab world is delving into
a war of dilemmas. These will not make the year 2008 any
different. On the contrary, some people's only hope is that
the situation remains the way it is now since the Arabs'
situations in the past decades point out that today is
better than tomorrow, that tomorrow is better than the day
after, and that the present year is much better than next
year. |
