The first drafts of the Tunisian Constitution are published these days. The preamble of the Constitution now mentions the Tunisian support for the Palestinian cause “above any other cause”. In my opinion, this is not appropriate at all, for the following reasons:
the only countries that mention another country in their Constitution are colonies mentionning the “mother land”. And those countries had their colonizers in their constitution only because they were forced to. Besides this case, it’s a unique example of a free country listing another country’s cause as the cause “above any other”, meaning above national interests. Why is a Tunisian cause less important to Tunisia than a foreign cause?
Tunisian first constitution ran for 98years, the second one for about 55years. Writing down support for Palestinian cause in the third constitution of the country means it is here to stay: indeed, what would be the point of Palestinian cause in our Constitution the day Palestine is liberated? In other words, Tunisian deputees put Palestine in the Constitution because they think that in the long term it will not be free; and if they think it, its simply because its not in their interest for it to be a free country. Simple: if Palestinian cause doesn’t exist anymore, how will demagocic governments of MENA region excite the feelings of their people and bring them away from their own problems? Arab dictatorships always used the rethorics of Palestinian cause while secretly helping Israel to root in the region: secret business deals, bad treatment of Palestinian refugees, etc. We made a revolution for our rulers to stop selling us metaphysical ideologies while working for our loss. At the very least, if Tunisia really wants to help Palestine they should start by believing there exists a solution for the crisis to end within the next few years.
As much as I care for Palestinian cause, I can’t accept the fact that because it’s an “Arab” cause it is above any other. It would simply mean that support goes with ethnicity not with justice. In many places in the world people experience situations at least as horrible as Palestinians, and sometimes much worse. Dying of hunger in Somalia or killed by a Taliban in Afghanistan or a Jenjaweed in Darfour is nor less important nor less painful. By favoring Palestinian cause, Tunisia would send the message that not all victims are equal.
Tunisia has a long History for supporting Palestine (Souha Arafat wife of the late leader Yasser Arafat has even obtained in the past a Tunisian citizenship!), it certainly does not need to write it down in its constitution for Tunisians to feel concerned by the fate of Palestinians.
One year ago, Tunisians were ousting Ben Ali. The last 12months were full of events, protests, hopes and fears. The people had to fight to not see their revolution stolen from them; they are still fighting. We voted; we were happy or disappointed with the results, and then with the first actions of the new interim government and the new president. Our newly free medias informed, misinformed, published opinions and caricatures, learnt the first lessons of the civil responsability of journalists. We blogged, we protested, we shouted. And one year later, Tunisia is still in love with freedom.
And all is still to do. Unemployment, poverty, exclusion of rural regions, weak economy, corruption, new constitution, transparency. Many are the challenges we have to take up to make of this country a country for Human Rights, equality for all, exlcusion for nobody. And because we saw things coming out from our country that we never even dreamt of, we know we will make a reality of all the hopes we have for Tunisia.
Almost one year after the dramatic immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi, Tunisia makes once again History, by appointing Moncef Marzouki as president. Elected by the Constitutive Assembly to be the transitionnal leader of Tunisia, he is a doctor and life long human rights activist, intellectual (not less than 20 published books on medical ethics, public health, human rights and political analysis of the Arab world), exiled in France for the last 10 years; we couldn’t imagine a more suitable person for a president. He highly contrasts with the rest of Arab leaders, and represents the standards we will ask for not only for our nation but for the whole MENA region.
The first speech of President Marzouki was beautiful, and as a Tunisian I was touched to see my president crying when he mentionned the martyrs of the revolution and praying for the Libyans, Syrians, Yemenis and Palestinians. I was also happy to see him wearing a burnous, the traditionnal Tunisian cloak, symbolizing in a simple and beautiful way our North African identity.
Today, like many Tunisians I am optimistic for my country. I think we are going the right way. We still have a lot of hard work to do, especially regarding the economical and labour market reforms; may the future be bright and brighter for Tunisia.
Today is a bright day for our beloved Tunisia. Today we show the world, and most important we show to ourselves, that we are free people. Our voting card is our weapon to defend ou freedom. Whatever the result will be, the victory for Tunisia would have been to organize fair, free and organized elections only 9 months after the end of a dictatoship. Tunisians are massicerly participating: the waiting queues are reported to be sometimes 200meters long and the ewaiting time sometimes near to 2hours.
As an expat, I voted in Geneva, in the Hotel Warwick. We were given clear instructions and besides the organizing staff there was extenal observers and I could count not less than five acredicted oubservers in the room.
On the technical side, after droping the ballot in the box, we had to soak a finger in a little bottle containing blue ink. The pictures of Tunisian citizens proudly showing their blue finger to the camera are flourishing by hundreds on the internet. Of course, I will not resist to the pleasure to show you mine as well.
Samir Feriani is a policeman that got arrested after he published in a newspaper names of people holding key positions in the Interior Ministry involved in the shooting of peaceful protestors during the Tunisian revolution. After a trial, he was released last week. His release was seen by the optimists as a victory for the Revolution, the others say that his arrest, regardless of the result of the trial, was already a failure in itself for the justice of a country that aims to be democratic.
Kamel Morjane is the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, currently involved in the scandal of the 3 years diplomatic passeports issued to Ben Ali and his family on January 16th, two days after they fled to Saudi Arabia. He held a press conference where he explained that in his point of view, he just followed the law. The passeports were cancelled since, but the exact extent of Kamel Morjane is still unclear. He runs with his party ‘Al Mobadara’ for the coming elections, although he was a member of the Ben Ali government.Many disapprove the fact that a former Ben Ali minister, although apparently not involved in criminal affairs during or before the Revolution, can still participate to the political life of Tunisia.
Samir Feriani and Kamel Morjane represent well this strange transitional period in Tunisia; they remind us Revolution is a continuous struggle. The remnants of the old regime still have a strong hold on the affairs of the state, strong enough to interfere with justice in particular. Not that the Revolution ‘failed’, like we hear sometimes; cleaning a rusty machine takes time, and the improvements are already beyond the reasonable predictions that were made at the beginning of the transitional period. But still a lot has to be done that can’t be delayed anymore. In particular, justice has to be reminded to its primary function. In the country dozens of the former regime heads like Morjane are moving freely, unworried, while thousands of simple citizens like Feriani are still under the threat of trials, harrassment or other means of pressure when they use their right to disagree.
To push reforms forward, let’s use our deadliest weapons: our pens and our voting cards.
Tunisians united to oust a dictator: because a whole people wanted their freedom; they wanted to have their right to speak and chose their rulers, the right to live decently and the right to not live with constant fear. So was the Jasmine Revolution of January 14. It is then with much enthusiasm that hundreds of political parties, syndicates and associations were created. It is for building the new country, with a constitution shaped just like its population, that were announced the elections for the constitutive assembly. Many times postponed, due to the difficulties encountered by the transitionnal government to solve the slightest issue regarding to the reforms to lead, and due to the new political game involving the members of the former system, the historical opponents of the regime and the protestors and newcomer in politics afraid to see the revolution fail to fulfil its goal. Finally, the elections are to be hold on October 23rd.
The ISIE (Instance Supérieure Indépendante pour les Elections), managed by Kamel Jendoubi, is monitoring the elections to ensure a fair and transparent process, for the first ever free elections taking place in the History of Tunisia. The ISIE launched a few weeks ago a massive campaign to encourage Tunisians to get registred for the elections. Indeed, until now in Tunisia, the citizens were automatically receiving their voter’s card. The new system asks for potential electors to register in town halls and embassies in a period of time going from July 11th to August 2nd.
The ISIE were providing continuously estimates of the number of registration. Since the very first days, Tunisians did not seem to rush to get registres; the number were low. Less than 2% of Tunisian potential electors registred after the first week, about 25% at the end of the registration period. The ISIE decided to extend for two more weeks the registration period. Disappointing: Tunisians do not seem at all interested in voting.
How come a people that mobilized to topple a regime is indifferent to voting, one of the basic rights they asked for and fought for? Many explanations were given:
the lack of a “democratic culture”: full generations of Tunisians were never part of their own political system; they never were but spectators to this comedy the old regime was calling “democracy”, knowing what horrible truth lies behind the words. The idea of voting with effective result might be too new to most of the people to take the initiative to register and to chose a candidate. They might actually have made a choice but not dare to make it, fearing the reaction of the rulers, or maybe they do not get that their voice really make a difference.
the confusion with the old system: the old system did not require registering, thus a large part of Tunisians are not aware that registration is a necessery step.
the contradictory ISIE guidelines: dates change following you consult one source or the other, required documents to bring change, unclear specifications, etc. Tunisians, whose a great part never voted in their entire life, whose a substantial part is illetrate or two poor to be wired 24/7 for new updates may feel totally lost.
the contestation: the political game opposing the parties (PDP, enNahdha, etc), where every political leader tries to make coalitions to bring down others, where attacks and rumors hit every side, gives maybe the feeling to the Tunisian population that politicians do not have the interest of the people set as a priority, therefore incitating them to “boycott” the elections. The brutality with which the police breaks sit-ins and protests and the extent of the emergency state might well also contribute in unsecuring the citizen: why would they vote for building a new authoritarian state? Indeed, many of Tunisians often say that since the revolution “nothing has changed“.
Like in most complex situations, the answer is certainly made of all these different explanations. But there is still a last one has – sadly – to consider: maybe, Tunisians do not register, simply because they do not care about voting. The idea in itself seems a bit odd: why did they do a revolution in the first place if they did not care? Well, first, it does not take more than some part (say, 10 or 20%) of a population to carry on a revolution.This does not mean that the rest of the population do not agree with the idea of a revolution, but that they are not active in the process: they follow it, but from far. Then, given the fact that an authoritarian state cannot survive for 23years without not only by scaring the population, but also by growing in them the uninterest for political matters, a good proportion of the Tunisian population was always very indifferent to politics.
The propaganda is more than convincing about some one-sided truth, it is also about telling “take care of your own business, and we take care of our own“. In such a case, the whole background of the mediatic culture, of the society, of the teaching in schools can evolve into directing people to get interested and focused on secondary matters: consumerism, for example. People died to bring us the right to vote, but what can you do, voting is definetly not as funny as going to shopping, gossiping or watching sports on TV. From my personnal experience, sadly, I have to say that many of our compatriots fall in that category of citizens that have closed their sight to the very idea of participative citizenship. I think that getting rid of this mentality is the biggest challenge of the Revolution: and it will certainly not be achieved by the upcoming elections. If half of the generation of our children are educated to participative citizenship, it will already be an outstanding victory for Tunisia.
The Revolution was never finished on February 11th: Egypt is in a continuous revolutionary state since then. So many has to be done, and it is not the new constitution or the first trials of Mubarak ministers that will end this. Now Egyptians are facing a new challenge: the Supreme Council of Armed Forces of Egypt (SCAF) that is ensuring the management of Egypt during this period of transition, is going too far beyond its duties. Arbitrary detention of activists, unability to secure the country, lack of concrete decisions for Egyptians standard of life. And many more. On May 27th, Egyptians are back in the streets, in Tahrir Square and on other squares all over the country, to ask to the SCAF to meet the duties the people entrusted them with.
Here are some of the demands of the Egyptians, like very well discribed here:
Setting up a minimum wage for workers in public sector as well as in private sector. Only a decent living for all can make of Egypt the land of free Egyptians.
End of military trials, back to civil justice, end of emergency law. The psychological and physical intimidation of activists must end. When protestors are arrested and “kindly” told that they are contributing in unstabilizing the country, they are not doing anything different than what was under the old regime.
Transparency in the affairs of the State. It is not a few trials of some personnalities that are going to end the whole systemic corruption. Concrete measures have to be taken to ensure a corruption-free and transparent state.
Getting back the police in the streets to secure the country. Police is extremely absent from the streets since the Revolution. The army arrests activists and brings them to military trial, but who arrests thiefs, rapists and thugs?
Dismantling the extremists groups. Like we saw with Embaba violent confrontation of Muslims and Christians, the SCAF puts very few effort to identify the extremists among the two communities. How can SCAF let a violent escalade happen in Embaba without intervening, and on the other side the same SCAF violently repress a protest in front of the Israeli Embassy where nobody’s life was ever threatened?
Compensation for victims and family of victims of the January 25th Revolution.
None of the Egyptians ignore that we are living a crucial and difficult phase of the revolutionnary process. We know and understand that the SCAF task is not only critical but also essential. The SCAF and the people must cooperate to achieve the goals of the Revolution, but Egyptians cannot let the SCAF take too much power. Egypt will never be a military dictatorship hidden behind a superficial democracy like Turkey, where one can vote but where one can be thrown 10 years in jail if one speaks in kurdish in the Parliament or mentions the Armenian genocide. And when the people sees Egypt’s SCAF taking the same kind of path that Turkey’s, they say NO.
After Jan25, May27 revolution is our new grant for freedom!
The communication with the Arab and/or Muslim World looks like being a conundrum for the Western World. The way George W. Bush adressed some issues related to the Arabs/Muslims is maybe the perfect example on what to not say to them. Obama speeches were always clean of the obvious mistakes of his predecessors and this 2011 speech on the Middle-East was even cleaner. The 2009 Cairo speech was actually so brillantly written that it really raised hopes in the Middle-East for a change. But alas, from 2009 to 2011, these high expectations were disappointed, not only because of Iraq and Afghanistan wars or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also because of the attitude towards the Arab dictators facing street protests: the support to the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt came too late, only when it was clear to the US that they can dump their dear allies (Mubarak, Ben Ali, Gaddafi,…) because they were already almost toppled.
Thus, it is in this mindframe of scepticism that most of us, Arabs, listened to this Middle-East Speech. We kind of all had our “checklist”: some were waiting how Obama will mention Bahrain, some others how is he to address about Israel and Palestine, etc. None of us was really waiting for anything interesting and special to be said, most of us were just looking for a renewed confirmation of a new form of the good old hypocrisy: same old routine, only covered with more elegant words than his predecessors would have used.
What I was personnally interested in was in fact the difference between the Cairo speech of 2009 and this speech of 2011 on Middle-East, not in terms of the content itself, but in terms of the form, the strategy of communication. Although the latter was pronounced from the White House, it is quite obvious that it was prepared with the intention to address to the Arab World. The decision to not hold this speech in front of an Arab audiance in an Arab country proves there is a hesitation to face directly Arabs, as there is no certainty on the welcoming it would have had (after all Clinton was boycotted in Egypt by youth and hooted by Tunisians to the point she had to cancell her speach in Tunis). As the changes go in the North African and Middle Eastern region, the”West” adapts its communication.They are totally aware the Arab revolutions were the occasion of multiple failures in communication and decisions, and that this caused a great damage on the trust the Arab and Muslim World have on them. Not only they want to restore that trust (surprisingly they seem to think that regaining it needs only to adapt the way of speaking, instead of admitting it needs a complete change of policy, what will apparently never happen), but also they are in high need of understanding the new Arab references.
The main differences between the two speeches are:
The Storytelling: in Obama 2009 speech, there were very few of the “storytelling” US rethoric is normally full of (emphazing arguments with an example of a person’s life story), besides the very brief mention to his own story linking him to Africa, while in the 2011 Speech, many mentions were done: Rosa Parks, Muhammad Bouazizi, Wael Ghonim (indirectly, by mentionning his position at Google), some Israeli father whose son was killed by Hamas starting a peace NGO. The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions certainly made realize to Obama, Clinton and their team how important will be now the ordinary people of the Arab World. Instead of talking about elites, refering to great places or figures of History, the ‘normal’ people (including women) that achieved great things with almost nothing were mentioned. The storytelling, that ensured Ronald Reagan with a great popularity in his country as a president and was so to say the standard of communication of George W. Bush (and Nicolas Sarkozy), is a very classical technique to reach the very general audiances: (over)simplifying in talking with images instead of building a consistant chain of arguments.
Erasing American references: only with the “told stories” one can see that they refer all but one (Rosa Parks) to Arabs. But the shift goes beyond this. In 2009 speech, there was a point about stressing on the fact that Islam was part of American History, about the fight for civic rights of African Americans, about the Cold War, etc, while in 2011 speech the direct references to American History are completely erased (except for the reference to the American Revolution where Patriots refused to pay taxes to a king). Even the cited locations were chosen to fit to the Arab perspective (Cairo, Benghazi, Sanaa). In two words, we are moving here from speeches where we talk about “American values to export” to speeches where we talk about “universal values”, that happen to be shared by America as well as by other parts of the world, worth fighting for, although America didn’t create these values. US want to give a more “modest” image of themselves, they don’t anymore commit the mistake to pretend they are bringing democracy/peace/hope as global leader (although Hillary Clinton in the few words preceding Obama speech expressed her views about the need of an American strong “leadership”). On the contrary they emphazise on the fact that these values are wanted and activelly won by the Arabs themselves. Americans want now to endorse the more “neutral” role (in surface only of course) of those who will just propose help (economical, G20, technological, etc) and let free the Arabs to decide if they want that help or not (of course it is just a very hypocrit way of presenting things).
Avoiding religious references: of course, 2009 was technically a speech to the Muslim World, while 2011 is a speech on the Middle-East, but no one will deny how much entangled are Middle-East and Islam. 2009 was not only refering to Al-Azhar, the Quran or Obama’s own Christianity, it was also speaking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of Jews and Shoah, Muslims and Christians. In the 2011 speech, he prefered to talk Israel-Palestine in terms of frontiers, security and official mutual recognition, Bahrain in terms of Iranian strategic political interest, and Arab revolutions in general in mentionning freedom, economy, technology, information. The only explicit references were made were the “region that was the birthplace of three world religions” and the Muslim/Copt violence in Egypt and the offered solution to take the Iraqi “multi-ethnic multi-sectarian democracy” as an example (what a strange idea by the way to take this as an example). In erasing the reference to religion and particularely to Islam, it is quite clear that the United States want to enter in a new phase of their relation with Arabs where they can close the Islamism/extremism/Al-Qaeda chapter. In a way, by saying that Al-Qaeda was against democracy, that it lost its revelancy in the region, that more has been done in six months of civil unrest than in decades by terrorists, but also by not referring to the recent choice of a new head for Al-Qaeda and denying the Ossama Ben Laden’s posthume message praising Arab revolutions, US call for having the right to “move to something else”: US wants to make known that they want to make politics, business (a lot of business in fact), partnerships; they don’t want anymore to be seen as the oppressor of Muslims around the World. As if there was any chance that Arabs could forget the military support of Israel anyway (clearly mentionned in the 2011 speech).
Adopting Arabic rethoric: the only concession done to arabic language in 2009 speech was the opening “Salam Aleikom“. In 2011, there is a will to “speak the way Arabs speak”. Some linguistic specifities of the Arabic language are adopted. For example, the repetition of terms, very classic in arabic, but avoided as much as possible in english is clear in a sentence like “Square by square, town by town, country by country” (unfortunately for Obama, his advisors do not seem to have noticed the similarity that each Arab will notice with Gaddafi murderous speech “Zenga zenga, bit bit, dar dar“, meaning “street by street, house by house, room by room“). Another flagrant example is the sentence (actually the answer to the non-asked question) where he says: “Bin Laden was no martyr“, the word martyr being extremely often used not only in Islamic lexical field, but also in general Arab’s (for example, the people killed on Tahrir Square, regardless of their religion, are referred as martyrs by Egyptians), while it is totally absent from previous American official speeches. Adapting arabic rethoric is a way of looking “more familiar”, or “more comprehensive”.
I see the 2011 speech on the Middle-East as being a “grammatical contortion”: US diplomacy makes moves that are unnatural to them, not because they are taking a new orientation with us, Arabs, but because they think that if they want to continue to pursue the goals they always pursued in the region (oil, Israel and capitalism), they just have to make it a bit more subtly. With this Obama speech we officially entered in the era where the United States understand Arabs are not just parameters to adjust and fine tune, but a whole part of the world with 400 million people with real personal expectations and real intention to be sovereign. Let’s be clear: that’s only plastic surgery. If there was any real consideration to Arab aspirations, a word would have been adressed to the aspirations of the people living in the most repressive country of the region governed by a medieval feodal system, Saudi Arabia, and more firm positions would have been taken to condemn what happens in Syria and Bahrain.
Mimmicking our way of building sentences and arguments and using our own references is not enough and will never be; in fact it is even almost a bad idea from an American perspective for it makes it even easier for us to detect where exactly there is hypocrisy,emptiness or offense. It is as if President Obama tried to cook for us a couscous or any other Arab dish and really thought we won’t be able to make the difference with our own cooking. The thing is, sadly for Americans and luckily for Arabs, very, very few of us were fooled by this new way of addressing us.
The following text was written for the petition I lauched for asking to the High Council of Armed Forces of Egypt to reconsider their decision of deniying the right to vote for Egyptians living abroad. If you are an Egyptian living abroad and feel concerned about the denial of your rights, feel free to sign the petition here and share it with your contacts.
Indeed, The Egypt’s Military Council, in charge of leading the country since February 11th 2011 after putting an end to 30 years of Mubarak’s autocratic regime, decided to deprive Egyptians abroad from their right to vote. The Egyptian diaspora represents 4 million people living in 139 countries. Their rights as citizens were denied to them for the very arbitrary reason of the possibility of their votes being “sold” to non-Egyptian interests. The Egyptian diaspora is fully part of Egypt, and the Egyptians living abroad are therefore asking for their rights as citizen to be respected.
To: the High Council of the Armed Forces of Egypt
We, Egyptians living abroad, consider ourselves as fully Egyptians.Our reasons for migration are very different from one person to another, and very few of us consider living outside of Egypt as a deep aspiration. For many of us, it was merely a necessity: some had to migrate to look for a better living, sometimes being simply denied the opportunity to live decently in Egypt under the 30 years of autocratic regime, some others were forced to look for a safe place for they were haunted for their subversive opinions, some even work from abroad for the improvement of their country of origin (in International Organizations for example), some were also born abroad from Egyptian parents. What we have all in common is our love for Egypt and our concern for the future of our country.
We consider the denial made to our right to vote, based on the enventuality that our votes might well be “bought” by foreign interests is not only discriminatory towards us, but is also against the principles of the New Egypt we all wish to see blossoming. Besides being based on an unjustified and subjective preconception, it also sends a strong message to Egyptians living abroad: “You are unworthy to Egypt”.
We are aware of the technical difficulty to coordinate polling stations in 139 countries, but we don’t consider it as a reason for the denial of our rights as citizens. Not only many countries offer to their diaspora the possibility to vote, thus proving it is possible, but also this would mean that a minor technical constraint is stronger than our noble principles of freedom, democracy and unity.
We urge the Marshal Mohammed Tantawi, Chairman of the High Council of Armed Forces of Egypt to consider our determination to participate to the political life of our country and to give us our right to vote, regardless of our country of residence.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.
When I try to go back to my childhood memories, it seems to me that although I am Egyptian-Tunisian, I knew about Yasser Arafat much long before than about, say, Habib Bourguiba or Jamal Abdel Nasser. It is not even very surprising when you think of it, there is not one single thing in the world that unites Arabs (people, not elites) like the idea of that free country that once was, called Palestine. The Palestinian cause is kind of transcending our frontiers (in Arab countries and inside the diaspora); most of us felt emotionnaly and intellectually implicated in the Intifadas even before thinking of our own national causes.
One of the very common frustration of the Arab citizen we are is to be forced to see our own countries ruled by dictators all more or less openly collaborating with Israel – the oppressor of the Palestinian people. The corrupted elites of the Middle-East and North Africa allowed Israel to benefit of an auspicious neighbourhood to prosper while they benefited in return of exclusive and lucrative business opportunities or technical support by the Mossad. Each of us pronounced at least once the simple sentence “El Hokam al-Arab ahanoona” (“The Arab rulers humiliated us”), and each of us knew the supreme humiliation was always to watch, helpless, the Israeli giant killing day by day men, women, children, freedom and hope (supported and sponsorised by “Mama Amerika“). The one and only time of my entire life – more than 29 years now – that I cursed myself for being Egyptian was when, during the Gaza attack on civilians of 2009 by the Israeli army, Egypt (well… Egyptian officials driven by an American agenda) blocked the tunnels linking Sinaï to Gaza strip used for food and weapon supplies; the tears of shame were bitter.
When the current wave of popular freedom began to shake the Arab world, and especially when Egypt was freed from the Mubarak oligarchy, one of my very first thoughts went to Palestine: now that we are not forced anymore to watch our elites making of the 85 million of us passive accomplices of the Israeli savage repression on Palestinians and the denial of their humanity, will Israel be weakened and will it change something for the Palestinians? Will Israel consider in making steps towards an acceptable treatment of Palestinian revendications?
A couple of days after the February 11th, I saw an amazing video on youtube of 3 million Egyptians gathered on Tahrir Square chanting “Al Quds (Jerusalem) we are coming!“. The video of a peaceful crowd claiming their solidarity for Palestine don’t even need any comment or explanation to be powerful:
The protests in Egypt in front of Israeli Embassy became frequent, and the growing feeling is that there is no space anymore for the impunity of Israel. That’s from the people’s side, but what from the new Egyptian authorities? Well, we have only a transitory government, but it seems that it took the full measure of the popular demand on the deals of Egypt with Israel. The first relevant fact was when the government announced that the gas supply to Israel with an underestimated price will be revised. Egypt supplies almost for free 40% of the gas Israel uses and the pipeline bringing the gas to Israel and Jordan is often targeted by vandalism. On the night of April 27th, the pipeline was damaged once again, and the gas supply had to be interrupted, causing Israel to begin to consider the need of self-sufficiency, if in the future they have to forget about the Egyptian gas. The news was very favorably welcomed by most of the Egyptians.
Another significant fact we lately came aware of is that the significant entrave the Mubarak regime was opposing to arms supply to the Gaza strip will be now much reduced. On April 5th Israel has to hit with a missile a car in Sudan, killing two men implicated in Hamas military operations, one of them presumed to be successor of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, assasinated by Israel in Dubai last year. Apparently, Sudan gets weapons from Iran that are then carried through Egypt and then through Gaza tunnels, for Iran supports actively Hamas. Without a tightly collaborating Egyptian government there is very few chance Israel can controll the weapons flux incoming to Gaza strip, and ensuring collaboration of the democratically elected Egyptian government would require Israel to stop the abuses on the Palestinian population.
Besides Egypt, the Arab turmoil is causing trouble to Israel alliances with Arab elites in more than one way. The ousted Tunisian dictator Ben Ali and his clan were closely collaborating with Israel: the Mossad was well implanted in Tunisia where they provided a logistic and technical support to repression. The Tunisian crowd found many catridges stamped “Made in Israel” on the material used by Tunisian security forces. For example on this video, a Tunisian man in the city of Ariana finds a lot of bullets where we see hebrew writings:
The implication of Israel in repression in Tunisia was also clearly documented in the documentary “Soqot Dawlat al Fassad” (“The downfall of the corrupted regime”) broadcasted on Tunisian National TV Al Wataniya we can still watch on their website (especially starting from 15:00), including a new eclairage on the Djerba synagogue bomb attack, attributed to Islamists but apparently being the product of a cooperation of Tunisian authorities with Israeli Intelligence. Under Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia was a strong ally to the Palestinian Authority; Yasser Arafat long beneficiated from the support of Tunisia to the Palestinian cause and his wife, Soha Arafat, was holding until 2007 the Tunisian citizenship, before Ben Ali withdrawed it from her and urged her to quit Tunisian territory following an argument with Leïla Ben Ali. The ousting of Ben Ali might well be the end of the tolerance of Tunisia towards Israel. After the Revolution, Israel offered financial incentives for the return to Israel of the Jewish community in Tunisia, causing displeasure to the transitory Tunisian government, that argues that the Tunisian Jews were peacefully living in Tunisia since centuries.
Concerning the other Arabic States, although the outcome is not yet clearly known, some indications allow to conclude that Israel cooperations with tyrants might well be lost. For example, the trade that was ongoing between the Gaddafi family and Israel, providing Libyan oil in exchange of Israeli tanks and other weapons (among which forbidden weapons currently used to mass murder Libyan population) might well to be stopped forever, given the close evolution of the Libyan conflict.
Since the unrest began to shake Bashar Al Assad regime in Syria and a few signs of a possible propagation in Jordan, Israel’s most faithfull ally in the region, it seems that once for all, Israel entered in the phase of isolation in the Middle-East. If the people take power in the immediate and close neighbourhood of Israel, it might well that the Zionist State is no more given the choice: treat correctly the Palestinian, respect their right to have an Independant State, stop their crimes against humanity, or face the massive and strong opposition of Arab States, ruled by elected governments that are under the accountability of the people.The growing unpopularity inside the Arab region of the American foreign policy (to a point that Hillary Clinton visit in Egypt and Tunisia was troubled by massive protests) and the unpopularity of American-sided candidates like Mohammad Al Baradei or Amr Moussa makes it highly improbable that Israel will ever find again within the region allies like Ben Ali, Mubarak or Gaddafi.
There was a myth not so long ago: an imaginary tale consisting of depicting Israel as being the “only democracy in the Middle-East”. Besides the fact that brutality and apartheid automatically suppresses the credibility of a country self-proclamed democratic (voting is not the only right and due of a democraty), we might well have to tell the opposite tale in a couple of years: Israel, the only dictatorship left in the Middle-East, forced to justice or to disparition.
