The “Arab Spring” began with a popular uprising in Tunisia a year ago, then spread to Egypt, where Hosni Mubarak, quickly abandoned by America, fell after a few weeks of demonstrations in Cairo. From Egypt it moved to oil-rich Libya, where—with the aid of NATO intervention, with Barack Obama “leading from behind”—Ghaddafi was finally overthrown and murdered. In Yemen uprisings ended only last month with the (perhaps) final withdrawal from politics of the long-time strongman, Saleh.
The outcome in Syria, where the rebellion just celebrated its first anniversary, is still in question. There initially peaceful demonstrations, facing ruthless military repression, have become increasingly militarized. In Syria, unlike Libya, the Obama Administration—after first trying to appease the Assad regime—has gone along with the so-called “international community”’s non-intervention policy, which has, perhaps conveniently, used Russian-Chinese UN Security Council opposition as an excuse.
Despite initial American and Western media and diplomatic support for the Arab rebellions, including much “hype” about the imminent birth of liberal democracy in the Arab world (and much gushing about brave young “social media” liberals making a revolution through Facebook and Twitter), the “Arab Spring” has in fact everywhere failed, proving, in the process, to be a destabilizing agent.
In Tunisia, where elections have returned the formerly restricted Al-Nadha Islamist party, youth unemployment has risen, and sporadic rioting is again breaking out. In Libya, various tribal-based regional militias vie for power, Islamists connected to al-Qaeda are increasingly powerful, and even the UN’s farcical Human Rights Council has been forced to denounce the widespread torture of dissidents and prisoners.
In Egypt, the brief euphoria of Tahrir Square has been replaced by the overwhelming electoral victory of Islamist parties (the once-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, 45%, ultra-Islamist Salafists [Al Nour] 25%), with the “Facebook” young liberals polling under 2%). Functionally, SCAF, the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, the army, remains in power (as it has been since the Colonels’ Revolt against the monarchy 60 years ago culminated in Gamal Abdel Nasser’s dictatorship).
The political chaos and emerging Islamist ascendancy has witnessed a rising tempo of brutal attacks on the Coptic Christian community and a steady stream of Christian emigration. Other consequences include the destruction of the Israeli embassy in Cairo; repeated attacks on the Sinai gas pipeline to Israel; and the dismantling of the formerly closed Gaza border (where Hamas is, in fact, an extension of the Moslem Brotherhood). Clearly, the elected Prime Minister, due by the end of this June, will be an Islamist who may well make good on his party’s already-proclaimed determination to break the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
In Syria, the revolt pits the Sunni majority, supported by Kurds and other minorities, against the minority-Alawite-based dictatorial regime of the Assads. Assad to date retains the support of his main backer, Shiite Iran, and of its traditional ally (and arms-supplier) Russia. But major Sunni (and anti-Shiite Iran) powers like Saudi Arabia, Qattar, and Turkey are supporting the rebellion, with the Sunni Arabs in recent days calling for armed intervention against Damascus.
Wherever the “Arab Spring” rebellions have not succeeded, increased instability has been avoided: Monarchical Saudi Arabia itself is an example which, save for minor trouble in its Eastern Shiite-majority region, has escaped turbulence entirely. The conservative Sunni monarchy in Bahrain (which—with Saudi military support—disregarded American pressure to negotiate with Shiite rebels) remains on its feet; so too the relatively popular King of Morocco, who anticipated and outflanked resistance by issuing modest reforms.
And Algeria, where the military dictatorship had much earlier blocked Islamist groups from using democratic elections to seize power, remains in power (though a new set of elections there looms).
Lebanon is a special case: there the Shiite Hezbollah terrorists, who with Syrian backing (and American and French “neutrality”) had effectively become predominant in parliament, now face the potential loss of Iranian-supplied and Damascus-transmitted money and arms, and the revival of the Sunni/Druse movement. The Iranian-backed Hamas in Gaza is similarly weakened as Syria totters, which may explain splits in the leadership, a new orientation towards Egypt, and moves there to reunite with Abbas and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
The consequences of these shifts for Israel are both negative, and positive.
First, the negative: Generally, where the rebellions have succeeded, they are replacing relatively stable authoritarian regimes—like Mubarak’s, or Ghaddafi’s, or whomever succeeds Assad in Syria, or Saleh’s in Yemen—with unstable Islamist populist governments. Emerging on the basis of ”one election, once”, the new Islamist regimes are far more likely to reflect, and to implement, mass anti-Israel sentiment. And these regimes (e.g., Yemen, and currently the Sunni resistance in Syria) can be more easily penetrated by al-Qaeda, which despite Bin Laden’s killing is far from destroyed.
Insofar as Israel’s security is concerned, Egypt, the leading, and largest, Arab state, with its modernized, American-supplied and -trained army and air-force, is most worrisome. (Also, note the ongoing conflict over arrests of the American staff of democratic-reform groups in Cairo, with the new Islamist Parliament’s call to refuse renewal of the US’ $1.3 billion annual aid package)
Similarly worrisome is the realization that if Sunni Islamists—who may be close to Al-Qaeda—come to power in Syria, they will have access to Damascus’ huge chemical and germ-warfare weapons and advanced missile stockpile.
(N.B.: The current situation of course also affects the so-called “peace process”, already largely dead as a result of Palestinian intransigence. While no popular Islamist rebellion has yet broken out either in the Palestinian Authority-administered territory or in Gaza, if Egypt reneges on the 1979 land-for-peace treaty, while holding on to the land, the Sinai, it further weakens any peace-process with the Palestinians. It does so by clearly showing the danger, indeed, the foolishness, of exchanging real assets—strategically important parts of Judea, Samaria, and perhaps even Jerusalem—for pieces of paper with unstable, radical Arab regimes, including the internally-divided Palestinian movement.)
But there are, nevertheless, important positive aspects as well: The failed ‘Arab Spring’ rebellions, producing prolonged socio-economic and political instability in the respective Arab-Muslim regimes, can mean a turning-inward, away from a focus on Israel, as well as a possible externalization, or aggressive blaming of Israel for their problems.
Here, the key reality is Islamicization, the coming-to-power of backward religious parties; functionally, this means a weakening, an end to whatever modernization, or hope of political and economic progress and liberalization (extension of human rights) there may have been. The Arab world, from the nineteenth century, has been through successive periods of British- and French-backed monarchical-colonial development, Arab nationalism, Arab socialism, American-backed authoritarian liberalism, etc…
Today, the triumph of radical Islamism is a last gasp, a final desperate attempt to remake Arab-Muslim society, one which may witness the implosion of these artificial, Western-imposed state-structures. Instead, Islamist hegemony may well mean their devolution into local and regional tribal structures and into chaotic internal socio-economic and political struggles. Quite possibly, this can result in their disaggregation and descent into atavistic, inward-looking, pre-modern socio-political somnolence.
On balance, such incompetent governance, economic depression, and internal political division would seem more probable than any sustained resumption of the war against the Jewish state. Hence, the failed Arab Spring, however violent its ideological anti-Israelism, probably means a mid- to long-term lessening of the actual threat to Israel. But before we heave a sigh of (relative) relief, we must never forget the one truly clear and overarching existential threat facing Israel today, genocidal Iran’s imminent nuclear empowerment.
(Prof. Frederick Krantz is Director of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research,
and editor of its Daily Briefing, ISRAFAX, and CIJR Blog publications.)
