Guest Post: Who's Your Enemy

Who's Your Enemy?

by Iyas Sartawi

I can't explain the feelings that I had once I heard the news on the morning of Friday, February the 11th. I was woken up at exactly nine in the morning by a text message that said, "Mabrouk Egypt! Mabrouk Arab Nation." By that text, I found out that "president Mubarak" resigned - finally. I didn't have my glasses on so I jumped out of my bed, put my glasses on and reread the message. I hurried down and read the news on Aljazeera, and that's when all those feelings of joy, happiness, and triumph intensified and I could not help but drop a couple of tears. I put Aljazeera Live on and started watching the events about Mubarak and Tahrir Square. All of a sudden, the image of the assassination of Anwar Al Sadat on TV came to my mind. That image is one of the earliest scenes from TV that I can remember. I was seven years old then and I remember how it was big news for my father, who was watching anxiously, and seemed very much into it and seemed happy, and joyful. I did not realize the immensity of that assassination then. But, how would I know? I was too young to comprehend.

I did not see the celebrations of the inauguration of Hosni Mubarak to become the next Egyptian president then. I saw this 30 years later, on Aljazeera on the day when he resigned and delegated his presidential powers to the Armed Forces Supreme Council. Very ironic!

I spent some time watching the celebrations of the brave men and women of Egypt. Most of the scenes were transmitted from Tahrir Square in Cairo, occasionally showing from other Egyptian cities such as Alexandria and Suez. Aljazeera showed some scenes of the celebrations taking place in Ramallah and Gaza. Officially however, these celebrations were banned by both the Palestinian National Authority in Ramallah and self-appointed Hamas government in Gaza.

I didn't take too long to get over the feelings of joy, as I realized the president's resignation is just the beginning, and also the easy part. What's coming ahead is where the hard work is. I am a proud Palestinian, but at that moment I felt that I wished to be an Egyptian so I could fly and be there among those millions in the streets of Egypt and be a part of the planning for the future, be one of those guards of the Revolution. I realize how many will want to hijack the revolution and steer it toward their own agenda and benefit, where hijacking the the popular revolutions and people's aspirations isn't something we did not experience in the history of the Arab World. I remember what my late father always said, and again, I never really understood back then. He said: In the Arab World, never be happy for a change in regime; who comes after is just worse, and you will just cry on the predecessor. This time, and for this popular revolution, I don't think so. I hope and pray this won't happen to these holy revolutions of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, they're pure and holy, as pure and holy as of the blood of those young Tunisian, Egyptian, and Libyan men and women who sacrificed their lives for the sake of the rest of us to live in dignity and for a new dignified and corruption-free Middle East.

That's when my thoughts turned to the core of this crisis, Palestine. I thought I'd copy Wael Ghoneim and create a page on Facebook that calls for a Third Intifada in the Palestinian territories. (In fact, I have been thinking about it for a while now, long before the unrest started in Tunisia and Egypt). An intifada against corruption, tyranny, and occupation. The hardest was not the plan, it was choosing the enemy. Unlike Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and elsewhere in the Arab world, like Bahrain and Yemen where the enemy is just one--the corrupt regime--in Palestine, our enemy is many, whether the occupation forces of Israel, the corrupt regime of the illegitimate presidency of Mahmoud Abbas, the domination of the self-appointed Hamas government in Gaza, or the corruption in Jordan, where a large number of Palestinians reside, along with their Jordanian brothers and sisters, under harsh conditions of corruption and poverty. Tough job, isn't it?

My series of thoughts took me to a clip that I watched on Facebook the night before, where the clip showed footage of some of our fellow Tunisians being victorious after their revolution ended, shouting and calling for an Arab Unification. In the Middle East, we have this "dream" of an Arab Unification. We always viewed this unification as a dream. Well, just the liberation by itself from those evil regimes of the Middle East seemed something I never thought I'd live to witness, though I lived enough to see Baghdad fall to the American occupation forces.

The Egyptians woke up the morning of Saturday February the 12th, as free men and women since decades. I was thinking that when I woke up this morning, and I thought to myself, do they realize that it's a reality? Or is it just a dream? The sweetest of the dreams though? I would! Well, if my fellow Egyptians can wake up one day in liberty, freedom, and dignity, I believe this unity dream might come true one day.

Popular Uprisings All Over the Middle East a Death Knell for U.S. Credibility

US has lost all credibility, as well as the opportunity to be relevant, in the region.

Popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Jordan have been the main topic of news media of late, and while the democratic yearnings of the populace should, in theory, be supported by the U.S., a change in the status quo is the last thing our government wants.

Since the days of Eisenhower, our government has striven to make democracy our #1 export, in the perhaps mistaken belief that any democratic country would be our ally. Israel was the first country in the Middle East to get the American stamp of approval and, since its inception, this tiny state the size of New Jersey has received a total of $140 billion of aid (source), $53 billion of which was military aid (source). This is a symbol of America’s “special relationship” with Israel.

But what about our special relationships with the dictatorships of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, and the monarchies of Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia? Are we “supporting” them to the tune of billions of dollars annually in the innocent hopes that they will voluntarily enact democracy in their countries? Since 1987 (the year Tunisia’s Ben-Ali took power), the U.S. has sold $349 million worth of weaponry to Tunisia (source). US military aid to Egypt totals over $1.3 billion annually (source). We gave Jordan $666 million worth of military aid in 2007 alone, spending $80 million of that on an anti-terrorism training center (source). All these countries either have rigged elections or no elections at all and we have propped up their governments with billions of dollars worth of military aid for decades. We even provided the gas with which Saddam Hussein committed an act of genocide against his own citizens (source), an act we apparently didn’t consider reprehensible until 20 years later.

In fact, during the Iran-Iraq war, we provided weapons not only to Iraq, but Iran as well, and even sent the proceeds of that arrangement to the Nicaraguan Resistance, which resulted in a little scandal called Iran-Contra. And now we lambaste Iran for providing funding and weapons to the Lebanese resistance, Hezbollah. We call Hezbollah Iran’s proxy and say “no fair”, and meanwhile we have dozens of our own proxies that we fund and equip on a fantastically larger scale.

And now the citizens of all these countries call us hypocrites (like here), and we have the gall to build anti-terrorism training centers that are supposed to shield us from the results of our own actions.

Once upon a time, the U.S. had a chance to be truly relevant in the Middle East by brokering a lasting peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. We said we wanted peace, we sent our ambassadors and negotiators jaunting back and forth between Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and elsewhere. But, more than ever, it seems like that was play acting, what many political analysts refer to as “stagecraft” rather than statecraft. And now, with the Palestinian Authority seeking recognition from UN countries directly, without America’s support, it is even clearer that we are no longer needed.

The Palestinian cause is the poster child of injustice in the region. Everybody from Morocco to Qatar knows that the Palestinians are increasingly subjugated and abused in myriad ways by the U.S., who continues to fund the Israeli military machine at the rate of $8 million a day while expecting the citizens of our ally countries to believe that we are doing so because Israel is under threat (source). If Israel were to be attacked, the chances are staggering that it would be bombed with our missiles, dropped from our planes, by soldiers whose salaries are paid by our tax dollars.

We are financing war because it is more profitable than peace, and the Middle East, at least, is tired of the status quo.

We have lost our chance to be relevant. If we want a chance to survive at all, with any moral dignity, we need a drastic change of plans.