The Arab world
Martyrs or traitors
Jun 21st 2007
From The Economist print edition
A choice the West must be careful not to force on the people of the Middle East
THE Arab world has long been criss-crossed by feuds and rivalries. But if there is one point on which Arabs have agreed for more than half a century it is the justice of the Palestinian cause. Much as they may have loathed him in private, all Arab leaders had to show public respect for Yasser Arafat, the emblematic freedom fighter (and terrorist) who as leader of the Fatah movement personified the Palestinian struggle from the 1960s until his death three years ago.
That is why the scenes from Gaza have shocked Arabs far beyond Palestine. Arafat's portrait was torn off office walls and smashed under the boots of the Islamist fighters of Hamas. The Palestinian flag was hauled down and the green banner of Islam hoisted in its place. In one brutal week Hamas's swift destruction of Arafat's Fatah movement in Gaza summed up a change that is spreading across a broad swathe of the Middle East. Secular nationalism of the sort Fatah stood for is coming to look like the weak force and radical Islam like the strong force. This poses a huge danger to a region already beset by violent conflicts. What is worse, Western policy is in danger of strengthening the wrong side by making the Islamists look like martyrs and the secularists like traitors.
In Washington this week George Bush met Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, to work out what to do after Hamas's seizure of power (see article). Their plan, which may be co-ordinated by Tony Blair when he steps down as Britain's prime minister, is to keep Hamas penned up in its Gaza enclave and to shower love, money and weapons on Palestine's president, Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah-dominated security forces are still more or less in control of the larger and more populous West Bank. The hope is that if Gaza fails under Hamas while the West Bank prospers under Fatah, Palestinian opinion will eventually swing back behind the moderates.
Can such a plan possibly work? There are reasons specific to Palestine that suggest it will not. But the first point to note is general. Any Arab leader who wins the label “moderate” and is showered as a result of this with American love and money is in danger of being called a traitor.
The most dangerous love
Egypt's president, Anwar Sadat, was called a traitor for making his courageous peace with Israel in 1979 (and assassinated by jihadists two years later). Arafat was called a traitor after shaking hands with an Israeli prime minister on the White House lawn. In Lebanon right now the Hizbullah movement calls the beleaguered government of Fouad Siniora traitorous because it is propped up by France and America. Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, needs to keep his distance from America to fend off accusations that he is a puppet of the occupation. And, of course, the assumption of many Muslims that a pro-American leader must in some way be a traitor to the cause extends beyond the Arab world: in Pakistan and Afghanistan Presidents Musharraf and Karzai have constantly to face down the cry that by allying with the superpower they have sold out their countries—or, worse, their religion.
America's allies cannot stop the martyrs from calling them traitors. America has made itself deeply unpopular in the Islamic world by invading Iraq and standing by Israel. This is bound to taint any Muslim leader who looks as if he owes his position to American military or economic power. But guilt by association is only one half of the reason for the growing popularity of the martyrs and the spreading idea that America's allies must be traitors. The other half is that, by comparison with the traitors, the martyrs look clean.
When Arafat returned to Palestine from exile his honeymoon was brief. The returning hero created a regime of a kind all too familiar in the Arab world. It was riddled by corruption and ruled over by a sinister mukhabarat—the secret-police network that spies on and bullies the citizenry in most Arab states. By contrast, Hamas in Palestine, Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan have earned a reputation for both honesty and efficiency. They often provide the poor with the health and social services that the state fails to deliver. When Hamas blew up Fatah's security headquarters last week, many Arabs silently cheered. All the more pity that Mr Bush has lately dropped his efforts to push Arab allies towards greater accountability and human rights.
The banker in the suit
The martyrs have another selling point. They are still “resisting”. During the Lebanon war last summer Hizbullah won millions of admirers for breaking the spell of Israeli invincibility. Hamas claimed credit for forcing Israel to evacuate its settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip two years ago. Salam Fayyad, the new Palestinian prime minister installed by Mr Abbas, is a decent man. But he is a former World Bank employee in a suit. The Hamas fighter with a bandanna and machinegun makes much better box office.
After Fatah's debacle in Gaza, Mr Bush and Mr Olmert see an opportunity to prove via a Hamas-free government in the West Bank that moderation pays. But it is not enough for Israel and America to release the economic help they withheld from the Palestinians when Hamas was still formally in charge. For the Palestinians' principal grievance is not economic. What they chiefly want is an end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank as well as Gaza so that they can enjoy an independent national existence in both places. And in this respect the West Bank is a tougher problem than Gaza, because it remains speckled by Israeli settlements and throttled by checkpoints.
What America must now prove is that its moderate Arab allies, far from being traitors, can actually deliver desirable results. In the case of Palestine, Mr Abbas and his new prime minister have to show not only that they can govern cleanly but also that they can get Israel to start dismantling outposts and leaving the West Bank. This, as it happens, is not something martyrs can do: Hamas's rockets just make the Israelis less willing to take risks. But to offer the moderates money and no visible progress towards statehood is to treat them with contempt—and to invite Arabs everywhere to do the same.
