Dr Muasher notes that Arab regimes have handled reform in an irregular - I would say confused - manner. As a result, they lost popular confidence in their domestic and foreign policies. Muasher asserts, more than once, the centrality of the Palestinian cause, which, once solved, will help settle all other problems. Despite this, he advises Arab political regimes not to focus on this cause alone. The popularity-seeking center has to practice good governance, introduce genuine political reforms, focus on economy, and respect cultural diversity.
All this is true and required; however, Muasher is more optimistic than I am. He writes as if he expects or believes this can truly take place on the ground. But I see it as a wish that is unlikely to come true given the experience of the past thirty years.
The author refers to the now deceased Dr Haidar Abdel Shafi in the Oslo conference, Dr Hanan Ashrawi, a currently one-person Palestinian party, the Olso Accords concluded in September 1993, the Olso II of 1995, and a 1995 peace rally attended by 250 people in Israel, a rally that ended with the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
The above goes beyond the scope of politics to deal with history. It is all past history and has nothing to do with today's politics. We can probably chronicle the demise of the peace process with Rabin's death on November 4, 1995. Marwan Muasher was a witness as he attended the rally in his capacity as diplomat. It is enough to have a look at the names of prime ministers who succeeded Rabin to see to what extent peace has receded.
Muasher is a fair witness to this history. His book is a reference even if I do not share his optimism about the future of the Arab center and its role. Muasher urges the incoming US administration to focus on the peace process in its first term. Of course this is better than seeing George Bush's active and failed endeavors to settle this conflict in the last six months of his eight-year-term in office. Muasher is right. But does he really expect the Obama or the McCain administration to do the required job? The experience of the former US administrations over the past three decades bodes no good.
I certainly agree with Muasher that radicals benefit from the failure of the peace process. The failure of moderate regimes is the most important card in the hands of radicals. I am absolutely confident that if radicals rule, they will fail and wreak havoc in the Arab World. But if they rule, they will not relinquish office, which means it is a catch-22 situation. The only way to prove they are insane is to hand over rule to them.
At the end, I would like to refer to the beginning of Dr Marwan Muasher's book. He says that both the US and Jordan have suffered from the terrorist 9/11 attacks - the former in 2001 and the latter in 2005 with the hotel attacks that left 60 people dead and tens of others injured.
As Jordan's deputy prime minister in charge of reform, Dr Marwan Muasher found himself the voice of Jordan in the face of the human catastrophe that hit his country. I was on board the Jordanian plane about to land in Amman's airport to attend the wedding of a friend's daughter when the co-pilot notified me that someone would take me straight from the plane's door. He told me about the terror that befell Amman. It so happened that behind me there was a friend, an owner of a luxurious hotel that escaped this terrorist attack. In front of me there were the parents of Karim Kawar who succeeded Marwan Muasher as Jordan's ambassador to the United States.
In that terror act, I lost friends, such as film director Mustafa Al-Akkad and his daughter Rima. We will all keep losing if the moderate Arab center does not defeat radicalism, as Marwan Muasher requests.
* Published in the LOndon-based DAR AL-HAYAT on August 07, 2008. |
