Edward Said on Arab Powerlessness

Published in the Guardian London 24/April/1996 page 15
The problem is Arab powerlessness.
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Edward Said is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, New York
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THE question is not only that Israel has lived outside the norms of international behaviour in war or in peace since it was established, but that today the Arabs are totally powerless. Whereas Israel can roll its tanks across borders, its airforce can bomb civilians at will, its propagandists can fill the western media with their lies about self-defence and the war against terrorism, the Arabs for their part can only bleat out little squeaks of anger.

There are small groups here land there (like Hizbullah) who can offer Israel resistance with outmoded Katyushas, but they are part of no alliance or plan that is larger than them. Lebanon has now been bombed mercilessly for almost two weeks (and Hizbullah has survived), yet no Arab capital has brought forth any official response except silence or polite diplomatic murmurings.
The problem is Arab powerlessness. This bears repeating: the problem is Arab powerlessness. This is something for which neither the United States - which has behaved as an extension of the Israeli government, and the lamentable Warren Christopher as its local office boy - nor France, nor the European Union has a solution. It is an Arab problem. And it concerns every individual who calls him/herself an Arab. We are all part of this general incapacity to do much, except look on wringing our hands, crying or going on strike.

The most recent solution to our problem has been the so called peace process, which any mentally competent observer of Israel could have figured out an extension of its longstanding policy to dominate the Arabs militarily and economically. For Israel, Arabs are racially inferior people who must be beaten or punished until they obey. When they don't, as in the Hizbullah instance, the Israelis are momentarily stopped, though their arrogance continues. Then come the sudden illumination on the part of great minds like Mahmoud Abbas and Yassir Arafat that Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin had undergone a change. They have become visionary men of peace. So leading an exhausted and disillusioned Palestinian people Abu Ammar (arafat) and Abu Mazen leaped into Israel's lap.

All you have to do to know what then happened is to visit the Occupied Territories, which I have just done. Then you can see that the peace means Israeli occupation with Palestinian partners. The Palestine authority now has 12,000 Palestinian prisoners, thus proving that a Palestinian enforcer of Israeli policies can as clever as an Israeli in catching Palestinian "terrorists" and "fundamentalists". The only trouble is that the military occupation continues, the Territories are closed, Area A is only 1 per cent of the West Bank, there is 70 per cent unemployment, Palestinian lands are expropriated every day, houses are demolished, people go hungry and they are tortured, but Arafat goes to meet Peres while the Israeli army is bombing Lebanon and killing civilians. The two great peace makers and Nobel-prize winners emerge from their meetings with smiles on their faces. The peace process moves forward, and allows Peres to invade Lebanon, thus placing his desire to be re-elected above the lives of half a million Lebanese refugees and several hundred fatalities.

Such powerlessness borders on the comic. Of the 10 countries which lead the world in arms purchases, seven are Arab. Every Arab citizen has seen the armies and the police forces (Arafat has no fewer than 13 of his own) everywhere on streets and street corners. None of these, no airforce or navy (Arafat has 60 naval officers stationed in Nablus, which is 150 kilometres from any sea) or army, is used to deter Israel, except Syria's, althoug it too will not fight back in Lebanon where it has 30,000 troops.

The real question is powerlessness. As VS Naipaul, the Trinidadian-British writer, has his main character say in his first novel, The MI-Mic Men: "We in the Third World lack order. Above all, we lack power, and we do not understand that we lack power. We mistake words and the acclamation of words for power; as soon as our bluff is called we are lost." it is certainly true that, alone of the Arab states, Syria has stuck to its principles about complete withdrawal, but it does not mitigate the fact that like all other Arab states Syria has no real civil society, or democracy, or social dynamism; its Policies in Lebanon do not provoke admiration or participation on the part of most Lebanese, who feel themselves -rightly so- powerless in Syria's orbit.

AS a society we are left with slogans and, as Naipaul's character says, words. And these continue to camouflage the reality from us, which is our own self-inflicted powerlessness. We must all of us ask why it is that for the past five decades we have watched Israel violate our sovereignty, massacre our civilians, humiliate our soldiers and generals, colonise our land, even as we make speeches and vow vengeance. Empty words in the air.

Our last gamble - that Israel wants peace and is willing to be generous - has proved to be extremely flawed. Israel, like the US wants to preserve its interests intact. No matter how many times Abu Ammar and Abu Mazen repeat the words "peace process", the facts are that their people lose more land (and sovereignty) everyday, and Jerusalem is more lost to the Palestinians every day. When a "crisis" occurs, all the Arab peace-makers act surprised, as if they had no idea that Israel would behave this way, although of course it has always behaved this way, and will continue to do so, because it has power and we do not. Power, after all, is not just military strength. It is the social power that comes from democracy, the cultural power that comes from freedom of expression and research, the personal power that entitles every Arab citizen to feel that he or she is in fact a citizen, and not just a sheep in some great shepherd's flock.

I often think that one reason for our powerlessness is that we feel self-hatred. Otherwise it is impossible to explain how over 200 million people with human and natural resources of a high order can continuously hurt themselves, continuously prevent themselves from accumulating the kind of power that brings self-respect and seriousness of purpose. I have no other explanation for our situation, which cannot be extenuated or explained away by appeals to the ravages of imperialism, or to corrupt regimes, or any of the other litanies of self-exculpation.