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The Region And The Point Of No Return
Ghassan Charbel Al-Hayat 2003/11/18
The region has never been this agitated. Open wars and others implicit. Enduring and fresh conflicts. Crises likely to worsen. Bombs ready to blow up. The Middle East confronted the international changes brought about by the collapse of the Berlin wall. Its stability was not shaken with the USSR's disappearance. It thought it could weather the storm. It slept on the feathers of privacy and refused to change. But that was the past. Those who thought the 9/11 attacks were part of a remote war were wrong. With the downfall of Saddam Hussein's regime, the Middle East turned into a field for all wars and fears. War on terror and war on the U.S. Missile arsenals and nuclear dreams. Security calculations and accounts of interests. Taking over land by force and changing regimes by force.
It is not easy for the Middle East to survive between George W. Bush's attack, Ariel Sharon's aggression and Osama bin Laden's bombs. Not to mention the lack of institutions, which could have been used for referral and participation. The lack of security valves amid the repression of feelings, economic failure, a widespread fear and the desire to kill even through suicide.
The trouble in Iraq needs no evidence. The region's countries were afraid that the American military establishment would succeed in implanting a democratic regime in Iraq. They were afraid of a great American success. But their reasons of their fear did not materialize. Today, they should be scared by the American failure there. Victory would only be partly to Iraq's benefit. The American failure would trigger a time of bombings and attempts to destabilize regimes.
Omar Suleiman is seeking a new truce in Ramallah. Palestinians do not lack realism, whether they are within the Authority or outside it. But Ariel Sharon took his war too far. He cancelled agreements, destroyed the Authority and brought the conflict back to its early days. He said he was pursuing the independence war. This is why it seems difficult hard and even impossible to try and restore the old picture. Bombs will start exploding again soon. It takes two to tango, and dancing with Sharon is like dancing between mines.
Israel will not accept that Iran reaches the point of no return in fabricating its nuclear bomb. Shaul Mofaz's tone was curt. The chief of the Mossad did not hesitate to say that the Iranian nuclear threat was the greatest threat to Israel's existence ever since its creation in 1948. It is for us to imagine what it means to wake up one day and see the Iranian plants in ashes, the way it happened to the Iraqi nuclear dream.
Osama bin Laden will not miss the opportunity. He was looking for a front with the Americans and there it is, in the heart of the Middle East, in the heart of the Arab and Islamic world.
It is the battle over the future of the Middle East and the scopes of roles to be played there. The roles of the big ones and those of the region's people as well. With the absence of security valves, suicidal people are trying to reach their goals and bombs are getting ready to explode.
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