The Greater Middle East is a ticking time bomb – Part 2.
By James M. Dorsey
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This is part two of a two-part
series that explores developments autocratic Arab rulers and US policymakers
ignore at their peril. This two-part series explores developments autocratic
Arab rulers and US policymakers ignore at their peril. The series is based on
an essay published in Horizons.
Part 1 looked
at the region as a whole as well as Hamas’ standing in Gaza eight months into
the war. Today’s Part 2 focuses on the war’s potential fallout in Jordan, Saudi
Arabia, and Egypt.
It goes without
saying that the Palestinian issue touches many across the Greater Middle East.
Israel and the
world’s inability or unwillingness to help Palestinians secure their rights and
Palestinians’ sense of not being accorded the dignity and respect accorded to
others mirrors a quest for recognition and dignity across the region.
Take Syria.
Returning this year
to her home country for the first time in more than a decade, BBC journalist
Lina Sinjab noted that Syria “is sinking into poverty, and many ordinary people are desperate. ‘There is no light at the end of the
tunnel,’ they say. It has become normal to see families sleeping in the street
and others digging food out of rubbish bins, while in other areas, a high-class
lifestyle reminiscent of the swankiest parts of London or Paris continues unchanged.”
Syrian
beggars. Credit MEI
Grinding poverty keeps thousands of children out of school
and forced to work in northwestern Syria. Across Syria, more than 43 per cent
of children do not go to school, raising the spectre of a generation left
behind.
Eleven-year-old Ahmad Amro and his family of ten fled the
city of Aleppo in 2016. Since then, their home has been a tent in Syria’s
northwestern Idlib countryside, a region with an 88.74 per cent unemployment
rate ravaged by war and a 2023 earthquake.
Ahmad dreams of “wearing school clothes to go to school.”
Instead, he and his older brother, Abdo, who has never attended school, struggle
to make ends meet by helping their father sell daffodils.
With children like Ahmad and Abdo across the Greater Middle
East staring at a bottomless abyss of despair and hopelessness, the question is
not if but when and how simmering frustration and anger will boil over.
Iraqi
militants seize border crossing with Jordan. Credit: NDTV
“The Gaza
war is stirring up every radical movement across the Middle East. Its
recruitment potential against the US and Israel is enormous & will have
repercussions for decades,” tweeted Middle East scholar Joshua Landis.
Mr. Landis noted that Osama Bin Laden first conceived of the
11 September 2001 Al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington in 1982 when he
watched US-built F-16 fighter jets carpet bomb Beirut during the Israeli
invasion of Lebanon.
For now, much of the threat of renewed revolts and militancy
may be more bluster than real.
Iranian-backed Iraqi militants asserted in April that they
stood ready to arm 12,000
fighters of the Islamic Resistance in Jordan that would open a new front
against Israel.
Abu Ali al-Askari, a Kataib Hezbollah security official,
suggested Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s assessment that all Jordanian
militants needed was access to weapons inspired the offer.
Pro-Palestinian
protest in Jordan. Credit: Anadolu Agency
There is no evidence of an Islamic fighting force in tightly
controlled Jordan despite mounting public anger at the Gaza war, a limited
number of border incidents, and indications of attempts by Jordan’s Muslim
Brotherhood affiliate, Hamas, and Iran to exploit the fury, and in some cases smuggle
arms from Jordan into the West Bank.
Against the backdrop of 22 per cent unemployment, Jordan’s
Brotherhood affiliate, the Islamic Action Front, hopes escalating
pro-Hamas protests in Jordan will favour it in general elections scheduled
for later this year.
Earlier, Kataib Hezbollah said it would work
with partners in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to enable militants to strike at
“any point in West Asia where the Americans exist.”
A close US ally dependent on American economic and financial
aid with a peace treaty with Israel, Jordan walks a tightrope with more
than half of its population of Palestinian descent. Jordanian participation
in the shooting down in April of a barrage of Iranian drones and missiles fired
by Iran at Israel has increased the tightrope’s tension.
Similarly, Hamas leaders have sought to capitalise on
pro-Palestinian sentiment and Jordan’s vulnerability.
“We call
on our brothers in Jordan, in particular, to escalate all forms of popular,
mass, and resistance action. You, our people in Jordan, are the nightmare of
the occupation that fears your movement and strives tirelessly to neutralize
and isolate you from your cause.,” said Hamas military spokesman Abu Obeida.
Hamas
official Khaled Meshaal gives a video address. Source: Twitter
Senior Doha-based Hamas official Khaled Mishaal, who
survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Amman in 1997, told a women’s
gathering in Jordan in a video address that “Jordan is a beloved country, and it
is the closest to
Palestine, so its men and women are expected to take more supportive roles
than any other people towards the land of resistance and resilience.”
While Jordan is unlikely to emerge as a significant venue
for militant resistance against Israel, escalating
Baloch and Islamic State violence in Iran, a
country in which widespread discontent regularly spills into the streets, and
the adjacent Pakistani province of Balochistan is an indication of potential
explosions of popular discontent and/or militancy.
Wealthy Gulf states see the writing on the wall. They worry
that simmering public frustration and anger in much of the Middle East threaten
regional stability, and, with it their economic diversification and development
plans.
“Islamist groups want to benefit from (the ongoing protests
in Jordan) ...and reproduce the ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions again,” warned Saudi
journalist Hassan al-Mustafa. “Volatility in Jordan would pose a direct threat to Saudi Arabia’s
own national security,” said Abdulaziz Sager, head of the Gulf Research
Council and a scholar with close ties to the Saudi government.
Signalling Gulf concerns, Salah Al Budair, the Medina Grand
Mosque’s imam, asked God in a Ramadan prayer to protect Muslim countries “from
revolutions and protest.”
Wealthy Gulf states may be better positioned to pacify their
populations but are not immune to the region’s undercurrents.
Mohammed bin
Salman’s Vision 2030. Credit: AP
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has sought to bolster
Saudi national identity to cushion the impact of rapid social change that has
sparked concern among some conservatives and those who fear they may be left
behind.
"Whilst there is widespread support for the Vision,
there are concerns about the pace of change, as well as the perception that to
date, there has been an
over-emphasis on elite interests," said Mark C. Thompson, a
Saudi-based social scientist and recent convert to Islam, who has long tracked
the evolution of Saudi youth attitudes towards Bin Salman's Vision 2030
economic diversification and development plan.
Mr. Thompson noted that "the significance of Saudi
Arabia's two primary identity narratives, namely, Islam and family, have only
changed incrementally regardless of post-2030 transformations… The danger is
that Vision-related transformations might be weak in the face of much stronger
traditional values, and, consequently, the rapid social changes could vanish
just as quickly precisely because they have not become deep-rooted within Saudi
communities.”
The social scientist cautioned that most foreign Saudi
watchers based their analysis and conclusions on interactions with members of
the Saudi elite who would have the most to lose if social change were to
falter.
Mr. Thompson quoted a Western-educated Saudi consultant
saying that most Saudis "would not be affected greatly" if the
entertainment sector failed.
The fact that Saudi elites are the greatest beneficiaries of
Mr. Bin Salman's reforms means that most Saudis, concerned primarily about
jobs, cost of living, affordable housing, and healthcare, often only benefit at
best partially. To benefit more fully, they would have to have what the elite
has: wasta or clout and connections.
The risk for Mr. Bin Salman is that the reforms widen the
kingdom's already yawning income gap, cast further doubt on the integrity of
the crown prince's anti-corruption campaign, and undermine widespread support
for his vision.
In addition, small and medium-sized enterprises and their employees feel they are often excluded from participation in Vision-related projects favouring large and well-known family enterprises. As a result, young Saudis with lesser family backgrounds and education become drivers rather than executives when they migrate from the provinces to the cities.
Saudi Center
for Opinion Poll. Credit: SCOP
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates may be
one-man-ruled autocracies, yet their leaders are sensitive to public opinion to
varying degrees. “I know that the Saudi government under MbS (Mohammed bin
Salman) has put in a lot of effort to actually do its own public opinion polls…
They pay attention to it… They are very well aware of which way the winds are
blowing on the street. They take that pretty much to heart on what to do and
what not to do… On some issues, they are going to make a kind of executive
decision... On this one, we're going to ignore it; on the other one, we're
going to…try to curry favour with the public in some unexpected way," said
the late David Pollock, a Middle East scholar who until recently oversaw the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s polling in the region.
The problem for rulers like Messrs. Bin Salman and Bin Zayed
is that their rule's moorings could be called into question by a failure to
deliver public goods and services that offer economic prospects. At the same
time, social reforms needed to bolster development go hand in hand with undermining
the authority of religious establishments. Increased autocracy that turns
clerics and scholars into regime parrots has fuelled youth scepticism toward
political elites and religious institutions.
For rulers like the Saudi crown prince, the loosening of
social restrictions – including the disempowerment of the kingdom’s religious
police, the lifting of a ban on women’s driving, less strict implementation of
gender segregation, the introduction of Western-style entertainment, and
greater professional opportunities for women, and, in the UAE a degree of
genuine religious pluralism – are only the first steps in responding to youth
aspirations.
Determined to contain public sentiment, Saudi authorities,
in contrast to the UAE and Qatar and despite official condemnations of Israel’s
Gaza war conduct, have cracked down on expressions of solidarity such as the
donning of keffiyehs, the chequered head scarf symbolizing Palestinian
identity, T-shirts with Palestine emblazoned on them, and the waving of
Palestinian flags.
A rare
pro-Palestinian demonstration in Cairo. Credit: CCTV
In the same vein, Egypt, a nation that perennially pulls
back from the brink of economic disaster with the help of band-aid foreign
financial injections, has largely banned public protests and criticism of the
country’s ties with Israel.
Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi fears
that pro-Palestinian demonstrations could expand into domestic protest as has
happened in the past.
The ban was imposed after pro-Palestinian demonstrators
gathered In Cairo’s Tahrir Square, an icon of the 2011 popular Arab revolts
that toppled four leaders, including Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, reverted to
chanting the uprisings’ common slogan, ‘Bread, freedom, social justice!’
"The
Palestinian cause has always been a politicizing factor for Egyptian youth
across generations," noted Hossam el-Hamalawy, a prominent Egyptian
journalist, photographer, activist, and author of a weekly newsletter.
"In fact, for many Egyptian political activists —
whether those who led the (2011) revolution or were involved in earlier
protests — their gateway into politics was the Palestinian cause. The 2011
uprising in Egypt was literally the climax of a process that started with the
second Palestinian intifada a decade earlier… The more this war (in Gaza) drags
on, the more likely it is that something might happen,” Mr. El-Hamalawy added.
An end to the war may lower the
temperature and take the immediate sting out of public anger, but the drivers
of discontent, including the quest for dignity, remain unaltered.
Even worse, the fault lines have
hardened. The Middle East and North Africa are populated by the harshest rulers
the region has witnessed since its various constituents became independent.
Repression in countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates
is at an all-time high. The Gulf states go to great lengths to ensure that
others in the region mirror their suppression of any form of dissent.
Despite a worldwide clamour for
a two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the
establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state,
hardened Israeli attitudes towards the Palestinians mirror Arab crackdowns on
dissent.
Israel has moved from a de facto
recognition of Palestinian rights to outright denial, but was for decades
willing to go through the motions of a peace process.
Then-defense
minister Moshe Dayan speaks during the 1973 Middle East war. Credit: Israel Defense
Ministry Archive
Storied former Israeli Defence
Minister Moshe Dayan was brutally honest when he spoke in 1956 at the funeral of
an Israeli farmer, brutally murdered by Palestinian militants.
“Let us not cast blame on the murderers. For eight years,
they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes, we
have been transforming the lands and the villages where they and their fathers
dwelt into our estate,” Dayan said.
“Let us not be deterred from seeing the loathing that is
inflaming and filling the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs living around
us. This
is our life’s choice—to be prepared and armed, strong, and determined, lest
the sword be stricken from our fist and our lives cut down,” Dayan added.
Dayan’s comments frame United Nations Secretary-General
Antonio Guterrez’s statement seven decades later that Hamas’ October 7 attack
on Israel did not happen “in a vacuum,” particularly with Israel’s occupation
of Palestinian lands since 1967.
They also frame the disregard for the lives of others and
their own that have been put on public display in Hamas’ targeting of civilians
and brutality on October 7 and its risking of the lives of innocent Palestinian
civilians during the war as well as Israel's relentless devastation of Gaza at
enormous human cost and its failure to prioritise the release of hostages held
by Hamas.
Said an Arab human rights activist: “Gaza is the pinnacle of
the Middle East’s disdain for life and the dignity of individuals. It’s
disregard on a massive and unprecedented scale. It’s disregard that underwrites
autocracy in the region. It’s disregard that ultimately will spark an
explosion, even if it’s impossible to predict when, where, and how.”
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior
Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of
International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.
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