At Asia Times Online, Ramzy Barzoud writes about the lack of what he calls Arab gallantry.
… millions protested for Gaza across the world in a collective global action unprecedented since the US war in Iraq in 2003. South American countries led the way, with some governments turning words into unparalleled action, not fearing Western media slander or US government reprisals. Few Arab countries even came close to what the majority Christian Latin American countries like Ecuador have done to show solidarity with Gaza.
. . . But the lack of reactions on Arab streets (perhaps Arab societies are too consumed fighting for their own honor and dignity?) and the near complete silence by many Arab governments as Israel savaged Gaza civilians, forces one to question present Arab gallantry altogether.
. . . Hardly shocking, although certainly dishonorable, some Arab journalists who stayed largely quiet as the Palestinian death toll in Gaza grew rapidly, went on a well-organized crusade. While they shed crocodile tears for Gaza’s children, they insisted that Gaza lost, strengthening Netanyahu’s desperate narrative that his war had achieved its objectives. The Gaza-didn’t-win line was repeated by many well-paid journalists and commentators as to defeat the prevailing notion that resistance was not futile. For them, it seems that Palestinians need to accept their role in the ongoing Arab drama of being perpetual victims, and nothing more.
Why would they do that?
A strong Palestinian, practically and conceptually, is the antithesis to the dominant line of the current Arab political script that is predicated on strong rulers and weak nations. Since the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe), the Palestinian is only idealized as a hero in poetry and official text, but an eternal casualty in everyday life.
It’s not just commentators and other Arab states.
Just days following the ceasefire, the leaders of the Ramallah political class unleashed verbal attacks against the former Hamas government over money, salary and phony coup attempts. For Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, per the leaked protocol of his meeting with Hamas’ Khaled Meshaal in Doha, the war in Gaza seemed a secondary matter, as the 80-year-old was overwhelmed by some paranoia that everyone was conspiring against him. His Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, who behaved as if his “premiership” didn’t include Gaza during the war, returned to action as soon as the ceasefire announcement was made. His government didn’t feel any particular urgency to pay salaries of Gaza employees who were hired by the previous Gaza government.
Then, writes Barzoud, “As if things couldn’t get any worse”
… a leaked letter provided to French lawyers by the deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) showed that Abbas’ government actually blocked a Palestinian application to the ICC that is aimed at trying Israeli government and military leaders for alleged war crimes. … The shameful factionalism has reached a point where Fatah officials are accusing the former Gaza government for being responsible for the loss of lives among Gaza refugees as they make desperate attempts to escape the strip towards Europe atop crowded boats.
Ironically
Embattled Netanyahu is getting a badly needed break as Palestinian officials in Ramallah and some Arab media commentators are circuitously blaming Gaza for Israel’s own wars and war crimes.
In short
While Palestinians continue to gaze at the rubble of their destroyed lives in Gaza, they receive little support and solidarity from their Arab neighbors, or from their “brethren” in Ramallah.
In an explosive article titled Barbarians Within Our Gates in Politico Magazine, Hisham Melhem of Al Arabiya of Al-Arabiya provides some context for this kind of ceaseless factionalism and the general disunity of the Arab world.
Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but gone. The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by extremism—the extremism of the rulers and those in opposition—than at any time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. Every hope of modern Arab history has been betrayed. The promise of political empowerment, the return of politics, the restoration of human dignity heralded by the season of Arab uprisings in their early heydays—all has given way to civil wars, ethnic, sectarian and regional divisions and the reassertion of absolutism, both in its military and atavistic forms. With the dubious exception of the antiquated monarchies and emirates of the Gulf—which for the moment are holding out against the tide of chaos—and possibly Tunisia, there is no recognizable legitimacy left in the Arab world.
Is it any surprise that, like the vermin that take over a ruined city, the heirs to this self-destroyed civilization should be the nihilistic thugs of the Islamic State? And that there is no one else who can clean up the vast mess we Arabs have made of our world but the Americans and Western countries?
That last sentence might be better amended to read: “And that there is no one else who can use the pretext of cleaning up the vast mess we Arabs have made of our world to impose their own agenda but the Americans and Western countries?” Nevertheless, while this article might have been considered racist or anti-Islamic if written by a Westerner, from an Arab, it’s a clarion call to the Arab world to rise above factionalism and pull together lest it condemn itself to eternal strife. It’s ironic that a region that, for the last century, has been a source of energy resources to the world is now a drain on the financial and, however much its problems were created by the West, political resources of the rest of the world.