Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The session, part of the Carnegie Endowment's NEW VISION launch, examines the state of the Arab political reform agenda, what can be expected in terms of political change in the region, and what the U.S. efforts should be to promote regional reform.
An open letter to President Bush signed by 103 Arab and Muslim intellectuals and activists called on America to reaffirm its commitment to sustained democratic reform in the Arab world. Freedom and democracy are the only ways to build a world where violence is replaced by peaceful public debate and political participation, and despair is replaced by hope, tolerance and dignity.
The war in Lebanon deeply altered the concerns of elites and citizens in Arab societies. Following three years of unprecedented political dynamism and debates regarding the prospects for democratic transformation in the Arab world, the Arab-Israeli conflict returned to the forefront, turning attention away from the question of democracy.
Carnegie's Amr Hamzawy appeared on Al Jazeera TV to talk about the current crisis in the Middle East. Hamzawy discussed prospects of a national unity government in Palestine, Iran's nuclear ambitions, French-American differences regarding the war in Lebanon, America's strategic interests in the Middle East, and the confrontation between Hizbullah and Israel.
President Bush's view of Israel as a strategic ally and vision of a "new Middle East" has seen the escalation of the second intifada, the eclipse of Arafat's Fatah by the more radical Hamas, and a two-front war in Gaza and southern Lebanon. Bush's "new Middle East," has begun to look even less hospitable than the old.
Aggressive acts like the ones Hizballah and Hamas have perpetrated against Israel in recent weeks are rare against a country that has the strongest military in the region and the world's only military superpower as its chief sponsor. The raids are attributable less to U.S. engagement in Iraq, for instance, than to Washington's disengagement in recent years from the Middle East peace process.
This is a dangerous moment for the Middle East, because the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon could easily escalate to involve the broader region. Any strategy to address the present crisis must deal with the realities of the Middle East as they are now, not try to leapfrog over them by seeking to impose a grand new vision. Such a vision would be bound to fail as it did in the case of Iraq.
Over the last few decades most, if not all, Arab-Israeli crises have occurred when the United States has been either unable or unwilling to play an aggressive role as a mediator; and most have only abated after the United States has finally thrown itself into the middle of them.
The Heinrich Böll Foundation in cooperation with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosted a one-day workshop at Carnegie to explore the potential and the limits of engaging groups and movements with an Islamist platform and ideology.
Nathan Brown, a leading expert on Palestinian politics and Islamic law at the Carnegie Endowment, says that since neither Israel nor Hamas has much experience dealing with the other, what is needed is a period of "quiet diplomacy."