Opinion Gulf of misunderstanding
Jim Sillars
Jim.sillars@
holyrood.com
Just a year on from the so-called Arab spring, the free vote of people able to exercise it is producing results that make the United States, the UK and other European states, shall we say, troubled. For Israel it has become an event replete with danger. Te Arabs are voting for political Islam.
Tat comes as no surprise to people who know the history of Arab-Western relations. It has been comical to hear pundits in the media talk portentously about how the West can help the Arabs to develop their democracies. Comical when one considers that for generations, not just a few years, the key Western powers – UK, France and the United States – have used and abused the rights of Arab peoples, and backed every anti-democratic regime (including Saddam Hussein when he went to war with Iran). I can recall a business meeting in Saudi Arabia when the then ambassador Sir David Gore- Booth, said bluntly that it was the policy of the British government to back the conservative regimes in the Gulf. Tey sat on huge oil supplies. Tey were in the West’s pocket, and the last thing we wanted was for some Islamic group to take over control of that oil. Tere was the added value of that alliance between the Western democracies and the autocracies, that the latter planked a great chunk of their vast wealth in our banks and financial institutions, and they fair boosted real estate prices in the south of England and the south of France. But the reason for the rise of political Islam, and its triumph in the newly liberated Arab lands (at least some of them, because not all are liberated), goes way back beyond recent times. It starts with World War One, when the Arabs of the Hejaz (now the western province of Saudi Arabia, where Mecca and Medina are located), were promised independence if they joined the allies in fighting the Turks. No sooner was that promise made than it was broken, when Britain and France made a secret deal to divide up the newly liberated Arab lands between them. France got what we now know as Syria and Lebanon, and Britain got Iraq and mastery of the Gulf, and Palestine, while it effectively ruled Egypt, nominally independent, but under British control. France’s way was to rule directly, imposing
French government and culture wherever possible. Te Brits were different. We ruled
his position endorsed by a rigged referendum. In Palestine, as the Arabs revolted in the 1930s against the rising number of Jewish settlers, the British dished out collective punishment. As Tom Negev, the noted Israeli historian noted: “the men were gathered in an improvised enclosure or ‘cage,’ as the British called it . . . the soldiers went from house to house searching for weapons. Tey would break down doors, smash furniture, and ransack pantries, rippling open sacks of rice, flour, and sugar and strewing the contents all over the floor. Tey would empty cans of oil. Teir assumption was that people were hiding weapons in sacks of flour or cans of oil. But the soldiers also acted maliciously. ‘Tey deliberately mixed the flour and oil and poured it all over the beds,’ one villager remembers.” At one stage, the British held 9,000
“For Arabs history does not repeat itself as farce, but as more pain”
through the local sheiks, but we ruled nonetheless. In the Gulf, the Royal Navy, to teach molesters of vessels a lesson, burned Ras al–Khaimah (now part of the UAE) three times. Kuwait was nominally independent, but the emir could not see any non-British foreigner without the British ambassador being present. Te ruler of Dubai was handled by the British political officer operating from Bahrain, who doled out £250,000 to the sheikh. Te British decided that the old sultan of Oman was becoming an embarrassment, and engineered a coup to put his son in charge. Iraq didn’t exist as a state until the British
invented it. Tey put the son of the emir of Hejaz on its throne, although he had never visited the place until he was made king, with
Palestinians in jail without trial, and hung 30 of them. Tey transferred from India, Sir Charles Tegart, a senior policeman, who set up a special centre to train interrogators in torture. Not much has changed for the Arabs of Palestine. Te smashing in of doors, and malicious damage, was the recent experience of Iraqis at the hand of US forces. For Arabs history does not repeat itself as farce, but as more pain. Humiliation was the Arab diet at the hands of the West, until Nasser came along with his brand of Arab nationalism. All hope in that crashed in the 1967 six-day war, when Israel tanked, both metaphorically and actually, a succession of Arab armies led by Egypt. Te old sheiks and emirs, who hated Nasser, were able to re-assert their authority, and Western dictation resumed. Nationalism failed, traditional rule failed. In that vacuum, while the West was backing the failed sheiks and emirs, Arabs found not just solace but renewal in Islam. Tat resurgence in belief that Islam is the foundation of getting rid of the humiliation and Western control has been evident for the past 25 years. Western leaders were blind to it. All of us better open our eyes. Political Islam’s time has come, and we had better respect the Arab peoples’ choice and let them develop their own societies in accordance with their own values. Te time for Western preaching, much of it hypocritical, is over. Tat is a new factor for Israel too. Te treaty ending the conflict with Egypt has been described as a ‘cold peace’. Te president who signed it, Sadat, was assassinated. While world leaders flocked to his funeral, it was largely ignored by Egyptians. With Israel continuing to treat the Palestinians like dirt, it is hard to believe that political Islam, once it establishes itself in Egypt’s government, will continue as Israel’s uneasy partner.
30 January 2012
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