Unrest in Arab World Could Lead to Mideast Peace

By Raanan Geberer
Originally Published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BROOKLYN — By now, everybody knows about the revolutions sweeping the Arab world, not only in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria, but in nations that most people weren’t even aware of, like Bahrain.

Everyone also knows that the Arab-Israeli conflict is one of the most burning issues in the Middle East. If it’s not the Number One problem — that “honor” probably belongs to the tension between Iran and the Arab world — it’s certainly in the top three.

Some people in the West, mainly hard-core conservatives, fear this revolutionary development and are certain that takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood is right around the corner. Maybe it is in, but maybe more democracy is around the corner instead. We’ll have to wait and see.

If the Arab regimes are transformed, at least partially, into genuine democracies, this could definitely help efforts to find a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

For years, Arab regimes and their controlled media have been emphasizing hatred of Israel 24 hours a day. Viewers of state TV stations are exposed to hysterical tirades about Israel and the Palestinians that often crosses the line into anti-Semitism. Israel is characterized as being propped only by the United States, and as an entity that is certain to fall on the “day of revenge.” The Arab leaders do this in order to take their people’s minds off the real problems in their countries. And more than 60 years after the establishment of Israel, Palestinian refugees, depending on the particular country, often are given very little or no rights from their “brother Arabs” and still are forced to live in squalid “refugee camps.”

I’m not saying that Israel is blameless. Certainly, Israel frequently violates international law and flouts U.N. resolutions by permitting settlement activity in the West Bank, by imprisoning Palestinian suspects for months without charging them, and by its continued blockade of Gaza. Israeli soldiers harass Palestinians at checkpoints on a regular basis. Even within Israel, Arab villages offer much fewer essential services than Israeli towns.

Even so, if democracy in the Arab world comes to pass, a free discussion of the issues can only help the situation. Arab leaders may come forward with their own peace initiatives rather than cynically calculating that they have more to win from peace than from a no-war, no-peace situation.

And even if Israeli leaders typically respond with their own hard-line tactics, the Israeli public may finally start questioning certain outdated assumptions that are at the heart of Israeli culture (“The Arabs respect only strength,” The non-Jewish world hates us no matter what we do”) and become more open toward peace.

For those who are sincerely interested in Arab-Israeli peace, Arab democracy can only be seen as a step forward.