In 2017 the University of South Carolina in the United States invited me for a series of lectures and a closing symposium on the Arab Spring. At this seminar, I had to answer the questions of three of the leading specialists in Middle East affairs and in the presence of many students. One of the "examiners" surprised me by focusing on my vision of the situation in Syria and the reasons for my decision in 2012 to cut ties with the Syrian regime.
After the symposium ended, I understood the reason, and the man presented himself as the brother of a former head of the Israeli government, and that he headed the Israeli delegation that had been negotiating with the Syrians for ten years to ensure calm on the common border and search for understanding between the two countries.
I had heard about secret negotiations, but I thought it was rumors. Here I am in front of someone who led the ten-year negotiating team with the "reluctant" regime, which was selling to Arab peoples the last stronghold of the struggle against imperialism and Zionism. I will remember what I laughed as he said to me: We used to make copies of the Syrian delegation because we knew that we were negotiating blood from the Sunnis, and behind the curtain were those who ran the real negotiation and they were all Alawite intelligence officers.
I have no illusions about how the supporters of the Syrian dictator will receive this story, as tomorrow they will not be as poor as yesterday, neither the denial nor the justification.
Until the mid-seventies, Abdel Nasser's picture did not depart from my office, and then came the day I put it in one of the drawers. I had reached the firm conclusion that it was not dangerous for the future of the nationalist unitary project. To atone with nationalism does not mean to atone with Arabism. Therefore, in 1984 I published a book with a provocative title: “Why will the Arab feet reach the ground of Mars” (available on my website). After its release, some nationalists came to me saying, "It is time for an Arab party in Tunisia." I said why not, and I will provide you with a paper on my perception of the principles and objectives of this party.
In the paper I put the buds of the ideas I stand for today:
Our people rose up in the first wave of the Arab Spring against corruption, injustice and inheritance. Nationalists stood with Gaddafi in Libya and with Sisi in Egypt.
From that day on, I did not hear about the honorable brothers until the coup d'état took place on Bourguiba and entered Tunisia from the 1987 stage of democracy-decoration. I was not surprised to see at the time many nationalists engaging in a "unitary" party fighting within it under the supervision of intelligence, which sought to establish a liberal, progressive, and third constitutional party to guarantee Ben Ali its control over the entire political spectrum.
Then the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait came in 1990. I wrote that it was a foolish operation that would bring back the scourge of Iraq and the entire nation, and that the mother of battles would be the mother of defeats. Saddam's supporters waged against me a war no less violent than the supporters of Bashar waged against me to this day.
When our people rose up in the first wave of the Arab Spring against corruption, injustice and inheritance, the nationalists stood with Qaddafi in Libya and Sisi in Egypt, and see how they support the Syrian dictator even after spreading dirty laundry to his family. Of course, they voted against me in every election.
They say to you, but look what the “Hebrew” spring has achieved, look at the price of this “revolution.” It says who is responsible? Did the people revolt just because of the revolution, or were they pushed? Did she have to forever succumb to oppression, corruption, and hereditary rule just because your regimes unleash a loud cry against Israel and America?
They tell you, but what about NATO, Bernard Levy, the global conspiracy, ISIS, Turkey, Qatar, Condoleezza Rice and creative chaos! I keep on my mind: Do not forget the treachery of Sinbad, plot against Ali Baba, the betrayal of Shahrazad and a supplication of guilt upon you.
In truth, no one denies that the nationalists defeated colonialism and Zionism in the middle of the last century, and that they provided the people with what they are proud of to this day, that is, security, education and health. How I knew from them also are honest people who are jealous of the most jealousy of our nation, who do not have a link with the National Intelligence Service, which is more regrettable in my regret for the shameful positions you have given as a result of the absence of the courage to revise oneself.
To achieve the same right, it must be remembered that they founded the corruption and tyranny of the military class in Egypt, the sectarian community in Syria, the dictatorship of the single party and the inspiring leader and his family in Iraq and Libya, that they dealt with us as a citizen and not as a citizen, and that they bear the heavy price that our peoples paid for the revolution and the price minister The high price it pays to resist a counter-revolution without shame in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Tunisia.
Imagine the astonishment of Abdel Nasser, Ismat Seif al-Dawla and Michel Aflaq, if they were told that the Egyptian regime, which considers itself an heir to Nasserism, would besiege the Palestinians to starve in Gaza in complete coordination with the Israelis ... and the Baathist regime in Syria to ensure its communication would displace half of the Syrian people and make the beating heart of Arabism a Russian-Iranian protectorate. As for the Baathist regime in Iraq, it will be the cause of the ruin of Iraq, just as the Libyan regime will be the cause of the ruin of Libya ... and the rest of the nationalists in other countries will become the fifth wheel of tyranny and counter-revolution simply because they hate Islamists who knew where the shoulder was eaten.
Behind mass bankruptcy is wrong and a sin
As for the mistake, it is the lack of understanding that the strength of the people in the strength of their institutions, values and economies is not in the charisma or violence of a leader, that every Arab leader sees in his country a “farm” for him and his family and it is impossible to salute him unless he is given control over all the other “farms”, which is impossible . From there, waiting for unity from authoritarian regimes such as waiting for milk from the bull. Is there more evidence than the two-party struggle of the two Baath Party, which belonged to Syria and Iraq and instead of the two countries joining themselves in a silent struggle that ended with the alignment of the Syrian regime with the American invaders of Iraq?
This is how I saw them dreaming of loneliness, insisting on achieving it with the wrong tool, and I came to them one day regarding them, the image of the one who is determined to write with the spoon and eat with the pen. What salvation can you expect from people who consider the problem the solution?
As for sin, the nationalists silenced all the transgressions and corruption of tyranny, from what happened in Halabja when the regime rained Kurdish civilians with chemical weapons in 1988, and silence them in front of the massacre of Palmyra prison in Syria in 1980, and their silence in front of the facts of Sednaya prison in Syria to this day (called the human slaughterhouse), and their silence In front of the Abu Salim massacre in Libya in 1996, and their silence in front of the fourth massacre in Egypt in the summer of 2013.
The sad thing is that neither they nor before them have absorbed the biggest lesson that history has taught us is that dirty means dirty the noble purpose it claims to serve, not to mention that it dirted all before, from intellectual laziness and moral downfall, the saying that the end justifies the means.
Someone may say: What about the mistake you are making in inviting a new Arabism? Isn't the concept itself “amalgamated” with all the contradictions that made translating it into political reality impossible? Did you not make the same mistake of the old nationalists when you were searching for the transfer of a European model of the twentieth century, the European Union, just as your ancestral predecessors searched for the transfer of another European model from the nineteenth century that is the model of German and Italian unity?
There are those who have accessed disgust in the countries that were ruled - less destroyed - by nationalists to say that there is no Arab nation at all.
We understand their anger, but is ISIS a reason to atone for Islam?
For some theorists who are skeptical about the existence of an Arab nation, they should explain to us why Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria flared immediately after the outbreak of the blessed revolution in Tunisia in 2011 and did not erupt in Peru or Kazakhstan?
Isn't that because there is a spiritual, cultural, political and emotional fabric among these peoples, within which the revolution has moved, just as electricity moves within the fibers of the same network?
Behind this idea, too, is the continuation of poisoning with the Western concept of the people and the nation, as there is no presence for him of the French people except in the French state, and there is no German nation except in the German Reich. Since we have not succeeded in creating a single Arab state, it is absurd to speak of an Arab nation. The problem of these people is that they do not understand that we are among the rare nations that a state does not create, but we are among the nations that create the state after the state. Only the Indians and the Chinese share this property with us.
It is not an exaggeration to say that without Islam, the fate of the Arabs would not have been better than the fate of the Mongols. But also, had it not been for the conquerors, scholars and Arab merchants, Islam would not have attained its spread and spread, and the Arabs were the ones who carried the torch of the first centuries and transferred it to the major other Muslim nations, which continued the epic.
Compare the saga of the Arabs in the sixth century AD and the saga of the Mongols in the twelfth century. The Mongols, like the Arabs, are Bedouins and knights whose counterparts are less common, and invaders have none and nobody in front of them. Their empires exceeded all ancient and modern empires. What is left of them today? As soon as the state founded by Genghis Khan and his descendants collapsed, they disappeared from history and today they are only a few million, living on the outskirts of the Russian and Chinese empires.
Now take the Arabs. Their first central state in the Levant collapsed, and their second country in Iraq collapsed, and were invaded by the Mongols, Crusaders, Turks, and Europeans, and driven out of Andalusia, and wars and calamities ensued on them, including the rule of corrupt repressive regimes covering nationalism, nationalism, and political Islam. However, today they are four hundred million people and have twenty-two countries, and they occupy thirteen million square kilometers of space, and their language spreads against all obstacles, which makes them, language, census and space, one of the five nations that rank on the order of nations on the surface of the planet.
Why is this huge bonn in destiny? Because, unlike the Mongols, the Arabs had two basic factors for expansion and survival: a message to all of humanity, and one of the greatest languages man produced.
It is not an exaggeration to say that without Islam, the fate of the Arabs would not have been better than the fate of the Mongols. But also, had it not been for the conquerors, scholars and Arab merchants, Islam would not have attained its spread and spread, and the Arabs were the ones who carried the torch of the first centuries and transferred it to the major other Muslim nations, which continued the epic.
How wrong were the Islamists when they rejected to the Arabs their national identity, and the fact is that history is made from the rivalry of individuals, peoples and civilizations, and that this friction is a constructive and vital element, as long as it does not cross the red line of populism and racism.
How wrong nationalists when under the influence of the Western model they wanted to break with and marginalize Islam, and they were like someone who wants to enter a race car and deliberately disables the half of the engine of the car that competes with him in the first place. Thus, they left the stage for the Islamists, who knew to click on the most sensitive strings in the soul of the nation, and they and the progressives remained outside the pattern, so they were more and more in the arms of tyranny remnants to add insult to injury.
Someone said that if we were a nation that was united by culture and divided by politics and does not owe its existence to a state, what is the use of a unitary project in the first place? Indeed, the last thing that can be achieved and the last thing we need is a central state from the ocean to the Gulf, headed by the comrade, the leader who did not give birth to an Arab before or after him. But we urgently need a new Arab order that unites and unites efforts in the context of freedom, pluralism and solidarity, so that we can return from the makers of history, not its victims.
The topic today - and we are a great nation and yet we weigh nothing - raise unprecedented challenges by achieving two goals that will correct the imbalance that nationalists have noticed and failed to remedy: building a state of law, institutions, and social democracy in every country, and building an Arab federation of free peoples and independent states, starting and learning from All failed experiences of authoritarian regimes, whether national, national, or Islamic, adhere to the only two sources of this nation's strength and ensure its continuity throughout history: its religion and language.