I have seen alot of discussion about the Israeli/Palestinian problem, and I want to offer up an article about the Arab world I think you folks might enjoy. July 3, 2002 Arabs at the Crossroads By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN NY Times President Bush was right to declare that the Palestinians need to produce decent governance before they can get a state. Too bad, however, that he didn't say that it's not only the Palestinians who need radical reform of their governance — it's most of the Arab world. By coincidence, though, some other important folks had the courage to say that just this week: The U.N. Development Program, which published, along with the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, a brutally honest Arab Human Development Report yesterday analyzing the three main reasons the Arab world is falling off the globe. (The G.D.P. of Spain is greater than that of all 22 Arab states combined.) In brief, it's due to a shortage of freedom to speak, innovate and affect political life, a shortage of women's rights and a shortage of quality education. If you want to understand the milieu that produced bin Ladenism, and will reproduce it if nothing changes, read this report. While the 22 Arab states currently have 280 million people, soaring birthrates indicate that by 2020 they will have 410 to 459 million. If this new generation is not to grow up angry and impoverished, in already overcrowded cities, the Arab world will have to overcome its poverty — which is not a poverty of resources but a "poverty of capabilities and poverty of opportunities," the report argues. Though the report pays homage to the argument that the Arab-Israeli conflict and Israeli occupation have been both a cause and an excuse for lagging Arab development, it refuses to stop with that explanation. To begin with, it notes that "the wave of democracy that transformed governance in most of Latin America and East Asia in the 1980's and early 1990's has barely reached the Arab states. This freedom deficit undermines human development." Using a standard freedom index, the report notes that out of seven key regions of the world the Arab region has the lowest freedom score — which includes civil liberties, political rights, a voice for the people, independence of the media and government accountability. In too many Arab states women can't vote, hold office or get access to capital for starting businesses. "Sadly, the Arab world is largely depriving itself of the creativity and productivity of half its citizens," the report says of Arab women. On education, the report reveals that the whole Arab world translates about 300 books annually — one-fifth the number that Greece alone translates; investment in research is less than one-seventh the world average; and Internet connectivity is lower than in sub-Saharan Africa. In spite of progress in school enrollment, 65 million Arab adults are still illiterate, almost two-thirds of them women. No wonder half the Arab youths polled said they wanted to emigrate. The report concludes that "What the region needs to ensure a bright future for coming generations is the political will to invest in Arab capabilities and knowledge, particularly those of Arab women, in good governance, and in strong cooperation between Arab nations. . . . The Arab world is at a crossroads. The fundamental choice is whether its trajectory will remain marked by inertia . . . and by ineffective policies that have produced the substantial development challenges facing the region; or whether prospects for an Arab renaissance, anchored in human development, will be actively pursued." Well said — and here's the best part: The report was written by a "group of distinguished Arab intellectuals" who believed that only an "unbiased, objective analysis" could help the "Arab peoples and policy-makers in search of a brighter future." There is a message in this bottle for America: For too many years we've treated the Arab world as just a big dumb gas station, and as long as the top leader kept the oil flowing, or was nice to Israel, we didn't really care what was happening to the women and children out back — where bad governance, rising unemployment and a stifled intellectual life were killing the Arab future. It's time to stop kidding ourselves. Getting rid of the Osamas, Saddams and Arafats is necessary to change this situation, but it's hardly sufficient. We also need to roll up our sleeves and help the Arabs address all the problems out back. The bad news is that they've dug themselves a mighty deep hole there. The good news, as this report shows, is that we have liberal Arab partners for change. It's time we teamed up with them, and not just with the bums who got them into this mess.
Other Arab news... http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/03/international/middleeast/03SUIC.html Gingerly, Arabs Question Suicide Bombings By JAMES BENNET JERUSALEM, July 2 - It has been muffled by Israel's latest military offensive in the West Bank and the Bush administration's demands for the ouster of Yasir Arafat, but a debate is under way among Palestinians over suicide bombing. Criticism of such attacks is made in code and pitched to Palestinian self-interest rather than broader moral concerns. The critics are trying to avoid alienating Palestinians who feel that any weapon is legitimate when turned against Israelis, whom they view as stealing their land and using overwhelming force to keep it. Like President Bush's demand for democratic change and new leaders, the criticism of suicide bombing cuts to the heart of competing Palestinian visions for statehood, of the proper means for achieving it, and of the deference that should be paid to Israeli or American public opinion. ``You have to appeal to people's self-interest, in terms of what works and what doesn't work,'' said Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian legislator from Ramallah. Dr. Ashrawi was among 55 Palestinian politicians and intellectuals who published an unusual appeal to fellow Palestinians on June 19 in the Arabic-language newspaper Al Quds. It called for a reassessment of ``military operations that target civilians in Israel'' and urged those behind them to ``stop pushing our youth to carry out these operations.'' The letter said the attacks were not ``producing any results except confirming the hatred, malice and loathing between the two peoples'' and endangering ``the possibility that the two peoples will live side by side in peace in two neighboring states.'' The day the advertisement was published, a suicide bomber killed six people at a Jerusalem bus stop. That and the new Israeli offensive into the West Bank, begun after another suicide bombing just the day before, shouldered the development aside. But among Palestinians, the appeal reverberated in conversations and the Arabic news media. It continued to run in Al Quds for several days, gathering more than 500 backers, some through the Internet. A rebuttal was published elsewhere, calling for the use of ``all ways and all means'' of ``armed struggle.'' It gained about 150 signatures. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, a leader of the Islamic group Hamas, bitterly denounced the signers of the first petition, which he called ``the appeal to declare war on the Palestinian resistance.'' Despite such strong criticism, none of the original petitioners have reported any threats. Even some Palestinian politicians who said they opposed attacks on civilians shied away from the petition, calling it one-sided for focusing on Palestinian attacks. President Bush has denounced suicide attackers as ``murderers.'' Yet even signers of the appeal balked at directly criticizing the bombers, who are called martyrs but are revered in nationalist as well as religious terms, pitied as desperate victims or romanticized as patriots who strike back against Israeli tanks with their only weapons their own bodies. This help explains why, though a narrow majority of Palestinians supports suicide bombing, a far broader majority opposes arresting those behind the attacks. ``There is a global culture of that, of how sweet it is to die for your liberty,'' Dr. Ashrawi said. ``You can find quotations from the American revolution.'' She said that although she opposed any violence against civilians, it was no time ``to take the high moral ground'' on the subject of suicide bombing, with Israeli forces holding hundreds of thousands of Palestinians under curfew in the West Bank. ``We should make it a political debate,'' she said. Some signers of the petition raised the concern that the Israeli military operation was further radicalizing Palestinians and undercutting their message. But Israel says suicide bombing has forced its action in the West Bank. Today Israeli forces continued to operate in seven of eight Palestinian cities and towns, rounding up suspects in what the army called a continuing hunt for militants. In Hebron, the army lifted the curfew to allow students to take exams, then detained about 300 students at one college for questioning, witnesses said. Leaders of the peace camp in Israel heard in the original appeal a call for a halt to all violence, a halt to the intifada - the uprising - itself. ``What they are saying is really, `Stop the violence,''' said Galia Golan, a leader of the group Peace Now. But the appeal was more narrowly tailored than that, not using the word ``suicide'' and referring only to attacks on ``civilians in Israel.'' That is understood by Palestinian as referring only to pre-1967 Israel and not to the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel occupied in 1967. Palestinians overwhelmingly support attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers in those areas, arguing that such attacks amount to legal resistance. Regarding all of historical Palestine as occupied, Hamas renounces any negotiated settlement that results in a two-state solution. But most Palestinians, including Mr. Arafat, say they seek a state only in the West Bank and Gaza. Dr. Khalil Shikaki, a pollster based in Ramallah, said support for attacks on soldiers and settlers in the occupied territories was ``almost reaching the point of consensus, more than 90 percent.'' But suicide attacks within pre-1967 Israel appeared to be losing support, he said. In a poll in December, he said, 58 percent of the Palestinian respondents said they supported such attacks. By May, that figure had slipped to 52 percent, though fully 86 percent of Palestinians opposed arresting those carrying out such attacks. The poll had a margin of sampling error of three percentage points. Dr. Shikaki called the published appeal ``a very important step in legitimizing the debate and taking it to the public level.'' Yet the leaders urging this reassessment are approaching the subject gingerly. Dr. Sari Nusseibeh, the president of Al Quds University and the representative in Jerusalem of the Palestine Liberation Organization, appeared June 29 on the Al Jazeera network with a leader of Hamas and the mother of a Palestinian who had carried out a suicidal attack on a Gaza settlement. Dr. Nusseibeh, a professor of philosophy, emphasized that ``there is general agreement that we naturally support resistance in general,'' according to a transcript provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute. But he argued that there was a difference between ``sacrifice of one's life for defense'' and ``sacrifice of one's life in an attack.''
