Doaa El-Bey and Rasha Saad write on the wobbly steps to law Egypt is taking as a result of Mubarak's trial and the Arab apocalypse known as Syria The ongoing military assault by the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad on the peaceful uprising of his own people is the focus of pundits this week. In the London-based daily Asharq Al-Awsat Tareq Al-Homayed lashed out at the passive Arab reaction towards the "defenceless Syrian people". "The Arabs should not be satisfied with the positions they have taken on the brutality of the Bashar Al-Assad regime in Syria," Al-Homayed wrote. He added that as the Syrian regime escalated its operations "its brutality has gone far beyond anything reasonable or acceptable as Al-Assad is continuing his military operation against the Syrians and all of their cities." Al-Homayed said that on Sunday alone the regime killed at least 30 civilians including 26 in the coastal city of Lattakia. Al-Homayed called on the Arabs to take several steps including withdrawing their ambassadors from Damascus and suspending Syria's membership in the League of Arab States. He drew attention to the fact that the Arabs, by their silence, are falling into a moral dilemma. When the Lebanon 2006 summer war broke out the Arabs rushed to persuade the international community of the necessity to stop the Israeli aggression and the war was stopped relatively quickly. "Now, the Assad regime has continued to attack the Syrians and their cities by land, sea and air for five months or more without anybody putting a stop to it," Al-Homayed wrote. Also in Asharq Al-Awsat, Hussein Shobokshi wrote that "even the most optimistic of observers couldn't have imagined such a closing scene for the Syrian regime." According to Shobokshi, the popular uprising there is burning with determination and enthusiasm, as internal support grows alongside international approval and blessing. In 'End of a cowardly regime' Shobokshi wrote that the Syrian regime was never, at any point in its history, honest, clear or capable of confronting its problems. "It has always acted with cowardice and deception when dealing with the issues facing it," Shobokshi wrote. Shobokshi maintains that all methods of suppression and killing have failed, and that all means of atrocities employed by the Syrian army against its own people have proved unsuccessful. "Al-Assad is a ruler whose time is up, a ruler who has lost all credibility, all respect, and all humanity. His departure has become inevitable," Shobokshi insists. "We are reading the last chapter of the story of a cowardly regime, and I believe it will have a happy and blessed ending for the Syrian revolution and the entire world," Shobokshi wrote. In the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat George Semaan focussed on the stance of Turkey vis-à-vis the Syrian dilemma. Semaan wrote that those blaming Turkey for coordinating with Washington are forgetting it cannot risk allowing the superpowers to monopolise the building of a new regional order. He reminded readers that Turkey, along with Brazil, tried to distance the sanctions' sword away from Iran about a year ago. "It did so to maintain the relations it built with its southern neighbour, but also because it is aware of the meaning of the eruption of a new confrontation in the region and the damage that this could cause at the level of its political influence and economic and commercial interests." Also, Semaan noted, the Justice and Development Party wants to "shed light on Turkey's unique position and strategic value for the West, and especially the European Union, through a diplomacy trying to render Turkey a hub of stability in a region struggling with all sorts of troubles, from Afghanistan to Pakistan, Iraq and the rest of the Arab region." Also in Al-Hayat, Mohamed El-Ashab wrote that President Al-Assad did not translate the pullout of his forces from Lebanon into concrete action. "He acted as if the pullout was nothing more but a redeployment subjected to the logic that preceded the imposing of international and regional pressure." But according to El-Ashab, the regime's greatest fault is when "new changes knocked on the doors of many Arab capitals with unprecedented force, it seemed that someone was not listening to the knocks." He cited Morocco and Jordan as two countries which sought change to escape an uprising. The Moroccan king worked on openness, namely by opening the eyes of the Moroccans to the major violations of human rights that characterised his father's rule. Also Jordanian King Abdullah worked on improving his country's record without the need for revealing the shady areas. But according to El-Ashab, the Syrian president "flipped the equation and practised the same violations that characterised his father's term when dealing with the uprising of Hama." The features of the road, El-Ashab laments, were lost between reverting to violence and its overuse against the peaceful protests, and responding to the logic of listening to the concerns of the street. "The current events are nothing but an indication that it is now time to pay the bill for not listening to the pulse of the roaring street," El-Ashab wrote. In Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Abdel-Bari Atwan wrote that the Syrian uprising was highly unlikely to come to an end soon "for the Syrian people are determined to restore their dignity and liberty." At the same time, the Syrian authorities will not conceivably retreat from their bloody military and security adventure despite the intensive Arab and international pressure currently targeting Syria from various parties. Atwan fears that the situation in Syria may develop into a sectarian civil war "particularly because numerous parties, both foreign and local, are strongly pushing in this direction." "If such a war erupts, it will not only burn Syria but the entire region," Atwan warns. "Will the Syrian authorities learn a lesson, halt the carnage, and prevent this horrible scenario from occurring, and so open the way for reforms of which it talks about but which we do not see? This is what is hoped for," Atwan concludes.
