Doaa El-Bey and Rasha Saad monitor the still reverberating events following the deadly shootings along the Egyptian-Israeli border and the imminent fall of the Libyan leader Pundits focussed this week on the fallout of the Arab Spring or "the political earthquake" shaking the region. In the London-based daily Asharq Al-Awsat, Tariq Al-Homayed wrote that this year Zein Al-Abidine bin Ali fell from power followed by Hosni Mubarak. "Today is the turn of Gaddafi, who will be the third leader to fall this year, and the fourth over recent years if we include Saddam Hussein," Al-Homayed wrote. Al-Homayed noted that also Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, and Bashar Al-Assad in Syria are both strong candidates to fall from power for several reasons, "the most important of which is that very few people in our region are actually learning their lesson." In "The world after Gaddafi," Al-Homayed wrote that with the fall of Gaddafi which is about to take place at any moment "the world will be a much better place without the colonel, his regime and his sons." According to Al-Homayed, it also means that "the Arab region has begun to get rid of its leaders and regimes that brought nothing but destruction and devastation to the region and hampered development." Al-Homayed adds that it means that the international community will be in a better position to deal with Yemen and Syria "even if the situation in Sanaa is still better than the situation in Damascus, as long as Saleh is still in Saudi Arabia, which indicates that some kind of deal can be reached at any time." In the Lebanese daily Assafir, Talal Salman wrote that the end of Muammar Gaddafi should have come as tragic, heartbreaking and humiliating. "The Libyan leader has raised himself above all men, emperors, kings and presidents. He decided that his mission is close to a prophet. Gaddafi has lived a very long time outside history. He invented a history onto himself and imposed it on his people," Salman wrote. In his article Salman noted that unfortunately Libya had to choose between oppression of its own ruler and its liberation by the occupation. "The leader of Al-Fateh revolution eliminated it when he robbed the freedom of the country and its people," Salman wrote. Dated on 1 September, "Gaddafi's Fateh revolution comes this year as the Libyan land is stained with blood and its treasures and fortunes open to occupiers to inherit in the name of liberation," Salman lamented. The deteriorating situation in Syria was also highlighted. In his article 'Bashar, leave,' Hussein Shobokshi wrote that the more international stances towards the Syrian regime intensified, in both quantity and quality, in support of the revolutionaries' demands, the more the Al-Assad regime became more stubborn and obstinate in its repression and brutality against its own people. Amidst such mobility, Shobokshi notes, an "odd incident" which occurred in Israel at the hands of "an anonymous group from Gaza" who carried out an attack in the Israeli town of Eilat, from Egyptian soil. Shobokshi explains that armed Palestinian troops, are known affiliates of Syria "and mobilising them at this particular time is reminiscent of when former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles on Israel, in a last-minute act of resistance." Shobokshi reminded readers that the Syrian revolution's poet, Ibrahim Qashoosh, who was slaughtered by the "bloodthirsty" Syrian regime when his throat was slit and his body was thrown into Al-Assi River, once sang Now Leave Bashar. "Now the entire world is repeating the same song after the issue turned into a global political cause," Shobokshi maintained. "We must put an end to a regime that has brought shame and embarrassment to the world, and now is the time for it to go," Shobokshi wrote. In the London-based daily Al-Hayat, Mustafa Zein, wrote that "the United States has finished building its new-yet-old file against Syria and its political regime, a file as old as the crises and the conflict in and over the Middle East." Zein wrote that Washington did not manage throughout the past period, whether under Al-Assad senior or Al-Assad junior, to breach Syria's regional alliances with Iran and Turkey, "both of which found in Damascus their gateway to the heart of the Arab world." According to Zein, Washington also failed to influence Syrian public opinion "which clung to its regime's views, opposed to Israel and its allies." The phase of exhausting the Syrian regime, and exhausting Syria with it, Zein argues, will last quite long. And the United States, adds Zein, has already achieved some of what it sought after without war: "it has formed an international and regional alliance opposed to Damascus in order to engulf Syria in its internal problems and keep it away from influencing its surroundings. And it does not matter whether the regime falls or remains engulfed in its isolation." In its editorial, the Saudi Al-Watan newspaper wrote that the recent incidents on the Egyptian-Israeli borders which included the bus attack in Eilat, the Israeli reaction with an assault on Gaza and the Israeli killing of five Egyptian soldiers in Egyptian territory "took the region and the Israeli Palestinian issue into serious and dangerous conjunctions." "The region is at this time politically fragile to a great extent," the editorial wrote. "Any risks may result in acceleration in the events making any force unable to control the course of things," the editorial read. The editorial also warned that with a number of the regional countries ready for escalation there is a great need for diplomatic and rational voices. "It is important to strip Hamas or any Palestinian faction of having the pretext to wage a war or escalate the situation. The urgent meeting of members of the Arab League should be supported on the international and Arab levels," the editorial said. Bottom Lines: "With the fall of Gaddafi which is about to take place at any moment the world will be a much better place without the colonel, his regime and his sons." Tariq Al-Homayed, Asharq Al-Awsat "Washington did not manage throughout the past period, whether under Al-Assad senior or Al-Assad junior, to breach Syria's regional alliances with Iran and Turkey, both of which found in Damascus their gateway to the heart of the Arab world." Mustafa Zein, Al-Hayat "Gaddafi has lived a very long time outside history. He invented a history onto himself and imposed it on his people." Talal Salman, Assafir
