For the second week running pundits commemorated the anniversary of the 1967 defeat, writes Rasha Saad For many, 40 years later, the 1967 War remains an open wound in the Arab body. "The 1967 defeat has created a qualitative shift in the path of Arab conditions," wrote Sayed Wild Abah in the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat . Wild Abah said the defeat created a setback in national renaissance from the perspective of the unionist Arab ideology. "Undoubtedly, the Nasserist experience that had attracted widespread popularity in the Arab world collapsed due to the defeat that undermined the image of a 'heroic leader and commander of the nation'. " It is true, Wild Abah argues, that many people took to the streets in Egypt and other Arab countries to protest against the resignation of former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel-Nasser, "however, there is no doubt that the defeat clearly expressed the failure of the popular revolutionary model which was endorsed by the Nasserist experience, even though the model continued to exist in several poorer versions in other Arab arenas." Another shift according to Wild Abah was the emergence of the Palestinian national movement with its particular features. After the defeat, the movement shifted from being a marginal party in the conflict to moving to the forefront of the so-called Arab liberation movement, or in other words, the driving force of leadership in the radical revolutionary transformation in Arab countries. "The Palestinian national movement has paid dearly for this Arab role that subjected it to persecution," Wild Abah contends. The pundits did not miss the coincidence of the memory of the defeat coming as the Lebanese army is engaged in a battle in the Nahr Al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp with Palestinian forces loyal to Al-Qaeda or Al-Qaeda itself. For Abdul-Rahman Al-Rashed, 40 years after the defeat, the real stigma is the Palestinian refugees. In Asharq Al-Awsat Al-Rashed wrote that there was no questioning the fairness of the Palestinian issue: land is being occupied by force and a nation is displaced. However, Al-Rashed stressed that only a few know about the inhumane aspects of the issue such as the refugees in camps that are filled with misery and despair. "They have existed for many decades, either because of long-standing indifference or giving priority to both military and political concerns over humanitarian matters," Al-Rashed wrote. What is happening in Lebanon's Nahr Al-Bared camp today is just one such example, he added. "Our insistence to lock the Palestinians in camps and treat them like animals in the name of preserving the issue is far worse a crime than Israel stealing land and causing the displacement of Palestinians," Al-Rashed charges. "No one is asking for citizenship or permanent settlement for them -- only permission to live like any other foreigner. Blame lies with the Arab League and Arab governments that took part in or kept silent about this moral scandal," Al-Rashed concluded. Hazem Saghieh in the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper wrote that the Palestinian Fatah Al-Islam group had kidnapped the Fatah movement and, therefore, the Palestinian cause and its heritage. At the same time, Islam has been hijacked. According to Saghieh, Fatah Al-Islam is not the first or last to practise such abuse and that many regimes, organisations and parties have done the same. Saghieh explains that the reproduction and spread of the phenomenon comes as a result of many factors, including the emotions Islam and Palestine elicit among people, as well as poverty, frustration, spread of illiteracy and the sense of humiliation. "It would not be an exaggeration to say that what is called politics in Arab life is nothing but a bloody game played by parties which lack political legitimacy. Due to this structural weakness, it is easy to resort to Islam and Palestine to compensate for the lack of that legitimacy, to drown that lacking in demagogue, and also to cover the inability to link politics with their national sources," Saghieh concludes. In "Forget the 1967 War! Think of this summer's war" Amir Taheri warned in Asharq Al-Awsat that with news and commentary about the 1967 Naksa dominating the media scene little attention is paid to the increasing possibility of wars in the Middle East which may come as early as this summer. Taheri explains that wars happen when a status quo becomes untenable, either because one side finds it unbearable or because another side hopes to benefit by undermining it. "Right now, the new status quo as shaped by last summer's war between Israel and Hizbullah is under threat in Lebanon." The status quo, according to Taheri, is also under threat in the Palestinian territories where what looks like a burgeoning civil war is already under way, at least in Gaza. Taheri also points out that the current avalanche of material about the 1967 six-day war has paid little attention to the fact that it came after a long period of proxy war waged by Egypt against Israel through Palestinian armed groups although the actual 1967 War was provoked by Egypt's president Gamal Abdel-Nasser, possibly egged on by his Soviet allies who hoped to destroy the Israeli nuclear programme. The question today, according to Taheri, is how long it will take before Israel decides that the cost of a long proxy war against it far outweighs that of a broader but shorter war against those who pull the strings from Damascus and ultimately Tehran. "Will the Middle East have another summer war? It's hard to say. One thing is certain: the situation in the region has reached such a dangerous level of instability that stability might not last by the end of the year," Taheri wrote.
