Two events, occurring only a few days apart, reflect the magnitude of contradictions at diverse levels in the regional interplay. The first was King Salman's announcement, during his visit to Egypt in early April, of the Egyptian-Saudi agreement to construct a bridge between the two countries. Many read this as an encouraging sign of a serious intent to forge a strategic relationship between the two most important Arab countries. It is widely believed that such a relationship is urgently needed at this time, as a means to rescue the Arab regional order from the deep chasm into which it has fallen. The second event was Binyamin Netanyahu's decision to convene a special Israeli cabinet meeting on the Golan Heights. Many regard that meeting, the first time it has occurred since the Israeli occupation of that part of Syrian territory in 1967, not just as a provocative and insulting act, but also as further proof that Israel has begun to behave as if the Arab regional order is already dead and buried, and that Tel Aviv now has the right to demand its share of the legacy of “the deceased”. That such crucial and contradictory events could occur almost simultaneously underscores the state of confusion in the Middle East and drives home how difficult it is to predict what direction patterns of interplay in this region will take in the future. On the one hand, there are many indications that the Palestinian cause no longer has a place on Arab agendas that are packed with so many other issues. On the other, there is a strong belief in many Arab circles that Iran is the main source of threat to Arab national security and that confronting it requires forging new regional alliances in which Israel would be allowed to play an active role. Such determination to marginalise the Palestinian cause and to ignore Israeli expansionist tendencies naturally calls into doubt the seriousness of calls to revive the Arab regional order given that the very existence, evolution and fate of this order has been intrinsically linked with the Palestinian cause and defying the ambitions of the Zionist project in the region. There is abundant historical evidence of this correlation. Awareness of the threat posed by the Zionist movement when it was nearing the realisation of its dream to establish a Jewish state in Palestine galvanised Arab governments into establishing the Arab League. The cause of the Palestinian people occupied a central place in the preparatory consultations for this organisation's establishment. Its charter includes a special annex dedicated to Palestine. The Arab League Council opposed the partition resolution when it was discussed in the UN General Assembly, although it was adopted as the result of intensive US pressure. It was the Palestinian cause that prompted the first Arab summit during which the Arab League Council resolved, unhesitatingly, to wage war in order to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine and the consequent uprooting of the majority Palestinian population there. The Arab defeat in the 1948 war had far-ranging impacts on subsequent developments in the region. In fact, it was one of the chief factors that paved the way for Arab military regimes to reach power in many countries. True, the Palestinian cause suffered as the result of the actions of some Arab governments in the post-1948 period, especially after neighbouring Arab states signed the 1949 truce agreement and Transjordan agreed to annex the West Bank into the “Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan”, while Gaza was placed under the authority of the Egyptian administration. However, the conflict between Arab countries as a whole and Israel intensified because the Palestinian cause had become a collective Arab responsibility. Indeed, it is in this context that we can understand the Arab governments' resolve to sign the Joint Defence and Economic Cooperation agreement in April 1950 and the resolution adopted by the Arab League Council, that same year, prohibiting any member state from recognising or entering into separate negotiations with Israel. This can have only one meaning: the Arab regional order, from the outset, was determined to create a regulatory framework to ensure that the handling of the Israel question remained within the bounds of the needs and requirements of a comprehensive and collective confrontation. Arab commitment to that framework was instrumental in sustaining the cohesion of the Arab regional order for decades, in spite of many crises and successive wars. Moreover, decline and collapse set in only after Arab countries succumbed to the trap of separate agreements with Israel. While I can understand some of the anxiety that has arisen in response to increased Iranian involvement in the affairs of Arab states, I believe that the blame for this falls more on ruling Arab regimes than on Iran. Were it not for the reluctance of these regimes to bear their historic responsibility for the Palestinian cause and their negligence in restraining the Israeli expansionist drive for so long, Iranian influence could never have penetrated so extensively and deeply into the Arab region. The eruption of the Iranian revolution only months after Egypt signed a separate peace treaty with Israel was one of the oddest ironies in modern history. One of the first actions of that revolution, once it established itself, was to expel Israel's ambassador from Tehran and hand over the premises of its embassy to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Tehran then focussed its energies on building up Hizbullah in Lebanon, following the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982, and it increased these efforts after Israel succeeded in driving the PLO out of South Lebanon, forcing the PLO leadership into exile in Tunisia and securing the appointment of a Lebanese president committed to signing a peace treaty with Israel at gunpoint. As Hizbullah increased in strength as a resistance organisation fighting the Israeli occupation in South Lebanon, as a succession of intifadas erupted in the West Bank and Gaza and Hamas and the Islamic Jihad emerged as Palestinian resistance organisations, and as the Iran-Iraq war grew fiercer, the region as a whole began to become polarised between two camps. One paraded beneath the banner of “resistance” and the other beneath the banner of “diplomatic settlement”. The first camp was led by Iran, the other by Egypt. When the Iran-Iraq war ended, the road was clear for the return of the Arab League to its original headquarters in Cairo and the general impression was that the “diplomacy” camp would prevail. Suddenly, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait threw everything into confusion for a while. But when the smoke cleared, developments moved even more strongly the same direction as before. As a result of Saddam's folly, the US spearheaded a massive military intervention culminating in the “liberation” of Kuwait. Then followed the Madrid Conference, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Washington's rise to the throne of uncontested leader of a unipolar order. Against the backdrop of that sudden shift in international and regional balances of power, Yasser Arafat found himself compelled to sign the Oslo Accords. The PLO had thus fallen into the separate peace trap and the immune system of the Arab regional order began to weaken further. Three major scenes of history sum up what has become of the Arab order since the abandonment of the Palestinian cause and the fight against Zionist expansionism. The first occurred in Egypt and is epitomised by the assassination of Anwar Al-Sadat. The “hero of war and peace”, the president of the largest Arab state, was assassinated not long after he signed the first separate peace treaty with Israel and only a few months before Israel completed its withdrawal from Sinai. It is interesting to contemplate what has become of Sinai today. The semi-disarmed peninsula that was restored to Egyptian sovereignty three decades ago has once again become a theatre of war in which Egyptian blood is being shed, but in a confrontation against a different enemy. The second occurred in Palestine and is epitomised by the assassination [[QUERY]] of Yasser Arafat. The symbol of the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian resistance, who had been incarcerated in his Ramallah compound for several years, was assassinated in spite of the fact that he had signed the Oslo Accords. Today, more than two decades since Oslo was signed, the Palestinian people are still the victims of economic blockade, dispossession and displacement, arbitrary arrest and targeted killings, and all the other cruelties and injustices of an ongoing occupation. Meanwhile, Israeli settlement expansion continues to gobble up Palestinian land and property, and, moreover, the Palestinian Authority is not only forced to look on, but obliged to coordinate on security with Israel. The third scene is epitomised by Bashar Al-Assad. The leader of Arab opponents of peace with Israel on Israeli conditions is now caught between two wars: one against a portion of his people who revolted against him, the other against terrorists that are still flowing into Syria from abroad in large numbers. The wars have destroyed the “heart of pan-Arab nationalism” — Syria — and displaced half of its population. In this context, by convening the first-ever cabinet session on the Syrian Golan Heights and proclaiming its intent to hold on to it “forever”, Israel evidently wants to deliver a message to the Arab people to the effect that those who sign separate treaties with it, regardless of the compromises they made and losses they sustained, are better off than rejectionists who championed resistance. Anarchy seethes in every corner of the Arab world today as a direct consequence of the implantation of Israel into the centre of the region. Iranian infiltration into Arab affairs would never have been possible if Arab regimes had not abandoned the fight against the Zionist project. By the same token, the Arab regional order has no hope of revival unless it is prepared to rehabilitate the Palestinian cause and resist the expansionist and racist Zionist enterprise. The writer is a professor of political science at Cairo University.
