How justified is the wave of optimism now sweeping over the Middle East, asks Mohamed Sid-Ahmed Sharon announced that Israel has reached a "historic opportunity to achieve peace with the Palestinians in 2005", and that his government is determined to implement its disengagement plan from Gaza and pull out the eight thousand settlers there before the end of 2005. But this sudden optimism rings somewhat hollow, given his insistence on pushing ahead with construction of the controversial security fence around Gaza and his adoption of a policy of disengagement rather than, and in open opposition to, a policy of peace. If Sharon is really serious about achieving a peace settlement within such an ambitious deadline, he should not be pursuing a policy aimed at physically separating Palestinians and Israelis. Instead, he should be considering more constructive options, such as Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's initiative calling for a complete peace in exchange for Israel's withdrawal from all the territories occupied in 1967, which was unanimously adopted by the Beirut Arab summit in the late 1990s. As envisaged in the initiative, peace would be based on the complete elimination of mutual enmity, not on further stoking the flames of mutual distrust and suspicion by erecting a concrete barrier between the two peoples. The logic of Sharon's security fence, condemned as illegal by the International Court of Justice, is in direct opposition to a logic of peaceful coexistence. The cause of peace is not helped by the mystery surrounding Arafat's death. In the absence of a positive diagnosis by his treating doctors of the cause of death, both sides have come forward with their own theories. The Palestinian theory that he was poisoned is countered by the Israeli theory that he died of AIDS. It seems Sharon's attempt to sully the image of the late Palestinian leader are continuing even after his death. But the whispering campaign serves a more immediate purpose in that it discourages the investigation into the cause of death from delving too deeply into the possibility that he was poisoned. Meanwhile, Arafat's death is being hailed by Israel and its allies as providing a widow of opportunity for the resumption of the peace process, as though he alone was responsible for its failure. We are now required to believe that the most acute contradiction in the Middle East was the one between Arafat and his closest aides, and that his disappearance from the scene will pave the way for these aides, notably Abu Mazen and Qurei, to reach a deal with Israel. For Sharon, Arafat's very existence was an insurmountable obstacle to peace, and there could be no prospect of reaching a settlement with the Palestinians on Israel's terms -- the only "peace" Sharon is ready to contemplate -- while he was around. Whether he took active steps to remove his nemesis from the scene or not remains an open question, but the possibility of poison cannot be discounted. After all, this would not be the first time Israel resorts to poisoning its enemies, most notoriously with its recent attempt to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. Israel's highly advanced -- and secretive -- scientific establishment is known to have made huge strides in all scientific domains, including the development of untraceable poisons like the one that may have been used on Arafat, and other chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. The Sharon government makes no secret of its intention to hunt down and kill Palestinian activists it brands as terrorists. Arafat, accused by Sharon of masterminding terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, was placed at the top of its hit list. In other words, the sentence of death had already been pronounced against him, only the date remained to be determined. It is strange that the contradiction between Arafat on the one hand and Abu Mazen and Qurei on the other should be portrayed as the deepest in the whole region while Sharon's contradictions with Peres are assumed to be negligible. For such an assumption to be credible, the internal cohesiveness of the parties headed by the two men must be assured, which is far from being the case. Sharon is facing strong opposition from rebels within the Likud, most notably from Netanyahu, while Peres has equally acute differences with leading members of the Labour Party, most notably with Yossi Beilin, one of the architects of the Geneva accord setting guidelines for an overall solution of the Palestinian problem. As they embark on their second term of cohabitation, both Sharon and Peres have an interest in downplaying their differences and presenting a united front to the world. However, this does not mean that the very real contradictions between them, on the differences each has with prominent members of his own party, will miraculously disappear. The sands of political alliances in the region are shifting dramatically and the situation, including the nature of the various contradictions in play and their potential impact on future developments, needs to be carefully analysed. With the region caught in a tangled web of contradictions and confrontations, the question that is, through the mechanisms of democracy. Any talk of democracy in the region today is linked to the Bush administration's Greater Middle East project. Why the need to create a new geopolitical entity by artificially expanding the geographical boundaries of the traditional Middle East with the addition of the word "greater"? Is the term "Middle East" alone defective because it restricts the region to the Arabs and excludes a number of non-Arab Muslim countries like Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. Does the notion of a "Greater" Middle East presuppose that democratising the region requires the addition of non-Islamic countries to the list of Middle East Arab countries; in other words, the dilution of the notion of pan-Arab nationalism in a wider context of extended Middle-Easternism, or even of Euro-Mediterraneanism? A question worth asking in this connection is whether the QIZ is the economic expression of the emerging geopolitical entity that would bring together Egypt, the United States and Israel? In the light of such a network of contradictions, a clear picture of the relationship between democracy and Islam must be further developed. In a way, this issue is related to the hot debate over whether change can be imposed from outside or whether it must emanate from each society according to its values and culture. It is necessary to underscore in this connection that change is not always and in all conditions a positive phenomenon. To qualify as such, change must be in the direction of progress. Which brings us to the question of how progress should be identified. For example, does being "progressive" run counter to the tenets of the Salafiya Islamic reform movement? Does embracing tradition and clinging to one's cultural specificity necessarily entail rejecting progress or can the two notions be reconciled? Can democracy provide the right framework for a debate conducted in accordance with the requirements of social peace? A key issue of our times is how to strike a balance between progress and tradition in a globalised world where the Information Revolution has brought down barriers preventing the flow of ideas and the exchange of views between societies. I have never been an advocate of Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilisations" theory, first advanced some two decades ago. The theory assumes that wars cannot be brought to an end because the clash of civilisations is in the very nature of civilisation itself. Huntington made this statement long before 9/11 triggered the current contradiction between Islam and the Judeo-Christian world. The reason I rejected Huntington's theory is his postulate that the movement of history is determined by the civilisation factor, that is, the domain of ideas, not economic and social factors. This is an over- simplification which needs to be further scrutinised and corrected -- an issue to which we will devote our next article.
