By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed Although the advent of a new millennium is without doubt momentous in and of itself, no extraordinary event is expected to mark the first day of the crossing into the third millennium, save the possible breakdown of the world pool of computers not programmed to deal with dates beyond 1999. Moreover, the calendar according to which the advent of the third millennium will be celebrated at the stroke of midnight on 31 December is the Western Christian calendar, which concerns only a portion of humanity, albeit that portion which includes the most powerful states standing at the apex of the present unipolar world order. Still, there is no denying that a new millennium is always an opportunity to reappraise the past and contemplate how best to cope with the challenges of the future. For the Arabs, however rich their ancient history, a reappraisal of the past would have to begin with the immediate past, more specifically, with the punitive raids launched by American and British forces against Iraq. Not only should we try and understand the significance of the event, we should ask ourselves why the Arab states are unable to convene a summit to ensure a common stand towards such a hostile act towards an Arab people. Moving further back in time, we should look at how the Arab-Israeli conflict has evolved and how Israel has managed to ensure its relative security and tranquillity despite the hostility of its Arab environment, thanks to its success in 'displacing' the most acute contradictions in the region from those between Israel on the one hand and all its Arab neighbours on the other to those which divide the Arab parties among themselves. So far, the Arabs have adopted a largely defensive posture in face of this aggressive Israeli strategy. It is time they began playing by the rules of a game at which Israel seems to excel, that is, hit back by devising a counter-strategy aimed at shifting the most acute contradictions out of their own ranks into those of the Israelis. For the future of the Arab-Israeli conflict will be determined to a very large extent by how successful each of the two protagonists can be at deepening the rifts in the other's ranks. Actually, the game now in progress is a relatively new one, its rules still in the making. For many years, the conflict was played out under the extremely stringent rules of a deadly game in which the aim was nothing less than the total negation of the other. The Arab side was accused of seeking to throw the Zionist invaders back into the sea, the latter of seeking to throw the Palestinians into the desert. Of course, the rules had to change once the parties involved themselves in a peace process, which assumed the replacement of relations of mutual exclusion by relations of mutual coexistence. But because neither party had come to terms with the notion of accommodating the other, what actually happened was that the will to drive the other back and, if possible, to eliminate it, was replaced not by a genuine attempt at reconciliation but by a more insidious if less virulent form of hostility, in which each side sought to use the other to further its own ends. Still, the modern history of the Middle East has not been shaped exclusively by the conflict between the Arabs and Israel. Other conflicts have been and continue to be played out, albeit less overtly, in this troubled region. The last few decades have seen the emergence of two distinct types of Arab regimes, some attributing themselves to the Arab thawra (revolution), the others a product of the Arab tharwa (wealth) generated by the massive inflow of petrodollars in the seventies. Because the former are rooted in the ideology of pan-Arabism which is all-encompassing in nature and objectives, they are regarded by the beneficiaries of oil wealth as seeking to bring about a redistribution of Arab wealth and hence as potentially hostile. The crisis came to a head with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Washington took advantage of the deep rift in Arab ranks to convince many Arab regimes still reluctant to accept Israel as a permanent factor in the Middle East equation that an Arab leader, namely, Saddam Hussein, was a more immediate threat to their security and integrity than the Zionist enemy. To proceed from this assumption was to recognise the need to try and 'neutralise' Israel as an enemy, so that all efforts could be channeled towards confronting the more immediate threat personified by the Iraqi regime. This was the rationale that made the convening of the Madrid Middle East peace conference possible. Israel took advantage of the peace process to further exacerbate inter-Arab conflict by a variety of means, notably by dealing with each Arab party separately. Thus it succeeded in ensuring that the agreements it concluded with various Arab parties were signed without consulting, or even, in some cases, informing, the other concerned Arab parties. In the context of these new dynamics, inter-Arab conflict has gradually taken precedence over the conflict with Israel. It is clear form the present ministerial crisis in Israel that conflict within Israel too has reached unprecedented heights. Israel's decision to go for early elections, two years ahead of schedule, reveals how shaky Netanyahu's right-wing coalition government has become. Unfortunately, inter-Arab divisions, most graphically illustrated perhaps by the inability of the Arab states to convene a summit meeting in the aftermath of the US-British raids against Iraq, are preventing the Arab parties from using the present turmoil in Israel to improve their bargaining position. All the signs indicate that 1999 will most likely be dominated by the deep rifts in the ranks of both the Arab and Israeli parties -- rifts that are putting forward fundamental questions touching on the very essence of the conflict itself. One such question is whether the conflict is gradually moving away from its secular, political and nationalistic roots (pan-Arabism versus Zionism) to acquire a religious-cum-fundamentalist identity (Islamic versus Jewish fundamentalism). And, if so, what of the Arab Christians? Indeed, what of the rich mosaic of minority groups throughout the Middle East? While I have never subscribed to Huntington's 'clash of civilisations' theory, recent developments in the Middle East often seem to confirm his views. However, I see the 'clash' as being the product of a complex array of conflict situations: social, political, economic, cultural, etc., at a time the ascendancy of globalisation is bringing about fundamental changes in the rules of the political game and the very identity of the protagonists. Phenomena presently in the making are spreading much confusion and putting forward challenges we are ill-equipped to cope with. But two phenomena now emerging in the Arab world cannot be denied: one is the degeneration of the Arab thawra, the other the erosion of the Arab tharwa. Because of the sharp drop in oil prices, the deficit in Saudi Arabia's budget is expected to reach an unprecedented 12 billion dollars this year. It is high time for the Arabs to draw the necessary conclusions. The reasons for inter-Arab conflict have largely disappeared with the disappearance of both the Arab tharwa and the Arab thawra. Is this not enough justification to convene an Arab summit and decide what common denominator could bring together the Arab parties and preserve their common patrimony in face of their common plight, instead of admitting failure and surrendering without a fight? What is at stake is the very survival of an Arab identity.
