Rasha Saad tries to predict when Saudi women will start driving The right of Saudi women to drive in their country was the focus of the pundits who believe it is a matter of time before women in the kingdom will be allowed to drive. Though the matter has been debated for nearly a decade, fierce controversy was renewed when Manal Al-Sherif recently drove her car through a street in the town of Khobar and posted a video on Youtube of herself driving. Al-Sharif and other women also organised a campaign on Facebook and Twitter urging Saudi women with international driving licences to get into cars starting on 17 June. Al-Sherif was then detained, then shortly released after she signed a pledge that she will not participate in the Women2Drive initiative. She officially withdrew from the campaign. In the Saudi-funded London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper Salman Al-Dossari wrote that he believed the question is not whether Saudi women will be granted the right to drive but rather when it will happen. In "Women will drive... but when?" Al-Dossari argued that it was only a matter of time. "If they are not granted the right this year, then it will be next year or the year after. I am not looking into a crystal ball. This conclusion is a reality that is being shaped and felt by many," Al-Dossari wrote. He pointed out that those in opposition, mainly conservatives, admit there is no legal fatwa forbidding women from driving in terms of the act itself. They argue that their objection to the idea stems from what they call the "evil" consequences associated with the act of driving. Al-Dossari thus concluded that such a step will undoubtedly be taken as long as the dispute is fundamentally social and not religious. He said there are around eight million Saudi women today, constituting roughly half the country's population. "They cannot be prevented from taking their own decisions. If a woman decides that she doesn't want to drive, no one can argue with her." Abdel-Rahman Al-Rashid agrees. In "To drive or not to drive? That is the question" Al-Rashid wrote that many in the Kingdom have become convinced that driving is a universal right, and that women should no longer be banned. Al-Rashid argued that "it is in the interests of Saudi national welfare to remove this ban, after a resolution was delayed for decades, making the problem far bigger than it needed to be." Al-Rashid explained that there are roughly a third of a million chauffeurs [employed to drive female passengers] in Saudi Arabia and the fact that women are prohibited from driving exposes them to a higher risk of crime. Citing the controversy surrounding girls' right to education years back, Al-Rashid admits that "unlike other Arab societies which have been interacting with the wider world for centuries, Saudi Arabia has remained somewhat isolated, with no new ideas or technology introduced into the country except after much contention." In the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat, Jameel Theyabi suggests ways to solve the problem. "The answer resides in the formation of a specialised committee including qualified people from the relevant ministries and institutions, in order to come up with a decision that would contribute to the final resolution of this issue, or the creation of an official survey website that would be closely monitored and would allow the registration of names and ID numbers only once, so that people can vote in favour or against this matter," Theyabi wrote. In "A renewed file and a partially-opened door" Theyabi wrote that far away from the justifications and the problems of the drivers and their harassment of women and children, their massive monetary transfers abroad, their depletion of the monthly wages of the families, and the high costs induced by visa fees, the renewal of residency papers and the provision of plane tickets, housing, food and clothing, "is this pending issue not worth closing for being an obligation and not one of the pillars of Islam?" Arab pundits also marked the anniversary of the 1967 Arab defeat by Israeli forces. Inspired by the Arab revolutions, this year witnessed protests on Israel's border with Syria and on the West Bank to mark the Naksa. Dozens of protesters were reportedly killed by Israeli forces. In its editorial, the Palestinian daily Al-Quds wrote, "In memory of defeat wins the will". "Yesterday, 5 June, is the anniversary of the 1967 war when Israel occupied the rest of Palestinian lands in Gaza and the West Bank... in memory of this defeat and with [Israel as] the only occupation that still exists, we [Palestinians] are showing the world, and Israel in particular, that our will is stronger than the defeat and that these long years did not wear us out but on the contrary increased our support for our rights," the editorial said. The UAE Al-Bayan newspaper also took pride in the pro-Palestinian demonstrations. In its editorial it wrote that "since 1967 till now, Palestinians always found ways and means to resist the [Israeli] occupation. They are still standing up to the occupation by organising marches and peaceful demonstrations attracting international supporters for the establishment of an independent Palestine state." In the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Abdel-Bari Atwan accused the West of "hypocrisy towards Arab uprisings. The stand of the West, particularly Britain, towards the uprisings and revolutions in the Arab world is remarkably inconsistent and should be condemned," Atwan wrote. Atwan wrote that British newspapers disclosed that British military personnel have been regularly training Saudi National Guard forces in the most up-to-date ways and means to confront domestic popular protests. Having been trained, some of these Saudi forces were sent to Bahrain to assist in quashing the popular uprising that called for political reforms. "The current British coalition government repeatedly claims that it supports the Arab Spring and sides with peaceful popular revolutions, yet at the same time it trains security forces belonging to regimes that put down these revolutions in their early stages, particularly in Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Gulf," Atwan wrote. On their stand towards the Arab Spring, Atwan contends, Western governments are discriminating between "benign dictatorships" -- that have huge oil reserves and deserve security and military support and the most up-to-date training on repression -- and other, "malign dictatorships". "What the West is interested in is not democracy and its values but the flow of cheap oil and the continuation of Israel's military superiority in the region. Those who saw Congressional members stand up dozens of times and applaud Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's speech are certain of this fact," Atwan wrote.
