Politics entails control over events, but some things -- like revolutions -- are beyond control and can only be managed, writes Abdel-Moneim Said It is not easy for a group of intellectuals, opinion pundits, and decision-makers past and present to retire to some remote corner of the globe in order to exchange opinions. But if they do, they tend to find that the subjects under discussion are akin to closed circles, always leading them back to the starting point. On this occasion, the selected venue was at the edge of the Arabian Peninsula's Al-Rub Al-Khali, or Empty Quarter, in a luxury hotel dedicated to devotees of desert landscapes and contemplators of the shifting effects of light as day passes through those sacred moments of sunset and of the shadows beneath a crescent moon before night passes into that glorious spectacle of sunrise. The Chatham House Rule applied. The rule states that you can repeat any information or opinions you hear in a meeting held under this rule, but you cannot reveal the identity or affiliation of the source or any other participant in the meeting. The purpose is to ensure confidentiality and, thereby, to encourage a free and frank exchange of ideas without fear that what one might say will end up splashed across the headlines of the next day's press. Yet what frequently happens even under such a rule is that participants find very little new and original to add to what everyone already knows. When the subject under discussion is the Middle East, everyone knows that no matter which direction the discussion heads, and no matter how many twists and turns it takes, it will always end up right where it began. All Middle East issues, from Iran to Palestine, and before and into the Arab Spring, are interrelated. And the more overlapping circles there are, the harder it is for anyone to say anything useful, at least as far as policymaking is concerned. The attendees at that meeting spoke with total candour. They drew red lines and green ones. The underscored the important points and doubly underscored the most important points. Then they set about the quest of that magic solution that would restore the region to those blissful days of stability, but with the addition of a measure of the democracy heralded by recent events. As for the Arab-Israeli peace process -- which everyone always wants even though they curse their rotten luck for having begun it, if it did begin, and shed copious tears because it inevitably stalls and remains pending until future notice -- it is permanently on the discussion table so that all can reaffirm the ongoing effort. Nevertheless, anyone with any experience in this matter will tell you that there can be no solution as long as Binyamin Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman and their clique remain in power and persist in altering what is under negotiation through incessant settlement construction. In addition, as long as the Palestinians cannot reach reconciliation there will be the problem of representation at negotiations, a problem made stickier by the fact that even if they did reach reconciliation, how are the Israelis supposed to negotiate with a Palestinian Authority half of which does not want to recognise Israel? The Iranian dilemma is even more acute and making decisions on this matter more difficult. Iran has succeeded in enriching uranium up to 20 per cent, which is a greater purity than is needed for reactors meant for peaceful purposes. In other words, it is close to being able to make a nuclear bomb. Solutions that do not include a military strike, such as kidnapping, smuggling out or killing Iranian nuclear scientists, or sabotaging Iranian computer systems with a virus, may have stalled the project a bit (unless the Iranians have an installation that they have managed to conceal from Western intelligence agencies' detection methods while others installations are proceeding normally under international inspection), but the point is that Iran is approaching the critical point where it might develop a weapon that would enable it to threaten regional and international peace and security. Yet, a problem of this magnitude happens to coincide with an economic crisis that remains gruelling. It also comes after two failures in foreign intervention, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq, and as the US approaches a presidential election year, and at a time when the Arab world stands on the dividing line between the dream of democracy and the spectre of total chaos. In short, the regional situation is extremely fragile and cannot tolerate another military confrontation. The Arab Spring has begun to show other faces that are very different from its original one. It is impossible to predict where post-revolutionary Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and now Yemen, are headed, and the same applies to Syria in mid-revolution. During the Egyptian revolution and in the presence of then vice president Omar Suleiman and a gathering of 50 journalists, I voiced my concern that Egypt would jump from the dictatorship of Orouba Palace into the dictatorship of Tahrir Square. In the midst of revolution the masses surge like implacable tsunami waves. With no fixed position there is no certainty. It even becomes impossible to choose between holding elections, postponing them or preventing them. On all the questions raised among participants in the hotel at the edge of Al-Rub Al-Khali, responsible parties are damned if they do, but no less damned if they don't. In the late Youssef Chahine's film, Al-Nasser Salaheddin, the protagonist -- Saladin, as he's known in the West -- asked for his spiritual mentor's immediate blessing or his curse on a difficult decision he had just taken. Such an option no longer exists in life in which no scenario can be quite that simple. But in a way this is how some participants behaved. They pointed out every possible hitch and drawback in implementing this scenario or that, leaving us with no scenario at all. There are two alternatives that should be considered. The first is to let nature take its course. Mankind has yet to discover a way to stop volcanoes and tsunamis. The nature of politics is similar to the tempestuousness of Mother Nature. More often than not, a solution occurs only after the eruption, at which point the balances of powers are re-measured and people begin to feel that the pain is worse when "politics" keeps away. I do not think the Yemeni question could have been resolved until it passed through a period of agony that was felt by all, and now it seems like Yemen is about to enter its second phase of pain. Henry Kissinger would use the expression, "Let nature take its course," as a kind of threat. It often had results. "Nature" generally wrought things that were unpleasant all around. The second choice is to engage in political and diplomatic efforts on a central issue that would impact on other central issues in ways that would qualitatively change them all. The Syrian situation, for example, overlaps with the Iranian question, with the Arab-Israeli conflict and with the Arab Spring. Who knows? It might also impact on Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria's entire geographical vicinity. The cost could be high. But the cost of letting nature take its course could be much higher. In any case, there are experts in such cost-benefit analysis, which in all events was not the task of the participants at the meeting in Al-Rub Al-Khali.
