Egyptians read avidly about the trial of the century and the third round of elections, while Syria hits the headlines all over again, say Doaa El-Bey and Gamal Nkrumah Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad delivered a bombastic speech on Tuesday covering his perspective on the domestic Syrian situation. He spoke to a packed house at the Damascus University Auditorium amid thundering applause from his supporters. Al-Assad's is a speech that will not save Syria, though, Arab commentators concurred. Under different, somewhat less sanguinary, circumstances, Al-Assad and the leading lacklustre Syrian opposition figures might identify with each other's dry, diligent and sullen approach to public life. As it is, they are all squabbling over who is to blame for the alarming spate of terrorist bombings in Damascus. The sad truth is that by calling for the involvement of the Arab League, Syrian leaders -- both Baathist and opposition -- are all confirming how little trust they have in each other. "Syria's destiny is to face crisis," Al-Assad declared. It is a message that is hard to disagree with. However, most Arab papers failed to cover the speech on Tuesday at least in their initial editions, though some managed to comment on Al-Assad's address in the evening edition. In his address, Al-Assad promised to deal with his political adversaries with an "iron fist". But there are good reasons to be sceptical of the Arab League's plans. "In terms of our security and stability, we have paid a heavy price. What happened was an unprecedented ordeal that overshadowed our country and led to a situation of distress, confusion and frustration." Al-Assad reiterated his position of not giving in to the Syrian opposition forces and pro-democracy activists and denounced them as traitors and terrorists claiming that they had a hand in this week's terrorist bombings in Damascus. "Credibility, after all, has been the foundation of my relationship with the Syrian people; a relationship built on deeds rather than words and on substance rather than words," the Syrian president was quoted as saying in the mouthpiece of Syria's ruling Al-Baath Party Al-Thawra daily newspaper. Yet caveats can only help a government in deep trouble so much. As the prospect of the Arab League Monitoring Mission to Syria slips over the Levantine horizon, there is a widespread perception both in Syria and abroad that Arab unity, in spite of the Arab Spring, is a dream deferred indefinitely. The Arabs appear to be divided over the question of Syria. The Syrian president accused the opposition of "sabotaging both public and private property." He highlighted the Machiavellian machinations of a hidden hand bent on destroying Syria. "Sectarian sedition [is] scrambling at the gates of the homeland and cut off the head of the snake before it could bite the Syrian body and kill it," the Syrian president warned. "External political positions are applying pressure on Syria and trying to interfere with the internal affairs of our country. Their target is a price that we know in advance, related directly to us abandoning our principles," he added. To be fair to the Syrian president, there is a large section of his people, judging from the pundits, who pay him much homage. Syria's religious minorities such as Christians, Alawites, Druze and a sizeable segment of the non-Arab ethnic Kurds support the president. The papers focus on the overwhelming backing of the Sunni majority to the opposition forces. Tongue-tied and bashful, Al-Assad seems to have craftily turned shyness into a political art form. Syria aside, there is a new whiff of vigour, though, in the air. Many papers in the Arab world highlighted the question of Arab disunity and pressed for greater unity. In an article in the Pan-Arab London-based daily Al-Hayat, Khaled Ibrahim, a Saudi academic and author, entitled "Pan-Arabism, Islam and Liberalism", he says, "The groups espousing political Islam are embracing democracy and excelling at the multi-party pluralistic game. This is in line with the dire need for social change as envisioned by those who want to see a greater degree of liberalism and rationality in society�ê� Fears, however, arise and create confusion when a conspiracy theory is supposedly to be hatched by the Islamists, especially from the writings we see emanating from Syria and Lebanon�ê� These writings deliberately ignore the realities on the ground in Syria�ê� For the first time the Islamists have come to power through the ballot box, an ostensibly non-Islamist mode of political activism." In much the same vein, in an article entitled "Al-Ganoushi [spiritual leader of the long-outlawed Tunisian Islamists] is a guru, and the New Tunisia is confident of the inability of Al-Nahda [the Islamist party] to swallow up the Tunisian Revolution," Hazem Al-Amin stressed compromise. Al-Amin noted the inevitability of devising a working relationship between the moderate Islamists and the secularist leftists in the Arab world. The Tunisian model is the way forward where Al-Ganoushi's Al-Nahda won 40 per cent of the seats in the National Assembly and still managed a good working relationship with the secular leftist Tunisian President Moncef Al-Marzouqi. The understanding, however, is that the president's powers are quite clearly curtailed. The way out of the crisis of Arab disunity is by not merely acting as a group of states that just happen to share a common cultural heritage. The Qatari daily Al-Raya counseled that the "only way to halt the indiscriminate killing of civilian targets in Syria is for the entire Syrian population to take to the streets." The Gulf Cooperation Council oil-rich states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are accused of stoking the fires of confessionalism in Syria. The Jordanian daily Al-Destour quoted the Arab League Secretary-General Nabil El-Arabi as saying that the authoritarian and totalitarian state has fallen in the Arab World and urged Al-Assad to seriously engage in dialogue with the Syrian opposition forces. That is why it spelled mortal danger for the Syrian regime. The problem, the paper conceded is that the international community, or more precisely Western nations, are hesitant to get embroiled in Syria precisely because they have been dealt a harsh blow in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The Baath regime of Al-Assad is hardly alone in having suffered a loss of face since the start of 2011. Russia and Iran want stability in Syria but are not prepared to bail Damascus out. Iran hails the "Arab Spring" and an "Islamic Spring". Radwan El-Sayed writing in the Pan-Arab London-based Asharq Al-Awsat observed that the "conflict within Islamist circles led to a division in schools of thought, or sources of religious authority and particularly when it comes to education and the issuing of religious fatwas." This perplexing issue has proven to be a prickly question among competing theorists in contemporary political Islam. Satea Noureddin writing in the Lebanese daily Al-Safir said that "the sad irony is that Syria's political establishment and the country's opposition forces have been most reluctant to deal with the Arab League. This is the common denominator in Syria -- the street, the opposition and the regime all have grave reservations of dealing with the Arabs.
