Palestinians, Vanguard of the Arab Spring

Shiites and Sunnis live cheek by jowl in the long arc that stretches from Lebanon to Pakistan, and the region’s two main power brokers, Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, are already jousting for power.

So far this year, Shiite-Sunni tensions have been evident in countries from Bahrain to Syria. But put together, they could force the United States to rethink its response to the Arab Spring itself.

Sectarianism is an old wound in the Middle East. But the recent popular urge for democracy, national unity and dignity has opened it and made it feel fresh. This is because many of the Arab governments that now face the wrath of protesters are guilty of both suppressing individual rights and concentrating power in the hands of minorities.

The problem goes back to the colonial period, when European administrators manipulated religious and ethnic diversity to their advantage by giving minorities greater representation in colonial security forces and governments.

Arab states that emerged from colonialism promised unity under the banner of Arab nationalism. But as they turned into cynical dictatorships, failing at war and governance, they, too, entrenched sectarian biases. This scarred Arab society so deeply that the impulse for unity was often no match for the deep divisions of tribe, sect and ethnicity.

-Vali Nasr, “If the Arab Spring Turns Ugly,” yesterday‘s New York Times.

Essentially, the regional problem is that confessional sectarianism trumps nationalism, and the one nationalism that has been tried—pan-Arab nationalism of the Nasser variety—was repudiated, and faces further complications, since non-Arab Iran has the allegiance of Arab Shiites like the Syrian Alawites and Lebanese Hezbollah, and even Arab Sunnis like Hamas and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

This is not all that different from certain European “countries” several centuries ago, where the violent war between Catholics and Protestants crossed borders and even split people within the same putative borders. The remedy was nationalism: a French state for French people, regardless of religion; an Italian state for Italian people; a German state for German people; and so on. Likewise, the remedy here would be a Syria for Syrians, even if at this point that is more a question of borders; a Lebanon for Lebanese; a Yemen for Yemenis; and so on. (This would also likely entail a Kurdistan for Kurds, which would make for problems, but still, bear with me.)

Obviously I am skipping the part of the story where the German state insists that it be only for German people, but it is still an instructive example. What became Germany was a group of unstable countries comprising what was a part of the Holy Roman Empire, and it took 19th-century German nationalism to unify them into a single country. And who were the nationalists? In many cases, such as those of Ludwig Börne and Herman Hesse, they were Jews, and more broadly the Jews, scattered throughout Europe, at home everywhere and nowhere, and coherent as a group, provided the best example to Europeans of what a nation could be. What the Arab Spring needs, essentially, are Jews! Except something tells me the Arabs in the streets will not see the Jewish national state as the example of what they should become (though honestly they would do well to).

So are there a Jews of the Arab world—a scattered group, at home everywhere and nowhere, who could serve as an example to different Arab nationalisms? Of course there are: the Palestinians! And is it a coincidence that the Palestinians are the only Arab group with a genuine, European-style nationalist movement, that envisions (in its best iterations; we are not talking about Hamas here) Christian Palestinians and Muslim Palestinians and atheist Palestinians all living in the state of Palestine? Of course not.

If the Arab Spring Turns Ugly [NYT]