A blow to Arab neo-liberals

[FarCenter]

http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/region/10215936.html

US President George W. Bush's visit to the region was doomed from the outset. It neither helped Israel nor ended up supporting moderate, pro-American Arabs states. But, more importantly, it failed to mobilise the region against Syria and Iran. I have a feeling the presidential aide who wrote the speech that Bush delivered in the Israeli Knesset, in commemoration of the Jewish state's 60th anniversary, is the same aide who wrote the speech the US president delivered in Sharm Al Shaikh, at the opening session of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East.

There is no need to point out the disappointment and anger people across the Middle East felt after the first speech, in which Bush was more Biblical than Israeli leaders and portrayed the occupation forces as a victim of their Arab adversaries. Nobody questions America's pro-Israel bias and its unlimited support for the Western satellite state implanted on the land of the Palestinians, who were driven out as a result of the ongoing genocide committed by Zionist terrorists. Just as the American president, in his Talmudist remarks before the Knesset, still advocates the historic rights of the gangs flushed out of Europe to our region, the people of this region still remember that American weapons were used by those aggressive occupiers to kill them in cold blood. All the US military and economic aid to the Jewish state seems insufficient, so Bush was committing more help from the US towards keeping the artificial state viable by completing a mission of subjugating the remaining pockets of resistance in the region. That is why his speech was rhetorical, strong and biased. It was no more than a last, preachy sermon. If there was a problem, it was with those who expected something different and took the media hype since Bush's first visit to the region in January at face value, wrongly believing that in the May visit he would seal a lasting deal settling the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was wishful thinking more than anything else.

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Expectations that Bush might dilute his rhetoric while talking to the Arabs in Sharm Al Shaikh led to more frustrations - it was mainly a continuation of the Knesset speech. Mainly asking the Arabs to stand up to Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran in an effort to "go past old resentment against Israel"! "Resentment", as if we are neighbours who were unnecessarily fighting about garden weed extending from one side to the other and as if there is no occupation of Arab land by those who still have their origins in New York, Russia and Poland. Anyway, Arab moderates brought their frustration on themselves when they believed the rhetoric in first place, and thought that the national interests of their countries and the region coincide with American interests in the region.

Though the US president stopped short of talking about the tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in his Sharm Al Shaikh speech, he was clear in his call to the region to adopt the "democratic example" he enforced through destructive force in Afghanistan and Iraq. Neo-liberal Arab elite shied away from applauding his call at the convention centre in Sharm Al Shaikh, and people all over the region became fully aware of what is in store for them in future if they followed that lead.

Unintentionally, Bush deprived those he relies on for "enlightening" the people of the region.
Bush might have disappointed his allies in the Arab world by not even saying anything to prop them up in the face of the rising opposition they face. In fact he helped the opposite cause a lot by making it clear that the US is doing all that it is doing in the region for Israel, and at the expense of Arab aspirations.