[The Guardian, UK, 25 September 2001]: If, as seems all but certain, Osama bin Laden masterminded the apocalyptic atrocity of New York, it was, self-evidently, directed against the US, in line with his call on Muslims everywhere to "kill Americans and loot their riches wherever you find them".

But, indirectly, the target was Muslim too, in the shape of Arab regimes, and not least the House of Saud, which, basing its entire legitimacy on the Koran and the Prophetic traditions, claims to be the most quintessentially Muslim of all.

On returning home after their victory over the Russians, the "Arab Afghans" had at first concentrated on an "internal" jihad against these "apostate" rulers whom they deemed Muslim in name only.

It was only in the later 90s that they resumed the external one, with the US, their former ally, replacing the Soviet Union as the mortal foe: hence the bombing of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998.

But with this switch in priorities, they certainly did not forget the enemies within. Their sin, in Saudi Arabia's case, was to have turned the lands of Mecca and Medina into an American colony, or, in the case of all of them, to have done nothing to rescue Jerusalem and al-Aqsa from the Zionist usurper.

Of all the grounds on which Bin Laden could hope to embarrass Arab regimes, the most fertile is Palestine. That is, Palestine and the Arab regimes' reliance on a unwaveringly pro-Israeli US to extricate themselves from the shame and ignominy, the threat to their existences, which this chief of Arab causes has become.

Confined to Israelis and Palestinians alone, the intifida would be a hopelessly unequal struggle. But helping to sustain the Palestinians has been the knowledge that if the Arab world could be induced to deploy a smidgeon of its enormous potential on their behalf - economic, diplomatic as much as military - it could have dramatically shifted the balance of power in their favour.

But never has the Arab world seemed more scandalously absent, and never, as the intifada approaches its first anniversary this week, have Arab commentators been more outspoken in saying so. They relentlessly assail the "shameful impotence" and "helpless defeatism" of Arab regimes, especially Egypt and Jordan, the two countries which, having made peace with Israel, are the spearheads of so-called "moderation".

The impotence is seen to have deep roots, amounting, in many people's view, to the bankruptcy of the whole peace-seeking strategy that has been unfolding since the Egyptian-Israeli treaty of 1978. It was then that the Arabs first turned so earnestly to the US, as the honest broker who would compensate them diplomatically for what they could not do militarily.

The Palestinians' anger and disappointment is shared by the Arab "street". True, after an initial effervescence, this street has been relatively quiescent. Yet the signs are that it is as emotionally embroiled in Palestine as ever. According to a recent survey, some 60% of the people of four rather disparate countries - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Emirates and Lebanon - regard Palestine as the "single most important issue to them personally"; in Egypt, the key country, that figure rises to a remarkable 79%. "The Palestinian issue remains an identity concern for most Arabs," commented Shibley Telhami, an American Egyptian academic. "Most Arabs are shamed by their inability to help the Palestinians."

To make matters worse, the impotence over Palestine is but a measure of the more general failure of some of the world's most ossified, corrupt and repressive regimes. Palestine taps into a reservoir of resentment over a range of other, often strictly domestic, issues. Not only is the whole peace process coming to be seen as a bogus agenda in which their rulers ignominiously connived, the economic and political rewards which Egyptian and Jordanian leaders promised their people would flow from it have not materialised either. Quite the reverse.

The economic reforms on which President Mubarak has mainly staked his regime's future are in deepening trouble. Last month, as one body of security forces kept a nervous eye on worshippers brandishing Korans and banners proclaiming that "al-Aqsa is captive", another clashed with thousands of graduates clamouring for their quota of government-guaranteed jobs - convergent symptoms of a latent discontent which could explode into full-scale confrontation at any time.

But the greatest blow to the regimes has come from the Americans, now betraying, as never before, the trust which the late President Sadat first placed in them. With the rise of General Sharon and the most extreme, belligerent government in Israel's history, the regimes urgently needed the US to redress the balance.

But the US, in the person of President Bush, simply walked away from the peace process that it had unsuccessfully monopolised for 10 years - and then blamed Arafat, not Sharon, for its collapse. "There is complete and blatant American bias in Israel's favour," said an unusually forthright Mubarak last month. And his confidant, Ibrahim Nafi, editor of al-Ahram, warned that throughout the Arab world, not just Palestine, "hatred of America has reached unprecedented levels". Another government newspaper, al-Akhbar, said that the Arab-Israeli conflict was being superseded by "a broader and more dangerous Arab-American conflict".

Little did al-Akhbar foresee just how much broader and more dangerous it would be. This spectacular terrorist exploit was something else as well: the most striking demonstration of the leverage which the Arab regimes, had they chosen, could have brought to bear on behalf of their Palestinian brethren. In its colossal impact on the world economy, New York amounts to the terrorists' version of the celebrated "oil weapon" which the Arabs last unsheathed in 1973, during the last full-scale Arab-Israeli war, but which, in deference to America, they have more or less promised never to unsheath again.

Will the regimes now seek to impress on the Americans the absolute, dire need to achieve a just and lasting Israeli-Palestinian settlement, for the world's sake as well as their own? Or will they, in heeding America's demand to join the coalition against terror, end up more subservient to it, at Palestine's expense, than ever before? The ceasefire to which Israelis and Palestinians committed themselves in the wake of the atrocity is seen as a step in the right direction. But it is a small step only, and the fear is that it is just a replay of the Gulf war, when the Americans promised the Arabs that, in return for joining the coalition against Saddam, they would make a real effort to settle the Palestinian problem. The promise proved vain and, the Arabs fear, it will do so again because the whole peace process will become subject to the logic and dynamism of the war on terror.

But these apprehensions have not stopped Arab regimes from rushing to identify themselves, at least in principle, with the anti-terror campaign. After all, some of them, most importantly Egypt and Saudi Arabia, were themselves targets of the Arab Afghans' internal jihad. And the Arab and Muslim public has shown some revulsion and consternation at what the terrorists have done in their name.

Doubtless, it is less whole-hearted than elsewhere; but some newspapers have been quite radical in their condemnation. Kuwait's al-Watansaid it was not just the Americans who "must transform themselves, so must the Arab world and the Islamic mind", and rid itself of the widespread approval of violence, force martyrdom and jihad that pervades the "dominant religious culture". Even Lebanon's Hizbullah has deplored "the loss of innocent lives".

But America's categoric "you are with us or against us"; its insistence that terrorists of every kind must be tracked down everywhere, along with all those who give them sanctuary, is ominous for the regimes. Mubarak and others have made it clear that a western onslaught on Afghanistan will be bad enough, even though it lies outside the Arab world; after earlier US attacks on Iraq, Libya, Sudan, it will fuel the widespread perception of western hatred and hostility to all things Arab or Muslim. Clerics and religious scholars, such as those in pro-western Jordan, have decreed that joining any US-led "aggression" against "any Muslim country" is "religiously forbidden, treason to God, his prophet and the faithful".

But worse, for the Arabs, is the prospect that the Americans, having dealt with Afghanistan, will turn to terrorists closer to home. The first likely target is Iraq. Arab regimes which, under pressure of public opinion, were so hostile to recent Anglo-American attempts to tighten the embargo on Saddam Hussein, would find it more difficult than ever to support a renewed military campaign against him; and, more worryingly, according to Arab press reports, the US under secretary of state, William Burns, delivered to six Arab ambassadors what amounted to an ultimatum: cooperate fully with the anti-terrorist campaign or face the full wrath of the west.

Cooperation required the arrest or extradition of all terrorists in all Arab countries. Who exactly are these terrorists? Evidently, to the Americans, they include Lebanon's Hizbullah. The Lebanese government has been shocked to learn that the US expects it to accomplish the almost impossible task of dismantling an organisation that not only enjoys great prestige for successful resistance to Israeli occupation, but has become an integral part of the country's social, political and sectarian fabric. And they almost certainly include the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad. These are symbols and instruments of what Arabs regard as legitimate resistance to the Israeli occupier. In moving against them, at least without any quid pro quo being expected of the Israelis, the regimes would be grievously flouting public sentiment already roused on the Palestinians' behalf.

They know it. Mubarak has called for a UN conference that would define the differences between legitimate and illegitimate political violence. Saudi Arabia, that other key US ally, is in a particularly tough spot. Upholder of a deeply conservative religious orthodoxy from which Bin Laden himself springs, deeply sensitive to the Palestinian issue, it has on the one hand put advertisements in US newspapers saying: "America, we stand with you", while, on the other, an official asserts: "We will not agree under any circumstances on hitting any sister country such as Syria, or groups resisting occupation such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah."

Bin Laden is clearly a believer of sorts in the "clash of civilisations", in an implacable enmity between Islam and the infidel west, and with this atrocity he undoubtedly sought to bring this Mani-chean conflict to a decisive climax. His calculation is that when the west counter- attacks, the Muslims will rise up in a general intifada that will bring down those "apostate", pseudo-Muslim regimes that do the west's bidding. It is an improbable scenario. But the wider and fiercer America's war on terror and the more retreat or humiliation it requires of Arab regimes at Palestine's expense, the less improbable it becomes that, in the coming tumult, something, at least, of his messianic ambition will be fulfilled.

Mid-East Realities

www.middleeast.org

Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/9/411.htm