In an unusual twist, fast-paced events are marking this year's Ramadan, writes Dina Ezzat Ramadan in the Arab world is usually a slow- moving affair comprising few major events. It is unusual for high-level Arab meetings to take place in the holy month since officials tend to keep a low profile, their statements scarce in the press as well. This year, however, was different. There are so many hot spots in the Arab world -- Palestine, Iraq and Sudan -- to name but a few, that the press could not help but keep on writing and analysing. Moreover, there is the upcoming US presidential elections that most Arab countries and regimes are following closely. In such respects, the Arab press was not at all short of news stories, official statements and political analyses. Most Arab papers noted that the beginning of Ramadan was marked by huge military assaults by Israel against the Palestinians and by the United States against the Iraqis. On the second day of Ramadan, many dailies across the Arab world came out with banner headlines on the increasing death tolls as a result of the Israeli and American attacks. There were other headlines: "A new US-French UN Security Council draft resolution to force Syria to pull its troops out of Lebanon", "African Union delays deployment of its troops in Darfur amid growing concern over next US move", "Falluja comes under severest military attack in a year", "New Somali president sworn in amid fears of resumption of military hostilities", "Sharon pulls out troops from Jebaliya but threatens to toughen military action against Palestinians if he deems it necessary", and "Bush and Kerry are running neck- and-neck in recent polls". The opinion pages reflected a sense of Arab helplessness over regional and international developments. Many commentators were frank in criticising the failure of Arab countries to help rescue Palestinians and Iraqis, and they warned it will not be too long before other Arab nations come under military occupation. Others contemplated the way out of the current Arab passivity. Many articles showed sheer perplexity. "What are the embassies of the 22 Arab countries doing in Washington and New York?" asked Ragih Al-Khouri in Lebanon's An-Nahar of Saturday. Al-Khouri's article focussed on the failure of US- based Arab diplomats to inform political circles in Washington of one of the most alarming developments in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict: the wall of separation that Israel is building. By offering an account of the efforts of the chairman of a Palestinian NGO who managed to communicate some information on the separation wall to a few congressmen, Al-Khouri said many of the congressmen were in the dark about the implications of the wall on the lives of Palestinians under occupation. "Most of the congressmen know nothing about this wall except from information fed to them by Israeli reports that present the wall as a mechanism to defend innocent Israelis from Palestinian terror attacks. These congressmen have not once received any communiqués or reports from any Arab side explaining the real expansionist motives behind this wall." Al-Khouri wrote, "Most congressmen consider the Palestinian resistance to be terrorist acts. Some are even convinced that it is the Palestinians who occupy Israeli land. This might be due to bias towards Israel but it is also due to a disturbing ignorance on the part of these Congressmen about the basic facts and history of the Arab-Israeli conflict." For Al-Khouri, the failure of Arabs to inform influential foreign policy-makers in the US about one of the most serious developments in the Arab- Israeli conflict can be seen as part of an overall Arab media and public relations failure. The Arabs have been unable to explain their case properly to the world, Al-Khouri said, and are sitting idle as the world sees them through the Zionist lens that tends to accentuate the image of Arabs and Muslims as terrorists. On Sunday, on the lengthy opinion pages of the daily Al-Ittihad of the United Arab Emirates, former Lebanese Minister of Information Ghazi Al- Oredi lamented the inability of Arabs to deal with their affairs properly during these particularly tough times. The developments on the Syrian-Lebanese front was a case in point. Having criticised the inability of Arabs to demonstrate sufficient solidarity with the Lebanese and Syrians in the wake of UN Security Council Resolution 1559, Al-Oredi called on Damascus and Beirut to be realistic in dealing with the US threat to toughen economic sanctions against Syria and to put political pressure on Lebanon to force the Syrian leadership to end its military presence in the country. "Anything could happen. It would be unwise for any of us to exclude any possibility in view of the attitude of the current US administration and in view of the overall Arab state... We are living in an unprecedented stage of hegemony where international organisations that were established to protect the rights of people are working not to serve these people but to serve the world's powers, with the US at the forefront." The new bill adopted by President George Bush to end the reluctance of the US State Department to issue an annual report on the state of anti- semitism worldwide was subject to considerable attention from the Arab press. And needless to say, the US president, who has done very little to garner sympathy in the opinion pieces of Arab writers throughout his four years in office, was again strongly criticised. "A new demonstration of pro-Israel bias", was the headline of the editorial in Al-Bayan, another daily of the United Arab Emirates, on Monday. The editorial said what many other editorials across the Arab world said more or less on Monday morning: this US president is going too far in his attempt to please Israel at the expense of international justice -- if such a thing still exists in today's world. "From now on, everybody must be very careful before making any remark about Israel. All must be careful not to say anything that might upset it," said Al-Bayan. The editorial said the bill clearly demonstrated how far and even how cheap has "the political opportunism of the US presidential elections become. "This bill is much worse than the veto US diplomacy keeps using in the UN Security Council to prevent any collective world resolution from condemning the atrocities committed by Israel against the Palestinian people under occupation... It is a weapon that the Hebrew state will use to implement all its plans without having to worry in the least about criticism, not to mention condemnation, of its policies of aggression," Al- Bayan said. More forthright was the London-based daily Al- Quds Al-Arabi which noted on the same Monday morning in its editorial, "this law was adopted to provide legitimacy and protection to Israeli terrorism." It seems that this recent move by Bush was so provocative that even the most pro-American commentators, including Kuwaitis whose articles show almost unconditional support for this US administration, had to speak up. In his daily column in the Saudi-financed and London-based daily Asharq Al-Awsat, pro- American, pro-Bush Kuwaiti commentator Ahmed Al-Robei strongly criticised the president. "This law is an example of political opportunism," Al-Robei wrote. But in the same paper and on the same day, Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Mohamed Al-Sabah still found it appropriate to express hope, albeit indirectly, that Bush will be re-elected. "After all, he is the only US president that spoke of the right of the Palestinians to have an independent state and he is the president who removed the terrorist regime in Iraq."
