A secular solution

The Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit recently remarked that "the state security forces are the backbone of authoritarian Arab regimes," but he forgot to mention that such, too, is the case of Israel, a state obsessed with security for obvious reasons, where the secret services and armed forces wield enormous influence.

We often hear that Israel is "the Middle East's only democracy" - though it discriminates against its own non-Jewish citizens, and in the West Bank and Gaza maintains a far larger population subjugated and besieged. Need we belabor the point that in a democracy all citizens must have the same rights, with no apartheid on grounds of religion, language or race? Indeed, Kant's ideal democratic republic lived in equality and liberty with all peoples, opPressing none.

True, in certain realms of thought, admiration has long been felt for militarist societies which, the better to ensure their own security against peoples they have subjugated, impose on themselves a strict social control and an iron internal discipline that restricts individual rights to a minimum. The best known of these, in our cultural tradition, is surely Sparta, which, in the social crisis of the 8th century BC, instead of founding overseas colonies as an outlet for the excess population, preferred to conquer its neighbors, the Messenians. To prolong indefinitely their military superiority, they were obliged to deform their own institutions and way of life, so that their citizens had to renounce all individuality. And by thus freezing their cultural development, in the end they fell victim to their thirst for domination.

While we cannot predict the course the present Arab revolts will take, they will surely affect the hegemonic position of the United States, the European Union and Israel. Just as the collapse of the Berlin Wall transformed Europe and with it the world, the fall of the army-based Arab regimes will completely change North Africa and the Middle East and, with it, the whole world.

In spite of Obama's speech in Cairo, the United States has not been very diligent in support of the democratic aspiration of rebellious Arab youth, led by the middle classes. Paralysed by the interests and prejudice of the two former colonial powers in the region, the EU has once again confirmed its non-existence on the international scene. As could hardly be otherwise, all of them, including Israel, have given soft, lukewarm applause to a democratization which at bottom they fear, for the unpredictable consequences it might bring. The powerful prefer to bank on the status quo.

What is really serious is that the United States and its European allies lack an alternative policy, and merely look on and await developments. However, before attempting to orient the (probably various and divergent) Arab democratization processes in line with our interests, the most urgent and pressing need is to deactivate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, so that in a reconstituted Arab world it will not fester to even more venomous effect.

Israel is a professedly Jewish state which looks more and more like a theocracy, while the greatest threat from the Arab world comes from the prospect of heretofore indeterminate national identities drifting from secular, lay identities in the direction of religious, Islamic ones. This would be a clash of religions, and, left in the hands of the confronted parties, the conflict would be insoluble.

The modern state upon which our model of democracy is built is a secularized one. But in the Middle East we are looking at two religions in contention, so that a negotiated solution would hardly be feasible. This is why, before the religious identities further entrench themselves, the pressing need is for both sides to be obliged, from without, to reach a secular and equitable solution, designed and built to be a lasting one.