1. The end of any potential ‘two state solution’ to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel’s far right wing Likud government, headed
by Binyamin Netanyahu, built or committed to build thousands of new family
domiciles for Israeli squatters in Palestinian territory. In the absence of a
Palestinian state, Palestinians are doomed to statelessness and a lack of basic
human rights, living under Israeli military occupation. The only other
possibility, given that they live on territory unilaterally annexed by Israel,
is for them ultimately to gain Israeli citizenship. In the meantime, Israel’s
treatment of the occupied Palestinians looks even worse than Apartheid or
racial segregation and systematic discrimination in South Africa before 1990.
Israeli Apartheid is likely to result in the country being sanctioned and
boycotted by the international community. Meanwhile, With Israeli parliamentary
elections looming early in 2013, Prime Minister Netanyahu launched a brief Gaza
war in November, so as to burnish his credentials as a hawk and gain
popularity. He found, however, that he was boxed in by the Obama administration
and the new Muslim Brotherhood president, Muhammad Morsi, in Egypt. Netanyahu,
much weakened in the Middle East, had to stand down from Gaza with few tangible
achievements. Does this failure signal a weakening of Israel diplomatically in
the wake of the Arab upheavals of the past two years?
2. Yemen’s president Ali Abdullah Saleh was finally forced
from office. His vice president, Abed Rabbo
Mansour Hadi, was elected president in a nationwide referendum held
last February, with 80% turnout. Yemen then faced a number of crises, including
resurgent religious fundamentalism, southern separatism, American drone
strikes, and a worrying water shortage.
3. Egypt moved decisively from military to civilian rule.
For the first time in its history, Egypt elected its president, Muhammad Morsi
of the Muslim Brotherhood.(There had been indirectly elected prime ministers in
the Liberal Age, 1922-1952). Since the young officers coup of July, 1952,
Egypt’s president had come from the upper ranks of the officer corps. As 2012
opened, the 23-member Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) was the de
facto executive of the country, which had appointed the prime minister and
approved his cabinet. In June 2012, the supreme administrative court dissolved
the parliament that had been elected late in 2011, and SCAF promptly declared
itself the interim national legislature, attempting to limit the powers of the
incoming elected president, Muhammad Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi
gradually made senior officers retire and got an agreement from the junior
generals that he promoted that they would return to the barracks. On August 15,
Morsi abrogated the SCAF decree on the legislature. By the crisis of the
referendum on the constitution from November 22 until December 22, the military
had been effectively sidelined or turned into an instrument of the Muslim
Brotherhood president. Egypt has many problems, including the question of
whether the Muslim Brotherhood really respects individual human rights. But it
is indisputable that the country’s basis for legitimate government has become
free and fair parliamentary elections. Meanwhile, Egypt moved decisively toward
Muslim fundamentalist governance, with the passing in December of a new
constitution, crafted in large part by supporters of political Islam.
4. The ruling Baath regime in Syria, over the course of
2012, lost more and more territory to the revolutionaries. They lost control of
the border crossings to Iraq and Turkey. They lost much of Aleppo, the
country’s second city. Then in November and December, the revolutionaries began
taking military bases in the north and looting them for medium weaponry. The
regime still controls substantial territory, and some smaller cities, such as
Homs. But its losses in 2012 have been highly significant, raising the question
of how much longer the regime can survive. In the meantime, Syria refugees in
Turkey, Syria and Lebanon mushroomed in number and they faced severe
difficulties in their often unsanitary and inadequate tent cities. In Syria, as
in Bahrain and Yemen, sectarian considerations began to enter into the
movements against authoritarian governance. The Alawi Shiite minority dominates
the Baath Party in Syria, and Sunni fundamentalists have targeted that group
(and vice versa). The government is supported by Shiite Iran, the rebels by
Wahhabi Qatar and Saudi Arabia. If the Damascus government falls, Iran will be
weakened, as will its ally, Hizbullah of Lebanon.
5. Libya held a series of municipal elections in spring of
2012, then in July held successful parliamentary elections. After the first
prime minister to come from the parliament proved unable to please the elected
delegates in parliament, they removed him and put in a second prime minister.
Despite the series of violent incidents in Benghazi, the second-largest city,
Libya’s transition from the quirky dictatorship of Muammar Qaddafi to elective
government has been anything but smooth, but such a transition is certainly
taking place. Political Islam fared poorly in Libyan elections, where
nationalists took center stage for the most part, since people are suspicious
of ideologies after four decades of Qaddafi.
6. Angry members of a small fundamentalist terrorism group
attacked the US ad hoc consulate on September 11, killing the ambassador,
Christ Stevens, and 3 other Americans. In late December fighting broke out
between the state and fundamentalists in Benghazi, leaving several policemen
dead and many hard line demonstrators or attackers jailed.
7. In revolutionary Tunisia, 2012 saw a political struggle
between the small but violent minority of Salafis or hard line fundamentalists,
and, well, everybody else. Salafi attacks on unveiled women provoked a huge
anti-Salafi rally in the capital, Tunis. In summer, some Salafis attacked an
art exhibit in tony LaMarsa. In September, Salafis of a
more al-Qaeda mindset set fire to the parking lot of the
American embassy and looted some of its offices. The leader of the movement for
political Islam in Tunisia, the al-Nahda Party’s Rashid Ghanoushi, was caught
on tape warning the Salafis that if they continued to be so provocative, they
risked instigating a civil war like that in Algeria (where some 150,000
Algerians died in a struggle between secularists and Muslim fundamentalists in
1991-2002).
8. The US Congress’s National Defense Authorization Act
contained an anti-Iran provision that went into effect July 1. It requires the
US government to strong-arm the countries still purchasing Iranian oil to stop
buying it. The boycott cut Iran’s oil sales in half in 2012 (though 2011 was a
particularly lucrative year for the regime). At the same time, Saudi Arabia
flooded the market by pumping extra petroleum, keeping the prices from rising
astronomically. This economic blockade of Iran’s petroleum is unlikely to
change the regime or its behavior, but it will likely kill the Iranian reform
movement. And it could be a path for rising tensions and war between Iran and
the United States.
9. The beginning of the end of the Afghanistan War,
America’s longest: The Obama administration withdrew the 30,000 extra troops
from Afghanistan it had sent in as part of the troop escalation or “surge.”
That counter-insurgency strategy appears largely to have failed, and its
author, Gen. David Petraeus, fell victim to a Washington scandal. The remaining
some 66,000 US troops will be withdrawn over the next two years.
10. Bahrain’s government continued to face demonstrations
and political unrest as the majority Shiite community campaigns for a more
equitable constitution. The US was forced to reduce the number of navy and
other military personnel stationed in Manama. The hard line Sunni monarchy
accuses its Arab Shiites of being cat’s paws of Iran, but this is a red
herring. The regime has resorted to the most despicable arbitrary arrests,
absurd charges, punishments for thought crimes, and torture. The US has not
done enough to condemn this situation or dissociate itself from the monarchy.
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