War in the time of Bush, Sharon and Ben Laden, Rami G. Khouri

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THE INTENSE, spontaneous reaction throughout the Arab world Monday to the Israeli assassination of Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin is an instructive insight into the prevailing mood in this region, one year after the Anglo-American-led coalition chose to wage war to change the regime in Iraq. The linkage between the two issues — Israel assaulting Palestinians, and Americans assaulting Iraqis — is very strong throughout most Arab countries, contrary to the prevailing American-Israeli view that prefers to separate the two conflicts. The narrow arguments about why Israel killed Sheikh Yassin and what consequences will follow will go on for weeks. I have heard many explanations of why Israel would have wanted to kill Sheikh Yassin, but none of them makes much sense. It seems to me that every possible consequence of the deed will be negative from the Israeli perspective. Here are a few that come to mind quickly: revenge attacks will be launched that will kill or injure hundreds of Israelis. Hamas militants might target Israeli leaders or prominent supporters of Israel in other countries. The Hamas military wing is likely to reorganise into smaller, autonomous units, and may be less disciplined or answerable to a central leadership, as has happened with Fateh in the West Bank. A struggle for power among Hamas' various factions may see the hardliners stepping up their activities in order to respond to the public's anger. A backlash of support for Hamas will further erode the weak credibility and impact of Yasser Arafat, Fateh and the Palestinian National Authority.

If Israel carries out its unilateral withdrawal from Gaza later this year, Hamas may well emerge as the ruling power there. Arab countries that have working relations with Israel will be pressured by public opinion to cool those ties. The Arab leaders who will meet at the Tunis summit next week will find it difficult to make a sincere appeal for peace and coexistence with Israel. The Arab political and economic reform agenda that has been heating up will likely take a back seat to the Palestine issue. Anti-American sentiment in the region will increase, possible translating into attacks against American targets, especially after Washington's conspicuous refusal to condemn the assassination. Syria, Iran and other players in the region who support Hamas, Hizbollah and other Palestinian resistance groups and militant political organisations will be emboldened to entrench their positions, and to exploit anti-Israeli and anti-American popular sentiments throughout the Middle East.

The list of potential negative consequences for Israel is so long that one wonders what the Israeli government expected to gain from the killing. Perhaps Israel killed Sheikh Yassin because this Israeli leadership is strategically unable to go beyond killing and repression as a basic policy. Sharon and his government have brought neither security nor peace to their people; yet they persist in their policy of hitting the Palestinians hard in order to beat them into submission, a proven failed policy that they cannot seem to change.

This takes place within a wider Middle Eastern and Arab context that, in the eyes of most people in this region, is not neatly separated into terrorism, Israel-Palestine, Iraq, poverty, democratisation or other issues. The depth and breadth of emotions that erupted Monday throughout the region were not fuelled only by the Yassin assassination. They reflected the general mood in the Arab world which is defined by a troubling and cumulative combination of negative emotions, including anger and humiliation at the hands of the US and Israel, uncertainty about personal security, exasperation at the lassitude and impotence of existing Arab regimes, frustration with the frozen, top-heavy domestic Arab political systems, and fear for the ability of one's children to enjoy a better life in their own generations.

None of these emotions or concerns is new. All have been building up steadily over the past two or three decades. They continue to be generated by a combination of domestic, regional and global events that the average Arab citizen perceives to be totally beyond his or her control. Arab citizens will watch the Arab summit on television next week in the same manner that they will watch the Olympic Games this summer — as spectators momentarily entertained by events and actors far away, detached from their daily lives.

In the year since the Iraq war was launched, the Arab world has been eerily and unnaturally quiet, probably because it is still stunned by the audacity of the imperial deed that the Anglo-American armies launched in March 2003. Most people in this region thought that sending armies half way around the world to rearrange countries and regions was a 19th Century phenomenon. It turns out that, in the Arab world, this remains an operative option.

To be fair, this reflects two symbiotic sicknesses: the many ugly police state regimes in the Middle East, and a brand of Anglo-American imperial arrogance that routinely uses lies, exaggeration, deception and subterfuge to achieve its ideological aims.

Most people and institutions in the Middle East, suffering a stunning combination of helplessness and hopelessness, have had serious trouble coming to grips with the twin problems of the Israeli assault against Palestine and the Anglo-American assault against Iraq. They largely lack access to the most basic mechanisms that any society needs to assess such phenomena and formulate a coherent reply, even at the level of public opinion, let alone national policy — mechanisms such as credible political parties, parliaments, civil society groups, quality mass media, reflective research universities and independent research institutions.

These are homegrown Arab problems, but they also happen and persist to a large extent because of the impact of American and Israeli actions over decades. As we enter the second year of the Anglo-American-led occupation and reconfiguration of Iraq, within the fourth year of the current round of warfare between Israelis and Palestinians, the linkages among the different problems and conflicts throughout the Middle East become more clear, though no easier to resolve. If current patterns persist — and this seems to be the message of the Yassin assassination — the circle of senseless war will continue to widen in this region, and perhaps spread to other parts of the world. In the time of Sharon, Bush, and Ben Laden, war seems to be the preferred policy option, and so we will continue to watch these gladiators on television for a long time.