MUST READ: MIDDLE EAST LESSON TOO LATE FOR THE LEARNING?

Middle East Lesson Too Late for the Learning?
by Prof. Barry Rubin

If you want to understand Arab politics, don’t bother with what Western “experts” say, get a feel for what people like to refer to today as the local “narrative.” This doesn’t mean you accept what is said as true, but that you understand how what is said makes things work (or rather, fail to work).

This is an especially interesting exercise in light of the Hamas seizure of the Gaza Strip. What will Palestinians, Arabs in general, and the West learn—if anything—from this experience.

As our text let us take an op-ed by Eyad Sarraj in the Toronto Globe and Mail of June 19, 2007, entitled, “Palestinian Territories: What’s Left.” There’s an irony in the title since Sarraj himself is an activist in the relatively tiny political left of Gaza. He is a physician and has been a human rights’ activist. He is one of the most “Westernized” Palestinian intellectuals and political figures. Eyad Sarraj received the 1997 Physicians for Human Rights Award and the 1998 Martin Ennals Award for human-rights defenders. He is director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program.

In short, Sarraj should be giving us just about the most rational, pragmatic, honest, detached, and accurate analysis we are going to get from the Palestinians. So if he doesn’t get it, well, they are in very serious trouble.

I will present his words below in regular font and my responses or additions in capital letters.

...


Read the whole thing...


Pertinent Links:

1) Middle East Lesson Too Late for the Learning?