Hazem Saghiyeh

No one could have predicted in 2005 that the split between two conflicting squares in Lebanon would extend to the quasi-totality of the Arab region. March 14 and March 8 forces divided Beirut between them, and so was the case with Sanaa, which is being divided into two squares, Cairo and Manama before them. In comparison, the division in Syria is taking the shape of rebelling regions as opposed to calm ones.

The reasons naturally vary between one country and another, and so do the roles played by the ruling regimes in drawing the outline of polarization. Yet it remains certain that the Arab region is, by and large, suffering nowadays from a tremendous lack in national unanimity issues. The dichotomies between the military and civilians, as well as between Islamists and laymen, often intersect with religious, sectarian and ethnic divisions and almost deplete politics of any kind in our countries.

Regardless of whether Arab Spring uprisings succeed or fail, this situation now calls for drastic reviews of our political culture and of the post-independence regimes. Ever since the independence period, the Arabs have not turned to themselves to deal with essential issues that they are experiencing or dealing with. Worse still, they transformed whatever little unanimities that still prevailed at the time into infallible sacred issues. As time went by and things changed, the ruling regimes and the prevailing patterns of social conservatism made no allowance for public debate and the expression of differences. The military and nationalists of all sides thus brandished accusations of treason whereas Islamists lashed out against unbelievers. In between them, they glossed over the contradictions inherent to Arab societies as if they represented an evil that should be avoided.

Strikingly, those who go too far in questioning a given postulate hide their questioning behind fanaticism for another postulate. For instance, former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who veered drastically off the prevailing approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, “covered” this turnaround by bowing to the most narrow-minded and backward interpretations of Islam.

On a narrower and more marginal level, communists who dared to adopt the medieval features of work relations, especially with regard to land ownership, or to persecute women, successively adopted an extremely radical stance on so-called nationalist issues.

In other words, everybody was requested—and forced—to remain “brothers” whose disagreements over one thing do not prevent them from agreeing on others. Thus, when Syria and Egypt fell out and separated from one another in the early 1960s, they competed in asserting their loyalty to “unity”. When war broke out between the Jordanians and Palestinians in 1970 or between the Lebanese and Palestinians in 1975, or when former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, each of these feuding parties stressed that it was seeking the best way to liberate Palestine.

This goes without mentioning the continuous description of society as one happy family flocking around a leader it is the only one to worship.

This reveals nowadays how we were torn between liars and those forced to act like liars. As decades flew by, we thought that there were bills we had successfully avoided paying. However, we are paying them today in the shape of a horrendous division extending to almost everything we lay our hands on.

This article is a translation of the original, which appeared on the NOW Arabic site on Monday November 28, 2011