Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be with you in these tragic times, and rather than try to outdo ourselves in literally and feats to talk about the situation, I suggest we keep a one-minute silence in deep respect for the victims of Palestine and Lebanon.
I would have liked to call my talk ‘Development in Times of Monsters’, but the Gramsci quote became suspicious since it was used in a tweet by an unexpected Gramscist, the Saudi ambassador in Lebanon (November 2021). With this goes the “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will” and I will keep the rest for Gramsci for myself.
I have an ungrateful task to talk about two complex issues and relate them together. They are seemingly apart but they meet in a bizarre manner, as I will try to show. I am referring to the wars and major transformations, and trying at the same time to imagine a social future for the region.
In a lecture at the Medina Theater, Beirut in March 2024, I described October 7th, 2023, as the most successful guerrilla operation of national liberation since the Battle of Algiers, 1957. We know the rest.
Many thought that Operation would be over in a few months, myself among them, with a lot of loss of life and destruction, but ultimately some ceasefire will be imposed in a few months and an exchange of hostages, as had previously happened in Gaza wars. We met with two tragic surprises.
- On the Israeli side was unleashed the full extreme right-wing program, though we rarely link together its components though ii is in fact a long-standing Likud and extreme right-wing program, which opposed three major developments concerning the Palestinian problem: the retreat from Gaza and from Lebanon, and the Oslo agreement. Now this unleashed what developed into a genocidal war with tens of thousands of civilians killed, mainly women and children, which not only renewed calls for reoccupation and ethnic cleansing, inspired calls to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza, but led to the repeated transfers of hundreds of thousands across Gaza strip and a project to transfer at least half a million its Inhabitants of Gaza in a new Nakba, climaxing in the discussion of the occupation of all of the West Bank in the Knesset and the resurgence of calls for the creation of ‘Greater Israel’.
- The preparedness of the Palestine resistance to wage a multifaceted, extended struggle and the epic resistance of the Palestinian people of Gaza and the West Bank reaching the second year of the war. This needs no more elaboration.
What of the Arab and international positions? The most painful event, rarely talked about, is the division of the Palestinian people. Palestine National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the Gaza resistance, called upon Hamas to release the hostages and deliver its arms, and declared the PNA prepared to take over the administration of the Strip after the defeat of the resistance. Abbas’s PNA sat silent while Israeli forces were demolished camps and neighborhoods of cities and emptied them of their occupants. Abbas was well rewarded for his positions. The Israeli forces carrying out military operations inside his capital city of Ramallah, and Donald Trump just barred him entry to attend the UN meeting in New York.
Egypt contributed to the blockade of Gaza all the while playing the role of mediator alongside Qatar in the ceasefire and the release of hostages. Qatar played the mediation practice in more than one conflict. Yet both governments, dealing with Netanyahu, were aware that the outcome of the mediation, was not theirs, but lay in the hands of Donald Trump. Saudi Arabia, managed to hide its position with calls for a Palestinian state. The Syrian regime collapsed, during the war, and it was revealed that it had initially refused an Iran demand to join the Axis of Resistance and initiate military action in support for Gaza.
What to call the European position concerning the two-state solution, if not hypocritical, as the Israeli sabotage of the Oslo Accords, from its earliest phase, was covered by United States was the very ‘interested’ Unite State mediator, with European complicity.
Now, Russia and China, were notable for their absence. It is not enough to say that Russia was involved in the Ukraine war. The type of positions on Gaza and on the war against Iran, did not require any military implications. And for all that we know, Mr. Putin is still very far from any deal with the United States.
One should look at the Chinese position from the perspective of the gas and oil interests in the Gulf states. But China at least initiated the unique initiative of bringing to Beijing the different Palestinian organizations in the hope of coming up with a common position vis-a-vis the war and a common position on the administration of Gaza. Consciously or unconciously, the Chinese initiative revealed the gravity of the Palestinian division.
Now comes a delicate question, where were the Arab masses and T=the of empty streets and campuses in most of the Arab countries, compared to any Western countries, save a few exceptions in the Maghreb and Tunisia. There are plenty of interesting explanations. Here are a few:
One is the fear of repression. Not a simple matter, but the Arab masses in2011 and after, had ‘broken fear’ and dared confront the army and police repression.
Another, the disillusion after the Arab Spring. Now, it could be said that disillusion is usually individual and it’s difficult to talk about masses being disillusioned. Not to mention the resurgence of 2019.
A more serious interpretation is that people were letting off their frustration and anger on the internet and the social media, leading to demobilizing, especially among the youth. Not to speak of the negative role played by the Western media..
I want to add another element: the Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict do not automatically translate into internal affairs, that is, into internal interests, demands, and aspirations. This is one lesson from the past, let’s say, decades concerning whether Palestine in itself, is conducive to anti-imperialism, to social change, to revolution, or whether it is the opposite? We’ll come to that. But the important thing is that what was needed were people who translate Palestine into internal affairs, who translate Palestine into questions of power and authority, who translate Palestine into issues of people’s livelihood, who translate Palestine into struggle against internal oppression and internal exploitation. This process is not immediate. This process is not direct. At least what we know from experience is that the Palestinian fida`is managed to survive in Arab countries in two cases before Oslo, Lebanon and Jordan, and those were the two countries where you had strong local oppositions that allied itself with them, that responded to the deeper meanings of the liberation message of Palestine.
Now, one of the things that were revealed in these wars, and which do not necessarily need to be detailed, but still need to be said, is that Israel is a settler’s colony in which a majority oppresses a minority, on the one hand, and that it is a state representing a minority in the region which survives only by dominating the majority. This is the essence of fueled Zionism, based on the belief that a minority can never live with a majorit without being dominate by it. This is the whole philosophy of the Jewish state, and this is to be remembered.
I think we don’t need much to realize after Gaza to what extent Israel is an organic part of not only the United States, but of what the Atlantic Alliance despite its fissions and present problems.
But I want to talk about something more immediate, which is the implication of the Trump administration’s participation in the war. It is not enough to speak about the organic links between Israel and the U.S. imperialism. It would be better to start from the beginning. Under Trump 1, the U.S. Administration had gone a long way in achieving its historical imperial task, that of joining together the two bases of its domination, the oil oligarchies of Saudi and the Gulf and Israel. On a more direct level, the Abraham Accords were designed to help the U.S. At that time, Trump 1, retreated forces from the Saudi Gulf region in order to mobilize more military power against China and charge Israel with the security and protection of that region as a regional sub-imperial power. The same is being tried under Trump 2, but by military means, especially after the discovery that Iran had gone a long way toward the production of nuclear weapons. The US administration was not dragged by Israel to its war against Iran’s nuclear facilities, rather the strikes, the preemptive strikes of the Israeli Air Force against Iran’s nuclear air defenses and military infrastructure paved the way for the final strikes of the B-2 bombers.
Now, I’d like to talk about what was called the War of Solidarity by the Axis of Resistance movements. Syria did not participate in the military activities, and it was revealed after the regime collapse that the regime had no interest in participation in the war in support of Gaza. The role of Iraq in the war ws a modest one. The exchange of rockets was symbolic and Iraq lost its main role in the traffic of arms to Lebanon when the Syrian regime fell. On the other hand, U.S. Military and political pressure succeeded in putting the disarmament of the Popular Mobilization forces and the different Shiite jihadi organizations on the agenda.
In Yemen, the Houthis are a peripheral movement that took over power by force in northern Yemen, and by so doing, redivided of Yemen into two zones. A northern zone, under Iranian influence, and a southern zone, led by a ‘legitimate’ government under the influence to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. The Houthis managed to control large sections of the Red Sea coast, and are presently confining their activities to launching ballistic missiles on Ben Gourion airport and attacking Israeli ships in the Red Sea, sparing American ships after an agreement with the United States administration, suffering in return a destructive Israeli air war of attrition. The big questions are concerning the fate of Yemen itself. To what extent would the Houthis manage to remain in power or collapse under the Israeli ongoing war or would the situation in Yemen end up in a compromise between Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Iran legalizing the country’s partition?
What we are left here is Lebanon, where you have tens of thousands of people who live a few kilometers away from the occupied upper Galilee and its armed settlers. I want to propose that, had Hezbollah not started war on October the 8th, Israel would have nevertheless attacked. I don’t imply that this is why Hezbollah took the decision to attack, but because of the fact that political negotiations on the border issues had failed. And now we know, in hindsight, that Israel had been preparing for the past 12 years to get rid of Hezbollah in Lebanon. So, my hunch is that on that day, it was difficult to assume that one can just say: “let’s keep the stalemate, nobody moves.” But that’s not the most important part. In fact, we can add to this that Hezbollah was had a plan to infiltrate the southern borders and occupy a big part of Upper Galilee and the settlements and the villages by the famous Radwan force. That was an open secret. And I think we know now to what extent that plan was used by the Israelis, as a pretext to mobilize for a total war against Lebanon and launch it.
So, what we have here is an asymmetrical war between a small army, Hezbollah, launching missiles against military and security installations in the Haifa and Tel Aviv region, and a superior army, with a crushingly superior air force waging war all over Lebanese territory, in the South, the Southern Suburb and the Bekaa. This total war was soon accompanied by a land war that occupied the whole of southern Lebanon south of the Litani river. A heavy toll was paid by the population of those region including massive destruction of some thirty frontline villages, Hezbollah lost its irreplaceable leader, dozens of its military commanders and cadres and hundreds of fighters, not to speak of wounded and victims of the Pager attack and attacks on infrastructure. Now Israel still occupies five strategic points in the South all the while continuing its attacks of resistant leaders and cadres and
A new government of technocrats under American pressure and Saudi intervention assumed the role of a state within a few months and decreed the disarmament of Hezbollah under the guise of the famous monopoly of arms by the state, which was to be implemented within the end of this month. What is even more dangerous is the decision to order to the army to draft a plan for the collection of arms.
We can stop here. In two days’ time, the army is going to present its plan for the recuperation of Hezbollah. I’m talking about all this not only because we’re in Lebanon, but because this is the only case of the four cases of solidarity, of the three cases of solidarity, where you have this very dangerous situation which raises the possibility of severe conflicts among the Lebanese. At least one can stress the point that national unity should be the priority in dealing with the post-war situation, to reach a negotiated solution where all the potentials of the Lebanese army and the resistance are put together in an integral plan for national defense, especially at a time where it is obvious that Israel has plans to enlarge its security belt in Syria and Lebanon, and that implies more and more occupation, more and more military presence.
Now, there’s something which is unsaid about the disarmament. When special American envoy to Lebanon, Mr. Barrack, detailed the type of arms that should have been delivered by Hezbollah not much has been said about ballistic missiles. After the 2006 war, with the help of Syria and Iran, Hezbollah built a huge ballistic missile depot in the northern Bekaa, and across the borders into Syria. Now, one should ask, what was the situation of those missiles during the war?
The Israelis used to talk about a few thousand. I for one believed that because Israeli armed reports said that those cannot be eliminated, except by land warfare. We lived from 2006 onwards under what was called a military balance between the two armed forces, because of that incapacity. What we know is that those were destined for use against the Dimona Israeli nuclear reactor in the Negev for deterrance or attack. The only theory that exists is that the launch chutes have been hit by Israeli air attacks planes and that the missiles are now buried under the rubble dumped under the rubble some 30-40 meters underground.
I think that should lead us to talk and think about another issue, which is the fate of the resistance axis. After having said that, one should pose the question, at least, but at the same time comment on it in the following sense. As a number of resistance organizations have been led by Iran, the assumption was that this state would not only delivers arms and money, but will be present in the solution of that conflicts and the end of the war. Significantly enough, when Iran responded to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh with an announced missiles and drones attack against Israel, the military exchange between the two countries was short lived. Next came the Israeli-American war against Iran’s nuclear installations.
So, this is where I think we are. Iran has not simply sold out its allies, but gave priority in the wars to defend its nuclear project.
One more thing before we move to the social future. A lot of talk goes on about normalization. First, the bizarre thing is that it’s called normalization, as if what we have lived under Israeli-American oppression, occupation and wars was the exception. It is normalization which is the abnormal. The real meaning of normalization for the peoples of the region, is forcibly introducing Israel as a regional power to compete for influence with Iran and Turkey over the better part of the Arab world. More importantly is that normalization has launched a fierce the competition between three oil oligarchies, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar, for regional power. Saudi Arabia has declared that it seeks privileged relations with the United States in the form of a defense agreement, like the other with Qatar and peaceful nuclear facilities.
I would add to this that there is a growing movement of resistance to normalization, but it should not be restricted to an act of solidarity with Palestine only, but to deal with it as an enemy of Arab solidarity and a threat to the sovereignty of the countries concerned. In addition to the fact that many agreements with Israel contradict blatantly the national and economic interests of the countries concerned.
I can stop here and move quickly to the social future and start with talk about the social present, which we’ve been living for the past 40 years, at least, under globalization and neoliberalism.
And I want to make the point that social future and the social present should be compared to the two major trends, intellectual and forces in the region. The militarized Islamic parties of the axis of resistance, on the one hand and the liberal ‘civil society’ and its NGOs.
Both negate and marginalize what one would imagine would be “The social. One can say largely that the liberal is more a concern of middle classes and that the Islamic radical or even terrorist draws a lot on the poorer and more marginalized sections of the population.
We know close to nothing about the real terrorists, the Jihadists of Daesh and consorts. Those people have been demonized and effaced: they don’t exist. But who are they? Why would one Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Palestinian, Tunisian, Algerian, on the borders, decide and accept to commit what can rightly be called terror. We don’t know them. There are tens of thousands of them. Once I made the mistake on a Syrian opposition television, and said, those are ‘our people’, and was scolded by the journalist how dare I consider them part of us?!
What should be said is attempt to characterize both tendencies. Let me try. In the axis, you have a colonial vision of imperialism, which is very basic, and which lends itself easily to a culturalist interpretation of being against the West, Islam against the West. And it’s coupled with a geostrategic approach that externalizes internal issues: as always, something being done to you. Haunted by projects, come conspiracy, the latest being the famous Greater Middle East Project, which has been living with us since 2003, and we’re still waiting for creation of a Greater Middle East feared by some and awaited by others. As far as I know, the Greater Middle East was the name given by the US Foreign Office to the region once it attacked Afghanistan. But let’s continue.
One should talk about the other side of the movement of the axis of resistance. In Yemen and Iraq, the movements have split the national army or replaced it. In Syria you have a rebel army trying to build and army and ironically enough rebuild the country’s unity around that army. Iraq has the Hashd, which is bigger and stronger han the Iraqi army. In Lebanon coexists with difficulty with the Lebanese army and the military arm of Hezbollah. which I’d still maintain is weaker than the resistance. And finally, the Houthis have broken the Yemeni army, and replaced it, fighting a similar militia claiming to be the legitimate army.
I should add a word on Hezbollah’s communitarian vision of the economic and the social. The party, presents itself as a provider of social services, health care, educational institutions not to speak of its banking institution. But arms don’t necessarily mean revolution. The party propagates a strong social conservatism, which by the way blends very well with its uncritical acceptance of neoliberalism. Rarely would you find a real critique of what the IMF is proposing. I should add that the first minister who decided to privatize the electricity in Lebanon was a Hezbollah minister. In Iraq, sister orgnizations of Hezbollah committed assassinations of militants of the popular uprising of 2019 in Baghdad and Basra. While in Lebanon, Hezbollah dealt a big blow to the popular movement and gave a great service to the capitalist sectarian oligarchy when its secretary general called upon its supporters to vacate the squares and streets, which sizably reduced the popular and geographic extension of the movement. And the call was, ‘come back to the sect, and we will solve your problems’.
I can move quickly to the other side, the liberal side. I want to emphasize that we are very little knowledge about the last 30 years of liberalism and neoliberalism. We know some economic aspects But we don’t know the political and social aspects. I would pretend that neoliberalism globally has created a new language, which is a negation, a reaction, and an opposition to a previous language, situation or phase, which is the phase of national liberation. So what you have, and I’ll take Development, since we’re talking about. Development, has been renamed growth. A full socioeconomic program, ranging from state role in planning, welfare, and social distribution, are now reduced to the ‘invisible hand of the market’ and replaced by the trickle-down effect, imposed by the ‘iron fist of the Pentagon’. Human rights in this liberal trends privilege individual and personal rights. Little interest in economic and social rights. Not to speak of silence concerning the rights of people to self-determination, which is at the heart of the question of Palestine. Anyone heard an NGO calling for its application in Palestine? Apartheid, racial discrimination, has been flattened into “فصل عنصري”racial separation. No hierarchy, separation, or exploitation. And I spend time calling translators and journalists correcting it is “تمييز عنصري” and not “فصل”. It is a hierarchy..
The concept of change was a key word of the 2011 and 2019 revolutions, taken over by social and civil movements, set by political parties. So, you’ll find it abundantly in IMF and World Bank literature. What is to be changed? By what means? What road plan? Who is going to do the change? All the real levers of politics are banned here. Tactics, strategy, offensive, defensive, resistance, move to reform, radical change, or reform, revolution, etc. and this mirrors another local slogan, “يسقط”, as always, somebody who should fall, especially the Nizam, the regime, which is an old, nice slogan from the 1920s against French and British imperialism, but you tell me what it means.
Radical change of meaning is best illustrated in the case of concerning social justice. During the Cold War, the term equality was struck with a taboo because it was seen to imply socialism or communism. It was replaced by equity. The term had a long life. When I used to ask students in my social inequalities class at AUB, what’s the opposite of inequality? I would generally receive the answer, equity. After the end of the Cold War, there was a return to social justice but with a facelift, generally used in opposition to equality and insp The term referred, in the old sense, to social and health security, generous state services, and fair distribution of resources and wealth. Here is the new social justice; a European Union grant for research on the question of promoting social justice in Lebanon would have the following subjects: Empowering women, Strengthening Parliament, protecting human rights, encouraging social dialogue, reinforcing drug prevention and treatment, and advocating for youth. You can apply, there’s still grants.
For the rest, the militant has been transformed into the activist. The first implied struggle and conflict, the other name implies neutral activity. And the name of militant now has shifted to the jihadists and the terrorists. Solidarity has become advocacy. Not the same at all. The first was between people and movement fighting for a common cause. Now it’s one group of people advocating the cause of another.
I want to add to this what concerns directly the political and the social. Civil society does not correspond to society or to the social. It’s the non-state part of society pitted against the state, and that includes the private sector and excludes political parties. In the neoliberal imagery, society does not exist. There is the state and the individuals, the individuals versus the state in anti-authoritarianism, or the state should be put in the service of the individuals. This last one is definition of the role of the state in the Chilean constitution under the bloody dictatorship Pinochet in the seventies. In Lebanon, by the way, one of the rare cases in which private property and private initiative are mentioned in the constitution.
Last but not least, in most of what is called political economy, we are readings of economy in political terms. For example, an AUB professor here had this idea to serve crony capitalism, which says that if a member of a family of bankers holds a political post, the whole family will become a political family. There is also a Syrian oppositionist with this contribution “What is the importance of economic poverty compared to political poverty? The first covers only 37% of the Syrian population, the latter 100% have lived under political poverty for long decades.” And I’m quoting in both cases.
I want to conclude with the following. There is no social future in this present. The social future has to be invented, and the social question reclaimed by the conjugation of the defense and resistance to imperialism and Zionism in the struggle against neoliberalism on the road to social democracy.
Thank you.