HEAVING VOLCANO (Continued)

Last week I referred to a prophetic picture of the Middle East which had Israel at its centre and encircled with hurricanes representing its neighbouring states. The hurricanes were getting ever stronger and more violent and were building up into a huge whirling vortex. That picture was given just a few months before arrival of the widespread uprisings that have been called the “Arab Spring”. It is a picture that has proved genuinely prophetic.

Those uprisings began in Tunisia, whence they spread to neighbouring Libya. Yemen was also thrown into turmoil and Bahrain was threatened. Iraq was already in turmoil due to the US invasion. But the critically important developments have been in Egypt and, more recently, in Syria. These two countries are the most influential of the Arab states and form the cornerstone of the Arab League of 22 nations. The situation in both these countries is at a highly critical stage of impasse, with violent revolution and brutal response evident on the streets of their cities. A major split in the Arab League has emerged as the league has censured Syria. It is not at all the sort of things most observes would have imagined twelve months ago.

So what exactly is happening, and why? In historical terms the unrest constitutes a popular movement against the self-serving and brutal autocratic governments that gained power in the ‘60s and 70s, mainly through army intervention, and deposed the corrupt kingships left over from World War 2. It is a movement for greater freedoms and for political re-structuring that will deal with poverty and injustice. This is genuinely the case even though there are among the “revolutionaries” elements which would like to impose their own brand of dictatorship. It is fundamentally a widespread challenge to the old political order, “l’ancien regime” of the Arab world. It is a challenge to autocracy and a call for something more akin to genuine democracy. That is why it has earned the title of “Arab Spring” – a new birth.

The origin of the movement is very deep and widespread. It is the fruit of a globalised world, of new technological information channels and a new sense of awareness among a growing and vocal middle class. It will not go away. Even Saudi Arabia, despite the immense wealth and power of its princes, is an autocracy that will not ultimately hold out. In the long term some kind of popular rule will be achieved. But if it follows the European nineteenth century experience, that could be another fifty years or even more.

In the short term, however, the outcome is anything but certain. Egypt has just had its first election for a popular government, but extraordinarily the result will not be known until next March! Meanwhile the army is determined to write itself into a place of power in any new constitution, and is not averse to using its muscle on the streets. Alongside that it is clear that the only Egyptian grouping or “party” which has any real cohesiveness is the Moslem Brotherhood, and it looks pretty certain they will get a sufficient number of candidates elected to have the largest say in the proceedings. It is extremely difficult to say just how much the Brotherhood will stick to its original militant and fundamentalist Islamism. There is an old core of hardliners, but there is some evidence that a younger generation of the Brotherhood seem to appreciate that an Islamic take over of the kind that happened in Iran under Khomeini is not really an option. So everything is “up in the air” and will take time to clarify.

Syria is a much more difficult case. Unlike Egypt its autocratic president has not yet been toppled; he is deeply entrenched and threatens all out attack on Israel if the West intervenes as it did in Libya. A much stronger Islamic fundamentalist influence is evident with close links to Iran. All this makes Syria a very violent and unpredictable storm centre.

The worst outcome would be a replacement of Arab autocracies by fundamentalist theocracies, but, though that sort of battle threatens, it is by no means a certainty.

Israel lies, so to speak, in the eye of the storm. I think I’m correct in saying that the eye is actually the calmest part of the storm. Those who would destroy Israel are in confusion around her. It is an extraordinary counterbalance to the threat of annihilation coming from Iran, and even there the rumblings of a popular movement are not far below the surface.

For me, I have a deep sense that God is palpably at work in the history of our generation in this part of the world. For that I am profoundly thankful, even if the outcomes are as yet obscure.


Bob




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