Egypt's revolution: a year on

Today, January 25, we mark the anniversary of the beginning of the Egyptian revolution. A year on, what has changed in Egypt and the region? And what are the implications for Israel and the United States, two countries that are accustomed to dictating the regional agenda?

Egyptian girl in Tahrir square during the revolution (photo: flickr/Aschevogel)

Recently, [Israeli] analysts and “Arab affairs experts” were asked to answer the question: Following the Arab revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and, to a lesser extent, in other countries, what has changed?

I believe the question is misleading. If what was experienced in the Arab world one year ago is indeed a revolution, then it is not an event or a series of events, but the beginning of a new era which cannot be measured in months but years. Only in another eight or ten years we can, perhaps, begin answering this question. In other words, we are at the height of the first stage of long-term change, the deep implications of which we can assess only in a decade.

However, it is possible to assess the immediate implications, on both the local and regional levels, of the fall of the old regimes in Egypt and Tunisia.

The first implication: loss of fear. The extended authoritarian regimes of Mubarak and Ben Ali were facilitated through oppression and fear, which resulted in a relative paralysis of popular resistance movements. One year ago, this blockade of fear was broken and the people returned to shape the history of their countries--no longer supposedly apathetic and subservient, but major actors on the political and social stage.

The second implication relates to the United States (and, to a lesser extent, France in relation to Tunisia), which lost its strategic partners who ensured American control over the region. This isn’t a total collapse of the imperialist system in the Middle East, but is certainly a weakening--from now on the United States and the new regimes must take the masses and their aspirations into account. In Egypt, the army continues to rule and only the ruling elite was changed, but there exists no doubt that it will be forced to make reforms due to fear of additional mass protests.

The third implication is the absence of progressive and credible oppositions – due to harsh oppression, but also because of serious political mistakes – which transformed Islamic movements into the sole political alternative in most of the Arab states. When we note “Islamic movements” it must be recalled that behind this general headline are groups different from each other and, in certain instances, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, these movements are not hostile to imperialism. In other words, if it displays intelligence and distances itself from the neo-conservatism of the “clash of civilizations," the American government can find a path of dialogue and cooperation with some of the new governments, even those dominated by Muslim parties.

Fourthly, the Arab Spring had implications for the state of Israel. For the first time in a century, the regional agenda was not determined by Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians, almost as if Israel and the Palestinians were left on the sidelines.

The Zionist regime can in no way accept this situation, and will do everything to return to center stage and to reclaim its role as the determiner of the regional agenda. Israel’s traditional way of doing so is to increase tension in the region and initiate a military conflict. The craziest of Israel's leaders are threatening to attack Iran; the more realistic ones demand to make do with attacking fronts that have less dangerous implications – Gaza and, perhaps, Lebanon.

In the meantime, the United States opposes an Israeli military strike on Iran and the tension between the two long-standing allies is likely to add fuel to the fire of regional instability. The current American paralysis comes from, among other things, the rapidly approaching presidential elections, so an Israeli military attack cannot be totally disregarded, despite White House disapproval. With the right wing, adventurous leadership of Netanyahu-Lieberman-Barak, no one can know what will happen.

Translated to English by the Alternative Information Center (AIC)