“The latest war in Gaza is unlike previous struggles between Israel and Palestinians,” writes Hicham Alaoui. So Israel too has been waging a struggle? What kind of a struggle is it?
“The ongoing conflict [?] embodies a dramatic reconfiguration of regional order in the Middle East that no longer abides by old sectarian schisms.” And further down: “No longer does the Sunni-Shi‘a split shape its outlook, as in the past two decades.”
‘No longer’? The is a swallowing of the myth of a ‘sectarian’ conflict propagated after the invasion of Iraq the after 2011 uprisings. One can only wonder how come that in very few years sectarianism that had shaped the region’s outlook was ‘no longer’. (see Ussama Makdisi’s paper The Mythology of the Sectarian Middle East, 2017)
“So long as Hamas holds power over its fiefdom, its quest to hijack the Palestinian cause will remain intact…” Needs elaboration. Are we saying those who voted for Hamas were victims of a hijacking or they had just let themselves being hijacked?
“It also cares little for the traditional geopolitical rifts dividing the Arab world…” In this context accuracy is required: Arab regimes, not ‘the Arab world’. Later in the article the writer uses the former. This is not a helpful conflation of the general and abstract with the specific.
“For the French government and elites, much as Hamas’ attacks on October 7 symbolized throngs of Muslim immigrants and refugees overtaking French culture, Israel’s militaristic response represented a valiant effort to reclaim Western democracy and civilization against these barbarians. For these stakeholders, the charge of anti-Semitism against pro-Palestinian activists is not merely about defending Israel. It is part-and-parcel of safeguarding the bulwarks of Western might from the dark hordes, which are besieging French exceptionalism. For them, October 7 is Bataclan in the Middle East. This xenophobic prerogative has grown in recent years across the continent: witness the European Union’s commissioner for promoting the “European Way of Life”.
Indeed.
Than back to abstract and myth: “truly universal principles such as liberalism and rule of law.” Putting aside the contradictory aspects of ‘liberalism’ from its inception, after all what has happened since at least WWII, Alaoui puts faith in ‘liberalism’, ‘rule of law’ and bourgeois democracy’ in general. We cannot speak of the so-called rule of law separate from the rule of capital.
Then, he states that the “clash of civilizations” has returned but in a different guise. Was not that ‘clash’ embedded in ‘liberalism’ and partly defined the ‘rule of law’?
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