In response to Dr. Jamal Abdel-Gawad: The Arab world does not end

Wrote a fellow flute, d. Jamal Abdul-Jawad, in the newspaper “Al-Ahram”, an article entitled “The end of the Arab world” (24/9/2020). Regardless of the circumstantial considerations that led him to that hasty conclusion, which is the peace treaty between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain. And I have another conclusion, the opposite of what Dr. Gamal Abdel-Gawad completely, and that Israel is well on its way to Arabization and may apply to join the Arab League within the next ten years. That is, the Arab world will increase by another country, and here are the reasons for this forecast:

First: the Palestinian Arab population within Israel itself is about 35%, and the natural growth rate among them, which is 3% per year, is double that among Israeli Jews. Especially since the sources of Jewish immigration dried up, the most recent of which were the Ethiopian Falasha Jews, who were brought to Israel more than thirty years ago, and the Soviet Jews who were deported to Israel after the collapse of Israel. Soviet Union. As for the Jews of Europe and the Americas, they are distinguished citizens, culturally and professionally, integrated into their societies, and they do not feel the need or pressure to immigrate from their most advanced countries to less developed Israel!

Second: the signing of peace agreements between Israel and the countries of the Emirates and Bahrain will not put an end to the Arab world in the twenty-first century, nor will the signing of such agreements with Egypt forty years ago and with Jordan thirty years ago. . Indeed, the number of countries in the Arab world has officially increased, represented by the Arab League, with the accession of Mauritania, Djibouti, Somalia and Comoros. And it could ask for membership of the South Sudan state soon.

Third: Arabism is primarily a sentimental culture and sentiment. This includes the broad and deep sympathy for Lebanon after the explosion of the port of Beirut, and with Sudan after the torrents and rains and the collapse of parts of the Blue Nile dams. These feelings are among the children of the Arab nation and we cannot touch them with the same force in the pandemics that can occur in China, India or European and American countries. The writer does not think that this Arab culture and sentiments will disappear only due to the signing of mutual recognition agreements and commercial cultures. In the case of Egypt and Jordan, we have two important examples. What the Arab nationalists feared did not materialize out of normalization or Israeli hegemony!

Fourth: both the UAE and Bahrain have been countries that have been open to the world for decades and citizens from all over the world come to them. Hence, expatriate workers in the Emirates, who represent 80% of the workforce, have the nationalities of one hundred and fifty countries, out of the total of the two hundred member states of the United Nations. By the way, these are global trends in the movement of trade, capital and labor. And Dr. Jamal Abdul-Gawad, by virtue of his academic specialization in international relations and his media work, must be well aware of this. We Arabs have already become part of that globalization, and so has Israel.

Fifth: Arab culture in general, and Egyptian culture in particular, is the strongest in the Middle East and Western Asia. And anyone who has visited Israel among Arabs and Egyptians feels it from the first minutes at Tel Aviv airport, where the Arabic language and Arabic restaurants are no less than their Israeli counterparts, if not a little more.

Sixth: dear friend Jamal Abdul-Jawad neglected to talk about the return that the UAE and Bahrain received in exchange for recognition, that is to stop annexing the territories of the West Bank and the occupied Jordan Islands to Israel, in the sense that they remain occupied territories with Gaza as the core of the promised Palestinian state.

Seventh: the expansionist Zionist appetite for Israeli hardliners, represented by their Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has led to the rapprochement of the PLO and the Fatah Organization in the West Bank and the Islamic movement of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, a reconciliation difficult to achieve. achieve over the past decade. It is a validation of one of the laws sociologist Max Weber taught us about the unexpected consequences of reckless human behavior.

Eighth: In parallel with the recognition and reconciliation initiatives between Israel and each of the Emirates and Bahrain in the Arabian Gulf region, and without intentional coordination, there has been an acceleration of reconciliation between groups in both South Sudan and Libya, which indicates the resurgence of the global trend to peacefully resolve extended conflicts, which is the trend that Supported by the concern of the great powers of the international system for competition and peaceful competition in other technological and medical fields, the Corona pandemic, which has spread in the world in the year 2020, has doubled its pace from China in the east, to both the United States and Brazil in the west.

Ninth: that Dr. Jamal Abdel-Gawad is not and will not be the first to foresee the end of the Arab world, as a concept and as a reality. He was preceded by a well-known Lebanese-American professor, Dr. Fouad Al-Ajami, in an article published in the Journal of International Affairs, which he developed into a book entitled: “The End of Pan Arabic”. This was forty years ago, and coincided with the signing of the peace accords by Egypt and Israel at Camp David, between the late Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, and under the auspices and testimony of US President Jimmy Carter, but Arabism has not disappeared and the Arab world has not ended.

May dear Jamal Abdul Jawad rest assured, because the Arabs and their world will continue, because they are a nation with an eternal message.

On the way that God intended

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