Liberal Palestine

Taufiq Abu Bakr, a columnist for the PA newspaper, Al-Ayyam, wrote recently that this is "The Moment of Opportunity for Arab Liberalism." Abu Bakr regards Pan-Arabism as finished. "Anyone reading [the Pan-Arabists'] newspapers, listening to their media, or watching … [the Arab] satellite channels notices … the total collapse of their ideological structure…." Recent upheavals in the region, he writes, reflect the ideology's spectacular demise.

"[Lately], an opinion poll by Faisal Al-Qassem on his show on Al-Jazeera
television caught my attention? 80% [of respondents] said they preferred
[Western] imperialism to nationalist Arab regimes." According to Abu Bakr, this justifies "international humanitarian intervention."

"For half of a century, [Arab nationalists] rebuked their peoples with the well-known slogan, 'No voice may be louder than the voice of the battle' with Israel and imperialism ? as if victory could be attained with a bundle of explosives, and without democracy that would bring about the liberation of the human potential within [the people]." The Arab world has wasted 50 years, he argues. Liberalism, "stangled in its cradle" by Pan-Arabists, is now a necessity.