War in Gaza Strip and relations with the Middle East: evaluating New Delhi’s steps in the “Jenga”

The paper seeks to examine the impact of post 2011 Arab developments on the nation-state and its repercussions on supporting the Palestinian cause? In order to answer that, the study deals with a theoretical approach to the crises of political systems, and then analyzes the nature of developments in the Arab region and its repercussions on the nation-state on the one hand, and its repercussions on the Palestinian cause on the other.It was found through the study that the Palestinian cause is affected by its Arab depth, whether before or after the revolutions. Although the Palestinian cause was not the main title of those revolutions, but it was present in the conscience of the rebellious masses. The Arab countries remained governed in this process by the duality of “the old next to the new” in light of the dilemmas and phenomena that prevailed. It seemed apparent how weak and fragile the Arab national state was towards itself and the Palestinian cause, as it was preoccupied with its internal crises that prevailed over its policies. Keywords: Arab Nations – Palestinian cause – Middle East – International Changes DOI: 10.7176/IAGS/91-02 Publication date: August 31 st 2021

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

Review

The international community has affirmed the human right to water in a number of international treaties, declarations and other documents. Most notably, the United Nations (UN) Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted in November 2002 a General Comment on the Right to Water setting out international standards and obligations relating to the right to water. Based on the UN concept of water as a human right for selected Arab countries in the Middle East (Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon), the paper analyses if and to what extent these concepts are acknowledged. It aims to identify the scale of knowledge of and commitment to the UN concept in the region, and the main areas of concern in each country regarding water as a human right. The paper summarizes the main challenges facing strategic and coordinated action towards the UN concept of water as a human right, identifies what types of processes and institutions need to be developed to meet the challenges of the concept, and provides best practice examples from countries that have shown innovation. Objectives and priority ideas for activities of non-governmental organizations are recommended.Water as a Human Right: The Understanding of Water in the Arab Countries of the Middle EastAll authorsSimone Klawitter & Hadeel Qazzazhttps://doi.org/10.1080/07900620500036414Published online:22 January 2007 Table 1. Egypt: evaluation of the UN criteria Download CSVDisplay Table Water as a Human Right: The Understanding of Water in the Arab Countries of the Middle EastAll authorsSimone Klawitter & Hadeel Qazzazhttps://doi.org/10.1080/07900620500036414Published online:22 January 2007 Table 2. Palestine: evaluation of the UN criteria Download CSVDisplay Table Water as a Human Right: The Understanding of Water in the Arab Countries of the Middle EastAll authorsSimone Klawitter & Hadeel Qazzazhttps://doi.org/10.1080/07900620500036414Published online:22 January 2007 Table 3. Jordan: evaluation of the UN criteria Download CSVDisplay Table Water as a Human Right: The Understanding of Water in the Arab Countries of the Middle EastAll authorsSimone Klawitter & Hadeel Qazzazhttps://doi.org/10.1080/07900620500036414Published online:22 January 2007 Table 4. Lebanon: evaluation of the UN criteria Download CSVDisplay Table

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

The Middle East region has been an area of war and political conflict for several decades. There is currently limited research on the experiences of war and conflict among the individuals from Arab countries in the Middle East. The aim of this review was to systematically review and meta-synthesize qualitative literature on the experiences of individuals from Arab countries in the Middle East of going through and coping with war and political conflict. We systematically searched for relevant literature through MEDLINE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Google Scholar, EThOS, OpenGrey, and The Arab Journal of Psychiatry. Studies selected needed to have a qualitative design reporting on the war and conflict experiences of participants aged 18 years or older from Arab countries in the Middle East. The review protocol was preregistered with PROSPERO (Ref: CRD42022314108). We identified 27 studies to be included in the final review. Four overarching themes were included in the meta-synthesis: War and conflict as life-defining experiences, experiences of hardship, coping with war and conflict, and positives out of a painful experience. Participants in the included studies reported significant distress and losing their sense of self, as well as resilience and positive growth. This review and meta-synthesis revealed the particular culturally informed experiences of individuals from Arab countries in the Middle East in processing their conflict experiences. These experiences highlight the need for culturally sensitive interventions for a population that has been under significant war-related stressors.

In Memoriam: Sadiq Jalal al-ʿAzm, 1934–2016

Bustan's commitment to scholarly review in the fields of Middle East and Islamic studies makes it important to stop and reflect on the passing of important scholars and intellectuals who have shaped these ever-broadening fields over the past few decades. The following short essay about Sadiq al-ʿAzm was written by Professor Itamar Rabinovich—one of Bustan's founders and editors, and a historian of modern Syrian history. It honors a Middle Eastern intellectual whose ideas have been woven into the fabric of a large body of scholarship over the past four decades. Many contemporary scholars continue to use specific terms and quotes that Sadiq al-ʿAzm formulated over the years, including during the brutal war that has devastated Syria since 2011. In a recent edited collection, for example, Raymond Hinnebusch used al-ʿAzm's concept of a “military-mercantile complex” to describe the rise of a nexus of army and business interests in Syria. Then in the same volume, another contributor, Reinoud Leenders, writes, “Syria's pre-eminent intellectual and philosopher Sadiq al-Azm explained [in reference to 2011 uprising] it was the in the very act of mobilization against the regime that Syrians discovered that they could overcome their ‘inferiority complex … in the face of this military regime's overall power.’”1Several other contemporary works continue to build on the legacy of al-ʿAzm for his contributions to understanding the Middle East from within and because of the impact of his writings on various important discourses that continue to attract new works of scholarship. The editors of Bustan: Middle East Book Review believe that the short essay in memory of Sadiq Jalal al-ʿAzm that follows reflects our ambition, as a journal based in the Middle East, to reflect critically on contemporary scholarship about the Middle East produced in the region.It was one of those ironies of history. The news of Sadiq al-ʿAzm's death as an exile in Berlin reached us at the same time as the stream of news and horrific descriptions of Bashar al-Asad's troops conquering Eastern Aleppo with help of his Russian and Iranian patrons, and the Shiʿi militias assembled by them. Al-ʿAzm, the leading Syrian intellectual, a man who had to a great extent represented older Syria, died on the eve of the Asad regime's military achievement, which appears to be a significant step toward preserving, and possibly restoring, the regime's rule over Syria as an ʿAlawi-Shiʿi hegemony under Russian and Iranian patronage.Al-ʿAzm was a scion of Damascus' most prominent notable family. In the eighteenth century, the al-ʿAzms founded and maintained a dynasty that governed Damascus under the loose sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire. It was part of two larger phenomena—the rise of local autonomies under Ottoman rule, and the emergence of a class of notables who served as mediators between the Ottoman central government and the Arab population in the Empire's Arab provinces. During the twentieth century, the al-ʿAzm family played a role in Syrian politics under the French Mandate and after independence in the 1950s. Most prominent among them was Khaled al-ʿAzm, who served as interim president and as prime minister in several governments.Sadiq al-ʿAzm was a philosopher, professor of philosophy, and, most importantly, public intellectual. He received his PhD in philosophy at Yale University, became a professor of philosophy at the University of Damascus, and as the political climate in Damascus grew harsher, moved to Beirut. Al-ʿAzm was at that time a Marxist, and a harsh critic of Syrian and Arab public and political life. In the late 1960s, two books made him famous, as well as one of the Arab World's most prominent public intellectuals.Self-Criticism after the Defeat was published in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. It was the most important critical essay published in the Arab World in the shadow of the Six-Day War and it resonated in the Arab World as well as in Israel. When Yehoshafat Harkabi published a Hebrew-language collection titled The Arabs' Lesson from Their Defeat, his translations from al-ʿAzm's book constituted the most important portion of al-ʿAzm's volume. Al-ʿAzm took Arab society and the pseudo-revolutionary regimes that had emerged in Syria, Egypt, and Iraq in the 1950s and early 1960s to task. These regimes were expected to transform Arab society and politics after ridding them of the corruption and inefficacy of the anciens regimes. Shortly thereafter, he published his Critique of Religious Thought. It was a powerful assault written from a Marxist perspective and directed mostly at Islam. The book was too bold even for liberal Beirut. The Lebanese political system rested on an uneasy balance between Christians and Muslims, and al-ʿAzm's criticism of Islam, though written by a Muslim, was too much of a challenge for the Lebanese status quo and al-ʿAzm was briefly put in jail. Over the following decades, Al-ʿAzm spent his life in exile at universities and think tanks in Europe and the United States or in efforts to find a modus vivendi with the Baʿth regime that would enable him to live and teach in Damascus, a city that he always saw as home. During these decades, his Marxism and radicalism were blunted but he remained critical, productive, and brave. In a 2013 interview, Al-ʿAzm addressed the issue of his relationship with the regime and said, among other things, that This reality constituted a type of inferiority complex (in me and in others) due to my impotence in the face of this military regime's overall power, as well as due to the impossibility of pronouncing a possible “no” against it (individually or collectively). I dealt with this inferiority complex by adapting slowly to this stressful tyrannical reality, and through the careful introspection of the rules and principles of interacting with it, with all that's required of hypocrisy and pretending to believe and accept, secrecy, word manipulation and circumvention of the regime's brute force. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to either continue with my normal life and do my routine work and daily errands, or preserve my mental and physical health. Al-ʿAzm was part of an elitist group of Arab intellectuals who chose, or were forced to, live and publish in the West, beyond the reach of the military officers and politicians who ruled the Arab World. It included, for example, the poet Adonis, Edward Said, and Fouad Ajami. Typically for the politics of exiled intellectuals, this group was divided by ideological controversies and personal rivalries. Each member of the group saw himself as the senior Arab intellectual. Al-ʿAzm fought in public with Adonis and was recently critical of the latter's position with regard to the current Syrian revolt. His rivalry with Said was particularly bitter. In 1978, Said published Orientalism, his sharp criticism of the fashion in which European orientalism saw and interpreted the orient. It was, Said argued, a patronizing and condescending view of the other, serving and legitimizing Western colonialism, whose impact went so far as to shape the manner by which people of the orient came to see themselves. The book enjoyed immediate and massive success and influence that transformed Middle Eastern studies in the academy as well as the discourse on the Middle East in both the academy and the media.But Said's Orientalism also met with significant criticism, part of which was written by Sadiq al-ʿAzm. In 1980, Al-ʿAzm published “Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse,” taking Said to task for among other things creating a linear view of orientalism from the traditional European view of the East to the academic cultural orientalism of modern times. Also, as a Marxist, Al-ʿAzm criticized Said for putting the emphasis on the power of ideas rather than on the material forces at work in history. Said accused orientalism and orientalists as being in the service of the colonial powers, but for Said, according to Al-ʿAzm, ideas preceded the quest for material interest. Al-ʿAzm did not exonerate orientalists of serving their governments, but for him the governments' quest for territories, political control, and economic interest preceded the intellectual justification. “Orientalism in Reverse” as such was not a critique of Said but of the tendency of Arab intellectuals to see Islam as a liberating force in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian revolution.Said was not receptive to criticism, and his relationship with al-ʿAzm deteriorated into a bitter and open rivalry. In 1980, al-ʿAzm submitted “Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse” to the Arab Studies Quarterly, edited at the time by Said and Fouad Moughrabi. It was rejected and published a year later in the journal Khamsin. The episode led to an angry exchange of letters between al-ʿAzm and Said. In his letter to al-ʿAzm, Said told him that his essay was too long and had to be cut significantly in order to be published by the Arab Studies Quarterly. He then added that contrary to his decision not to respond to criticism of Orientalism, he would respond to al-ʿAzm's critique. While referring to him as “a friend, who as you know admires and loves you,” he had to tell him candidly that in his recent writing he “detected an unfortunate narrowness and dogmatism which has weakened your work: This is the case of your reading of my book … The worst thing about your writing is how really badly you read … When you quote you misquote and when you construe you misconstrue.” Needless to say, al-ʿAzm responded to Said's response with equal force. “As you know,” he wrote, “I have been to many bitter debates, and controversies before, and I have succeeded in maintaining a reasonably detached attitude throughout. Therefore, I bypass your abusive accusation and take in stride the point by point comparison you draw between the qualities and virtues of yourself and those of my humble person, all leading, predictably enough, to the inevitable conclusion of your superiority.”Said clearly displayed a considerable degree of obtuseness when he allowed himself, from the safety and comfort of the Columbia University campus in New York City, to needle al-ʿAzm, who felt that as a Syrian intellectual and patriot, it was his duty to try to return to Damascus and to promote high level teaching of philosophy under the Baʿth regime. Al-ʿAzm himself spoke openly about his complex relationship with Asad's regime in an interview he granted in 2016 to A Syrious Look, published by Syrian exiles. He described the period in the mid-1990s when he found a modus vivendi of sorts with the Asad regime that enabled him to serve as the head of the Faculty of Philosophy in the University of Damascus. With the help of the Dean of Faculty of Humanities, who knew how to deal with the authorities, he managed to survive in his position for five years as well as to hold a successful and prestigious “culture week.” His coexistence, like that of other intellectuals, with the regime was predicated on not crossing certain red lines. Hafez al-Asad took pride in well-publicized meetings that he occasionally held with Syrian intellectuals, and his coterie made sure to remind the intellectuals that it was proper to thank the enlightened ruler from time to time. But this fragile coexistence ended in 1999. Al-ʿAzm was allowed to leave Syria, but he was told that he would not be allowed to come back. He chose exile.Over the years, al-ʿAzm softened his attitude toward Israel. He was originally a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause and worked for the Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut. But in later years, he maintained relations with Israeli academics and supported the Syrian–Israeli peace process in the second half of the 1990s. In June 2000, he published an intriguing essay in the New York Review of Books titled “The View from Damascus.” He described how Damascene society had come to terms with the idea of peace with Israel. Ironically, the essay was published shortly after the collapse of the Syrian–Israeli peace process and Hafez al-Asad's death.When the Syrian revolt broke out in the spring of 2011, al-ʿAzm became one of its early and prominent supporters, but his support was not free of reservations. He was worried by the significant role played by Islamists and Jihadi elements, but he kept hoping that the revolt would become a revolution that would lead to the emergence of a more democratic Syria. As time went by, and the magnitude of the calamity affecting Syria became more apparent, he became more pessimistic. When asked in the course of the interview whether an entity called Syria would exist in the future, he responded with what seems in retrospect to be a last will and testament: Al-ʿAzm:“On the map, yes.Interviewer:“And on your personal map?”Al-ʿAzm:“I am loyal to Syria. Once, I was not allowed to leave the country. I had to go repeatedly to secret police stations to get permission to travel. The officer used to give me permission to leave the country one time only. That meant it was a one-way ticket, or in other words, they were telling me go and not come back. If you come back, you are coming back to us. I told the officer that the al-ʿAzm family is in Damascus, and I want to return. I don't know if I will be able to go back to Syria. I don't think I will live to see it. My health … But I will defiantly return. I do not want to be an intellectual in exile, with all my respect to intellectuals in exiles. I could have been an intellectual in exile a long time ago. I kept on returning to Syria. Intellectuals in exile took their decisions and made compromises, and I took my decision and made other compromises, too.”

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is still one of the major causes of mortality and morbidity worldwide and is the main cause of liver cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma and liver transplantation in developing countries [1]. The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated a 3% worldwide prevalence of the virus affecting more than 170 million people worldwide [2]. A clear geographical distribution of the virus exists due to many factors. The Middle East region is the geographical area traditionally consisting of southwest Asia and parts of North Africa. This area shows a heterogeneous distribution of HCV with at least 23 million people estimated to have HCV infection in the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Region of WHO [3]. This is close to the number of infected people in the Americas and Europe combined. The average overall prevalence in most countries of the Region ranges from 1% to 2% with the exception of Egypt which is considered to have the highest prevalence worldwide with an estimated 14.7% of the total population seropositive for HCV [4,5]. The epidemic of HCV in Egypt is always explained by the previous long use of parenteral antischistosomal treatment campaigns for more than 30 years; this could explain in the higher rates in the age group 40–60 years in comparison with younger age categories [6]. No published data are available about the prevalence and risk factors of HCV transmission in some countries of the Region. HCV has six major genotypes and the genetic diversity of HCV has been clearly linked to the geographic distribution of the virus in different populations, as well as in specific risk groups. Genotype is of clinical importance because of the impact it may have on the response to the current standard therapy for HCV, combined pegylated interferon and ribavirin. Genotype is also considered to be an important epidemiological marker as it may help trace the sources of infection and elucidate the possible modes of transmission [7]. The genotypes of HCV in Middle East countries take two main distribution patterns; the first is limited mostly to the Arab countries (except Jordan) with genotype 4 being predominant. The other pattern which exists in nonArab countries (Islamic Republic of Iran, Israel and Turkey) is characterized by the dominance of genotype 1 [8]. Although varying prevalence rates of genotype 4 have been reported in the Arab countries, it is noteworthy that genotype 4 is quasi-exclusive (93%) in Egypt [9]. Jordan, the Arab country that is the exception to this rule, shows a heterogeneous distribution of genotypes with 1a the dominant subtype (40%), followed by 1b (33.3%) and genotype 4 (26.6%) [10]. A clear indication of the existence of the 2 patterns of genotypes in Middle East countries came from a study conducted to investigate genotypes of HCV in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel. The most common genotypes found were type 1b (62%) in southern Israel and type 4 (78%) in the Gaza Strip, which is the same dominant genotype in Egypt [11]. Both prevalent genotypes in the region (4 and 1) were considered the genotypes most difficult to treat in terms of response to the standard therapy. Since the development of new antiviral drugs and the approval of these drugs for managing genotype 1, response to treatment has improved for this genotype, leaving genotype 4 the most resistant type to treat [12]. The most challenging obstacles to managing HCV are the continuous transmission of infection due to lack of effective infection control measures and prevention programmes as well as the high cost of treatment. The financial burden of treatment in the Region is problematic in view of the limited resources of many of the countries. The expected directly acting antiviral drugs could add more to this in the near future. An example of a relatively integrated programme for managing HCV came from Egypt. In 2006, the Egyptian authorities launched the national control strategy for managing viral hepatitis. The programme aimed to improve access to HCV treatment through a specialized network of viral hepatitis treatment centres covering the entire country and providing antiviral treatment at very affordable prices to people in need. Despite success in improving access to treatment and delivery of treatment to almost 200 000 people in the past few years, more programmes for preventing transmission and optimizing the treatment strategies provided are needed [13]. HCV remains a considerable challenge in the Middle East region imposing both a health and a financial burden and more efforts are required to highlight the problem and augment both prevention and treatment programmes.

Brief Synopses of New Arabic Language Publications

Review: <i>Environmental Politics of the Middle East</i>, edited by Harry Verhoeven

Introduction

BEYOND THE SHULTZ INITIATIVE: THE NEW ADMINISTRATION AND THE PALESTINIAN PROBLEM John P. Hannah and Martin Indyck JLi April 1988, in the midst of his third trip of the year to the Middle East trying to revive the Arab-Israeli peace process, Secretary of State George Shultz noted that the e/fect of the Palestinian uprising, or intifadah , in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was "in many respects to make my task harder."1 In his own understated way, the secretary was acknowledging a reality that most outside observers were also coming to recognize: rather than increasing the chances for a breakthrough on the peace process, violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians had actually made a negotiated settlement of the conflict more difficult to achieve. Eight months and one trip later, there is little basis for taking issue with Shultz's pessimistic assessment. Indeed, in some ways, the situation has worsened. The uprising has settled into a state of chronic disorder, increasing the costs of the status quo to both Israel and the Palestinians, while reinforcing the hatred, fear, and suspicion that have made the conflict so intractable. Jordan's King Hussein—for twenty years, Israel and the United States' preferred partner for negotiations— has, for the moment, severed his kingdom's ties to the West Bank, thereby removing Jordan from the role of primary Arab interlocutor in the peace process. 1. John M. Goshko, "Shultz Seems Resigned that Mideast Peace will Elude Him," The Washington Post, April 10, 1988, A22. John P. Hannah is a fellow at, and Martin Indyck is executive director of, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Respectively, they served as rapporteur and convener of the institute's Presidential Study Group on U.S. Policy in the Middle East. This article is based on the group's report, "Building for Peace: An American Strategy for the Middle East." 87 88 SAIS REVIEW Although the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) seems to be creeping toward a more pragmatic posture, all indications are that its actions will fall far short of the minimum steps necessary to demonstrate that it is committed to peace and therefore an acceptable partner for negotiations. The new U.S. president, then, is almost certain to enter office in 1989 with the peace process still stalled and Israelis and Palestinians locked in a protracted intercommunal battle. While the uprising, by itself, represents more of a chronic irritant to U.S. policy than an acute threat to American interests, it will have to be a source of concern for the new administration. The continued festering of the Palestinian problem heightens tensions in an already dangerous Middle East environment. In particular, several recent developments have increased the chances of a new Arab-Israeli war: Syria has accelerated its military buildup and continues to insist that the conflict with Israel can be resolved only by force; the proliferation of long-range ballistic missiles and chemical weapons and their use with great effectiveness in the war between Iraq and Iran have escalated the regional arms race to a new, more destabilizing level; and the end of the Iraq-Iran War leaves the Arab states of the Persian Gulf with huge military arsenals and the option of eventually refocusing their energies from the conflict with Iran to the conflict with Israel. It is this danger of eroding stability and war, to which the uprising contributes, that poses the real threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East. As part of a larger strategy to contain that threat, the new president will need to make the management and resolution of the Palestinian problem a priority on his foreign policy agenda. Along with deterring Syria, stabilizing the Arab-Israeli military balance, and promoting an accommodation between Israel and Arab states, the president must seek to promote a process that encourages reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. However, before leaping into the fray with a new Middle East peace initiative, the new administration must soberly assess how recent developments have affected the climate for resolving the conflict. In particular, it will need to understand why Secretary Shultz's determined effort during the first six months of 1988 failed to produce a...

Proximate determinants of Palestinian fertility: a decomposition analysis

Setting the Record Straight: The Arabs, Zionism, and the Holocaust