Inching closer to unity
 Joharah Baker

It was inevitable that the surge of change that has overtaken the Arab world would eventually spill into Palestine. What began as Palestinian marches in solidarity with their Tunisian and Egyptian brethren has since turned into specific Palestinian demands. Unfortunately, unlike the masses in Egypt's Tahrir Square, the Palestinians' good intentions did not, at first, translate as well on the ground.

To be fair, the situations are not parallel. What began with the self-immolation of a beleaguered university graduate who was forbidden to sell fruit for a living quickly turned into massive protests aimed at plucking out the decades-long autocracies embedded in the Arab world. Arab peoples, long believed to be submissive to the oppressive regimes that governed them, rose up practically in unison to shake off the yoke of dictatorship.

At precisely the same time that civil society has emerged as the catalyst in democratically-driven upheavals in the Arab world, Israel's civil society is increasingly threatened. There is a direct correlation between the rising centrality of civil society as the locus of opposition to government policies and the intensified efforts of neo-nationalist groups to curtail its activities.

Israeli civil society institutions have blossomed during the past three decades both as a result of economic decentralization and as a reflection of societal diversification. Today, there are literally thousands of organizations that deal with everything from civil and human rights to the environment, gender equality, social justice, education and religious pluralism. Disempowered groups--especially Palestinian citizens of Israel but also many others, including new immigrants, foreign workers and residents of the geographic periphery--have found in these associations a focus of identity and a vehicle for empowerment. Israeli civil society has played a prominent role not only in initiating social change in the country, but also in democratizing Israeli society through expanding the parameters of public discourse, enhancing civil liberties, protecting minority rights, promoting agreement on the rules of the game, inculcating non-violent democratic norms and championing a diversity of voices and opinions.

Yet in the past two years, progressive segments of civil society have come under repeated attack by extremist groups that have wrapped themselves in a patriotic cloak with either tacit or overt government backing. The initial targets of these assaults have been Arab citizens of Israel and their elected leadership. But the attacks have fast come to encompass other purveyors of criticism and civil dissent: peace activists, civil rights organizations, their human rights counterparts, academics (with special attention devoted to social scientists), social justice groups and leading artists and performers.

Attacks on civil society have commenced with well-planned and heavily-funded public media campaigns against these organizations and their main backers (notably the New Israel Fund and European governments and foundations), based on a monolithic, ethno-centric and insular interpretation of Israeli identity. Any group or individual diverging from this increasingly hegemonic mindset is discredited and branded as disloyal. These efforts have also taken on legislative form, resulting in over 20 proposed bills that possess a distinctly anti-democratic and/or racist aura.

The backdrop for this unfettered offensive on progressive groups rests in embedded differences surrounding the ongoing occupation and approaches to the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Yet its intensification cannot be detached from the growing isolation of Israel in the international arena in the wake of the Second Lebanon War and the Gaza operation in late 2024-early 2024. It has been facilitated by the virtual collapse of moderate political parties in the past decades. The near absence of progressive outlooks in the formal political arena has shifted the center of their political activities to the informal sphere, rendering this setting the butt of heightened opprobrium in official circles.

The neo-nationalist de-legitimization of civil society in general and the human rights community in particular helps decision-makers shirk responsibility for Israel's deteriorating global position by shifting the onus to these groups, thus entrenching the current coalition in power and reducing the chances of a moderate electoral comeback. The purposeful generation of fear of these "enemies from within"--as well as of those from outside--nurtures a climate of intolerance that is antithetical to precisely that culture of open debate that is so essential to democratic sustainability. Thus, what began as a series of seemingly unconnected initiatives against pockets of disagreement in civil society is now evolving into a veritable democratic recession.

Ironically, the targeting of civil associations has actually enhanced their importance as defenders of democracy and bearers of change. In recent months, after a belated awakening, those groups that have stood at the forefront of the effort to safeguard civil society have been joined by broadening circles of citizens concerned with protecting its pluralist underpinnings. These hail not only from the left, but also from portions of the Likud still steeped in the tenets of their liberal heritage. This accounts for the heightened vociferousness of recent debates over, for example, attempts to create a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the funding of human rights organizations and the government intention to expel over 400 children of foreign workers. In what still remains a distinctly asymmetrical struggle, the reinvigoration of Israel's heretofore dormant liberal public is indicative of its potential power.

The crackdown on Israeli civil society--much like the systematic stifling of civic discontent in neighboring countries--is as counterproductive as it is ineffective. The stepped-up muzzling of alternative voices in Israel, however, is taking place within what is still a democratic framework where the power garnered in civil society can yet make a difference politically. Only time will tell if the current progressive surge can overcome retrogressive propensities and revive a vibrant, value-driven democratic order.-Published 17/3/2011 © bitterlemons-international.org

Naomi Chazan, former deputy speaker of the Knesset and currently dean of the School of Government and Society at the Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo, is president of the New Israel Fund.

When the East European dissidents of the 1980s were struggling against communist authoritarian regimes, they returned to the concept of civil society. What Eastern European intellectuals and civic actors understood by civil society was not just the eighteenth century concept of the rule of law, but also the notion of horizontal self-organized groups and institutions in the public sphere that could limit the power of the state by constructing a democratic space separate from state and its ideological institutions.

Recent democratic awakenings around the Arab world have demonstrated once again that civil society can help to provide the independent space that is needed, to use Sir Isaiah Berlin's famous distinction, for "negative" rather than "positive" liberty. What united Tunisians and Egyptians in their democratic uprisings, as is the case today with the people of Oman, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and Iran, was freedom from interference and a struggle against the concentration of arbitrary power.

For those Egyptians who gathered for several weeks in Tahrir Square, freedom meant putting an end to the unjust accumulation of power by President Hosni Mubarak and his regime. In so doing, they were constantly negotiating their desire for democratic governance based on secure civil society. Despite their heterogeneity, groups from Arab civil society that were leading the protests found a common enemy embodied in Arab authoritarian personalized regimes. The democratic protesters from Tunisia to Tehran have been demanding governments based on public accountability and popular sovereignty.

Actually, if we take a closer look at the young people who launched these demands, it is clear that they represent a "post-ideological generation". For this young generation of Arabs, the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the great Islamist movements of the 1980s and 1990s are history. However, what their slogans express is mainly a demand for democracy and not necessarily secularism.

As such, the democratic revival in the Arab world is occurring not necessarily through political ideologies in search of post-independence models of state-building (Kemalist or Arab nationalist) for their societies, but in terms of shared adherence to civic values that are fully compatible with the necessary pluralism of civil society. Interestingly, in such ethnically heterogeneous nations, a civil society allowing individuals to collaborate as individuals on non-ethnic and democratic lines appears as a real paradigm shift. Yet, civil society structures in some Arab countries (as in the Persian Gulf region) might not be sufficiently robust to contain future ethnic and tribal conflicts.

A civil society strategy, in other words, should assume that democratic passion is not enough to contain civil strife. Democratic passion cannot become real democracy until civil society becomes strong enough to control the state from the bottom up. It is in the institutions of civil society--a free press, trade unions, student and intellectual movements, private firms, publishing houses and so on that the future of a democratic society is written.

Many analysts fail to imagine what models of social, political and economic organization could result in the near future from these mass mobilizations around the Middle East and the Maghreb. Pessimism about the prospects for the post-Islamist Arab world is centered on this issue. In Western Europe, civil society took centuries to emerge from the bottom up, while Arab societies need democracy immediately. This said, without civil society, democracy is lame. But without democracy, civil society is blind.

What does seem sure, however, is that within the political framework of each of these societies in ebullition, a new generation of civic actors will have a major part to play in writing the new rules of the game in the Arab world. Without a doubt, this will entail ruptures with old systems and with illegitimate and corrupted regimes. The focus on constitutional changes accompanied by citizens' rights, political representation and the accountability of governing bodies affirms the new political attitude that emanates from civil societies in the Arab world. This new political culture is the heart and soul of the change that Arab citizens have initiated in their countries, noticeably without violence or foreign intervention.

It is still too early to venture into speculation about what the future of the Arab revolts might hold, and whether unrest around the region will lead to democratic regimes. There is also no reason to think that this wave of democratization would happen in countries like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in the same way as it happened in Tunisia and Egypt. Unlike Egypt and Tunisia, countries like Libya and Saudi Arabia do not possess civil society frameworks with the capacity to force out their leaders without engaging in a civil war. Also in Tunisia and Egypt, the army saw itself as a mediator between the regime and civil society and in the end decided to take the side of civil society. But unlike its neighbors, Libya lacks not only the mediating hand of a military institution; it also has no trade unions, no political parties and no nongovernmental agencies.

Though free and democratic elections are not likely to be held soon in the Arab world, the spread of freedom and democracy there is unquestionably a positive development for the future empowerment of civil societies in the Middle East.-Published 17/3/2011 © bitterlemons-international.org

Ramin Jahanbegloo is professor of political science at the University of Toronto. He is the author of "Talking Politics" (with Bhikhu Parekh , Oxford University Press, India, 2024).