Lunch with the Arab street

I’m in London, fresh from two days in Doha where I took part in the fourth annual Al-Jazeera Media Forum. I took part in a panel on academic research on the Arab media, which I might write up if I find the time and energy. I also got to see a number of Doha-based friends and see first-hand how the global economic crisis is and isn’t affecting Qatar (more on that later) –and an extra nod to my friend Mohamad Nanabhay, owner of the popular Qatar Living site, for his help throughout the two days.  The main event for the conference was a series of Davos-style panels focusing on media and power, with a strong representation of Arab and Western journalists.  We talked a lot about the Arab media environment, but since I’m participating in another conference on the same topic here in London right now I’ll hold off on saying anything about that right now. I was intrigued by the strong representation from Turkey and Iran — suggesting the growing Arab and Qatari interest in those rising Middle Eastern powers.  More on all that later.

The best part of conferences like this is always the conversations on the margins.  The special appeal of an al-Jazeera conference is that it brings in a different array of participants from the Arab world than one usually finds at such gatherings.  And that’s how I ended up having lunch with the Arab street (as I wisecracked on Facebook), after sitting at a table with the leading Egyptian public intellectual Fahmy Howeydi, the London-based editor of al-Quds al-Arabi Abd al-Bari Atwan, and the former al-Hayat journalist Abdalwahhab Badrakhan.  If only Al-Jazeera station director Wadah Khanfar were with us, I quipped, I would be eating with the Arab street incarnate.  The next day, I spent two hours having lunch with Wadah Khanfar, so that worked out. 

I’ll be processing the conversations I had in Doha, here in London, and on the next leg of my trip for a while.  But I just wanted to throw out a few quick impressions based on these conversations with some of the most important Arab public figures (including several others that I didn’t name above).  I’m not going to quote specific individuals, but rather offer a tentative preliminary aggregate view.

• Nobody expects much from the Arab reconciliation.  Virtually everybody I talked to expressed serious doubts that Syria could be "flipped" by the Saudis to the "moderate" camp.  What can the Saudis, Egyptians or Americans really offer, they asked?  Why would Syria leave its long-standing alliance with Iran?  Even the Golan didn’t seem much of an enticement — Lebanon, indeed, weighed far more heavily in their views of Syrian calculations.
• Nobody expects much from the Palestinian talks on a government of national unity.  The Arab commentators disagreed on the extent to which Hamas and/or Fatah needed the talks to succeed. Some felt that Hamas really did need to find some agreement in order to begin getting aid into Gaza while others argued that Hamas was in a strong position and had no need to compromise.  Some felt that Fatah was riding high because of U.S. support and because there was no alternative to the PA for the distribution of aid, while others argued that Fatah was mortally wounded by its performance during the Gaza war and would soon fade.  But nobody thought that the unity government talks would succeed, and if it did succeed on the surface it would soon collapse in practice.  The divides were too deep, the conflicts of interest too real, for such a facade to be sustained.  Hamas could not agree to the terms which Fatah (and Israel and the US) demanded, because that would cripple its legitimacy.
• Obama is disappointing them so far.  Most of them said that they had been full of hope when Obama was elected, and even when he was inaugurated (despite his silence on Gaza during the transition, which they found infuriating even though they understood). But they were frustrated at his approach to Arab-Israeli issues, and repeatedly complained that they saw no change.  When pressed, they would acknowledge that there were  some really important differences between Bush and Obama — and they mostly singled out George Mitchell for praise — but they were very frustrated by the overall thrust of American policy and especially by Clinton’s Middle East tour. When I asked several of them what Obama could do, what signal he could send, they were all surprisingly realistic: he can’t change policy overnight, each said, but he could send a powerful signal by standing up to Israel on settlement expansion.  Oh, and the decision to go with al-Arabiya for Obama’s first interview? Not popular here in Doha — go figure!
• Keep an eye on Jersualem. Two of them also warned that the tunnel currently being planned in Jerusalem could explode into a major issue if neglected — hope someone in DC is keeping an eye on that, since that’s been the trigger for major problems several times in the past.

More later.