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If Syria is not Arab, what is it then?
241 views31 December 2018 6 commentsMiddle EastInternational Network
Share the post "If Syria is not Arab, what is it then?"
By Fayçal Jelloul
A little over two years ago, a Lebanese newspaper published a draft constitution for "Syria" after the war, stripping the Syrian Republic of its Arab status. It was said at the time that a Russian party had leaked the document, and that was perhaps the Foreign Ministry directly involved in the negotiations for a political solution to the war against Syria. At the end of 2017, we find a second indicator emanating from the same source through a Russian draft submitted to the different parties during the negotiations in Astana, excluding the reference "Arab" of the Syrian Republic in the future.
By revealing the name of the Syrian opponent Qadri Jamil as the one who drafted the first draft, the Russian proposal appears to be different. Less than a month later, the international mediator Steffan de Mistura will adopt a 12-point initiative that contains no trace of the Syrian state's Arabity or any mention of the president's confession.
Some spoke of the need to remove the Arabic mention of "the Syrian Arab Army", including the famous poet and thinker Adonis who recently said that we should refrain from talking about the "Arab people in Syria" because there is other ethnic groups in the country that include Syrian citizens.
On the face of it, the question seems to be technical and not very controversial, especially after the alliance of the Bedouin oil tribes against Syria on behalf of the Arabs and Arabism and, according to Hamad bin Jassim, their "bickering" on the " prey "Syrian. This after the expulsion of Damascus League "Nabil Al-Arabi" in his time.
Many parties do not want Syria as an Arab country. In the foreground are Israel and the Western countries which, in their Sykes-Picot plan, created the Syrian state and it is the Ba'ath party which made it an Arab state. As for Israel, it complained of an Egyptian-Syrian-Jordanian belt on its borders which, in the 1967 defeat, managed to save Egypt from collapse and, in 1973, helped Syria and Syria. Egypt to emerge from the war by winning a partial victory to which Levant and Maghreb countries have participated and Gulf oil has stopped supplying world markets.
In the customs of Israel, it was necessary to create a secure environment while its neighborhood was to be fragmented, warlike and sectarian, such as the case of Iraq drowned in the shifting sands of sectarianism, and such as Egypt which was an Arab Republic united and that Sadat snatched from unionism and "Egyptized" it. He (Israel) knows Syria, his case should not be different. According to the French orientalist Ernest Renan, Syria too is not Arab, but occupied by the Arabs. She is Syriac. Byzantine. Assyrian, Chaldean and Phoenician, but never Arab. According to this logic, can it be Arab while the Bedouin oil tribes have bled its people in their ancient cities? Can it be Arabic whereas ISIS has destroyed its civilizational emblems from Palmyra to Maaloula, from Ghouta to Aleppo, Homs and Saidnaya?
This logic brings water to the mill of some who defended Syria to death and paid an exorbitant price, including the Syrian National Socialist Party which adopts a Syrian nationalist ideology in harmony with Arab nationalism, but considers that Syria has a Syrian national identity that needs to be highlighted and that, alone, has the merit of being able to defeat Israel and the so-called "Orben of the Gulf" (Orben are the Bedouins of the Arab tribes). Not to mention some Marxist lay people who do not attach any importance to "bourgeois" nationalism. As for the Muslim Brotherhood, they aspire to a transnational Islamic power. This is also the case for Kurds who speak in the name of oppressed Kurdish nationalism and oppressive Arab nationalism.
In the plans of the great powers, the sectarian crescent must be accomplished and constitutionalized, from Lebanon to Syria, Jordan to Iraq. These countries must tear each other apart and always need an external decision to form their governments and manage their economies, in addition to restricting the doctrine of their armies towards internal security and the local police. In Turkey's plans, Arab nationalism, which contributed to the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, must be punished. The Turkish project is reborn on the ruins of the Arabs and "Slavs", the historical neighbors of Turkey, and declines every time the Arabs and Slavs regain their unity and power.
Russia, which circulated secretly and publicly the draft constitution that excludes Syrian Arabity, is doing a great deal to many parties, including Israel, always concerned about its security. Not to mention that no one in the Middle East wants the Arab nationalist project and so it is easy to exclude the reference in the Syrian Constitution.
The above is a very serious problem for post-war Syria; if she is not Arab, what will she be? The proportion of Arabs in Syria exceeds 90%, what fate awaits them? Some regard them as Muslim sects, each with its own calculations and interests, and so they are not Arabs. They will then be cases similar to those of sects and ethnic groups in Iraq and Lebanon. This suits both Israel and the Bedouin oil tribes who believe that any Arab project necessarily targets oil wealth and works to ensure that "Arab oil is for all Arabs" and does not belong to marginal tribes and families here and there.
I do not know how the vast majority of Syrians who have defeated an implacable world war against their country will react. What we have seen so far in the various media is the inexorable attachment to the term "Arab" in the Syrian Arab Republic and the Syrian Arab Army. It is a rational choice, since the war wanted to strip Syria of an identity that unites its people and allows the defense of its territory by an army that has not been disintegrated by secondary identities even weaker than the Arab identity.
Syria has largely succeeded in constructing an Arab social environment based on a hierarchy that lists subsidiary identities according to their proportions, without however canceling or destroying them, with the exception of Kurdish identity. The Kurds are leading widespread conflicts in the region to secede from their societies and form a large national state, indifferent to the Arab-Kurdish integration that has lasted for more than 1,400 years.
The revocation of the Arab status of the Republic, the state and the army has necessitated the occupation and total destruction of Iraq, as well as the multi-billion dollar sectarian shaping of Lebanese society since the 19th century. Why are Syrians aligning themselves with this process as they prepare to defeat the fragmentation project that has targeted them over the past seven years? There is no equivalent in the Arab region to the Syrian integrationist structure which recognizes the difference of the other in Arab culture and civilization. There is no equivalent in the region for a successful social experiment in its religious, sectarian and ethnic diversity.
Syrian Arab identity is not racist. She is generous and tolerant. And if it were "racist", there would have been no other non-Arab ethnic people in Syria. The Arab identity is not the exclusive property of the oil tribes. It belongs to all of us in a civilized Arab space which, for its rebirth, needs people proud with their heads high and whose characteristics began to emerge in the Levant. And from there, the contagion will spread rapidly in the four corners of the Arab world.
241 views31 December 2018 6 commentsMiddle EastInternational Network
Share the post "If Syria is not Arab, what is it then?"
By Fayçal Jelloul
A little over two years ago, a Lebanese newspaper published a draft constitution for "Syria" after the war, stripping the Syrian Republic of its Arab status. It was said at the time that a Russian party had leaked the document, and that was perhaps the Foreign Ministry directly involved in the negotiations for a political solution to the war against Syria. At the end of 2017, we find a second indicator emanating from the same source through a Russian draft submitted to the different parties during the negotiations in Astana, excluding the reference "Arab" of the Syrian Republic in the future.
By revealing the name of the Syrian opponent Qadri Jamil as the one who drafted the first draft, the Russian proposal appears to be different. Less than a month later, the international mediator Steffan de Mistura will adopt a 12-point initiative that contains no trace of the Syrian state's Arabity or any mention of the president's confession.
Some spoke of the need to remove the Arabic mention of "the Syrian Arab Army", including the famous poet and thinker Adonis who recently said that we should refrain from talking about the "Arab people in Syria" because there is other ethnic groups in the country that include Syrian citizens.
On the face of it, the question seems to be technical and not very controversial, especially after the alliance of the Bedouin oil tribes against Syria on behalf of the Arabs and Arabism and, according to Hamad bin Jassim, their "bickering" on the " prey "Syrian. This after the expulsion of Damascus League "Nabil Al-Arabi" in his time.
Many parties do not want Syria as an Arab country. In the foreground are Israel and the Western countries which, in their Sykes-Picot plan, created the Syrian state and it is the Ba'ath party which made it an Arab state. As for Israel, it complained of an Egyptian-Syrian-Jordanian belt on its borders which, in the 1967 defeat, managed to save Egypt from collapse and, in 1973, helped Syria and Syria. Egypt to emerge from the war by winning a partial victory to which Levant and Maghreb countries have participated and Gulf oil has stopped supplying world markets.
In the customs of Israel, it was necessary to create a secure environment while its neighborhood was to be fragmented, warlike and sectarian, such as the case of Iraq drowned in the shifting sands of sectarianism, and such as Egypt which was an Arab Republic united and that Sadat snatched from unionism and "Egyptized" it. He (Israel) knows Syria, his case should not be different. According to the French orientalist Ernest Renan, Syria too is not Arab, but occupied by the Arabs. She is Syriac. Byzantine. Assyrian, Chaldean and Phoenician, but never Arab. According to this logic, can it be Arab while the Bedouin oil tribes have bled its people in their ancient cities? Can it be Arabic whereas ISIS has destroyed its civilizational emblems from Palmyra to Maaloula, from Ghouta to Aleppo, Homs and Saidnaya?
This logic brings water to the mill of some who defended Syria to death and paid an exorbitant price, including the Syrian National Socialist Party which adopts a Syrian nationalist ideology in harmony with Arab nationalism, but considers that Syria has a Syrian national identity that needs to be highlighted and that, alone, has the merit of being able to defeat Israel and the so-called "Orben of the Gulf" (Orben are the Bedouins of the Arab tribes). Not to mention some Marxist lay people who do not attach any importance to "bourgeois" nationalism. As for the Muslim Brotherhood, they aspire to a transnational Islamic power. This is also the case for Kurds who speak in the name of oppressed Kurdish nationalism and oppressive Arab nationalism.
In the plans of the great powers, the sectarian crescent must be accomplished and constitutionalized, from Lebanon to Syria, Jordan to Iraq. These countries must tear each other apart and always need an external decision to form their governments and manage their economies, in addition to restricting the doctrine of their armies towards internal security and the local police. In Turkey's plans, Arab nationalism, which contributed to the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, must be punished. The Turkish project is reborn on the ruins of the Arabs and "Slavs", the historical neighbors of Turkey, and declines every time the Arabs and Slavs regain their unity and power.
Russia, which circulated secretly and publicly the draft constitution that excludes Syrian Arabity, is doing a great deal to many parties, including Israel, always concerned about its security. Not to mention that no one in the Middle East wants the Arab nationalist project and so it is easy to exclude the reference in the Syrian Constitution.
The above is a very serious problem for post-war Syria; if she is not Arab, what will she be? The proportion of Arabs in Syria exceeds 90%, what fate awaits them? Some regard them as Muslim sects, each with its own calculations and interests, and so they are not Arabs. They will then be cases similar to those of sects and ethnic groups in Iraq and Lebanon. This suits both Israel and the Bedouin oil tribes who believe that any Arab project necessarily targets oil wealth and works to ensure that "Arab oil is for all Arabs" and does not belong to marginal tribes and families here and there.
I do not know how the vast majority of Syrians who have defeated an implacable world war against their country will react. What we have seen so far in the various media is the inexorable attachment to the term "Arab" in the Syrian Arab Republic and the Syrian Arab Army. It is a rational choice, since the war wanted to strip Syria of an identity that unites its people and allows the defense of its territory by an army that has not been disintegrated by secondary identities even weaker than the Arab identity.
Syria has largely succeeded in constructing an Arab social environment based on a hierarchy that lists subsidiary identities according to their proportions, without however canceling or destroying them, with the exception of Kurdish identity. The Kurds are leading widespread conflicts in the region to secede from their societies and form a large national state, indifferent to the Arab-Kurdish integration that has lasted for more than 1,400 years.
The revocation of the Arab status of the Republic, the state and the army has necessitated the occupation and total destruction of Iraq, as well as the multi-billion dollar sectarian shaping of Lebanese society since the 19th century. Why are Syrians aligning themselves with this process as they prepare to defeat the fragmentation project that has targeted them over the past seven years? There is no equivalent in the Arab region to the Syrian integrationist structure which recognizes the difference of the other in Arab culture and civilization. There is no equivalent in the region for a successful social experiment in its religious, sectarian and ethnic diversity.
Syrian Arab identity is not racist. She is generous and tolerant. And if it were "racist", there would have been no other non-Arab ethnic people in Syria. The Arab identity is not the exclusive property of the oil tribes. It belongs to all of us in a civilized Arab space which, for its rebirth, needs people proud with their heads high and whose characteristics began to emerge in the Levant. And from there, the contagion will spread rapidly in the four corners of the Arab world.
