Some of my questions about the Arabs answered… Part III

This is part III in a series of four.  Each post contains a question I’ve had about Arab culture and the Arab world for some time, and the information I was able to glean from Raphael Patai’s The Arab Mind, which I finished reading recently.

Why can’t we in the West resolve our differences with the Arab/Muslim world simply by talking?  Why will Obama fail in his rapprochement to the Arab world?  And why is he a poor mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict?

Arabs have a strong code of honor that they believe has been violated by the West.  Whether it’s the West’s ultimate triumph over the Arab Muslims who successfully conquered the Middle East and North Africa, the arbitrary creation of Arab states in the Middle East following the First World War with governments that suited the Europeans, Israel’s foundation, or the long period of stagnation in the Arab world for which Arabs blame the West, an Arab’s sense of lost honor can usually only be restored by violence.  The blood feud is still alive and well in the Arab world, and while it does not often lead to large-scale bloodshed, there is a belief that there are circumstances in which only killing can restore lost honor.  One circumstance is the rivalry between two principal tribes in a given region which periodically breaks out in violence.  Another is when a woman or girl is suspected of having violated the strict sexual mores of Arab society, and hence brought dishonor on the men in her family.  In these situations, it is up to her father and brothers to kill her, and then her paramour (to retaliate for the loss of a member of their family).

It is important to understand this sense of shame and the actions needed to overcome it in order to begin to understand the diplomatic decisions made by Arab nations and their leaders.  Patai notes that “[i]n every conflict those involved tend to feel that their honor is at stake, and that to give in, even as little as an inch, would diminish their self-respect and dignity.  Even to take the first step toward ending a conflict would be regarded as a sign of weakness which, in turn, would greatly damage one’s honor.  Hence, it is almost impossible for an Arab to come to an agreement in direct confrontation with an opponent.  Given the Arab tradition of invective and proclivity to boasting and verbal exaggeration, any face-to-face encounter between two adversaries is likely to aggravate the dispute rather than constitute a step toward its settlement.”  In one marked exception to this, Patai explains Egypt’s willingness to make peace with Israel by describing the positive effect on Egyptian society of Egypt’s strong showing on the first day and a half of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.  While they were ultimately beaten and seriously threatened by a successful Israeli crossing of the Suez Canal by the end of the war, the fact that the Egyptians crossed the Suez in the early days of the war and penetrated the Sinai, threatening the Israelis’ weak defenses there, restored in Egyptian minds their sense of honor that had been robbed of them by serial defeats by Israel up to that point.  (To this day, Egyptian schoolchildren are taught that the war in 1973 was a great military victory over Israel.)  This tipping of the balance of honor back in their favor put the Egyptians in a position where they could feel more magnanimous than humiliated, and could open the necessary channels to negotiate a peace with Israel.

Mediation is something Arabs are open to, but this requires not only a feeling of parity with their enemy, as described above, but also a mediator qualified for the job.  Patai describes a trusted mediator thus: “It goes without saying that the mediator must be a person whose impartiality is beyond question, and this means that he must not be more closely related to one side in the dispute than to the other.  He also must enjoy such a high status that neither of the two disputants can in any way exert pressure on him.  Preferably, he should also be a wealthy man, so as to preclude any suspicion of being accessible to bribery.  In sum, the ideal mediator is a man who is in a position, because of his personality, status, respect, wealth, influence, and so on to created in the litigants the desire to conform with his wishes.”  One other quality, which Patai says is present in mediators among the Kabyles (Algerian Berbers) is that of trying “to find fault with the party from whom pardon is being sought, so that a balance can be established and the supplicating party avoid complete humiliation.”  This, I think, is one of the most important qualities a mediator can have, since creating a sense of equality between the litigants has shown itself so crucial, as in that of the Egyptians prior to their peace treaty with Israel.

Obama is not an ideal mediator according to this formula.  As the leader of the free world, he possesses unquestionable status, and bribery is unlikely to be a threat to negotiations done through him.  As the son of a Muslim, and a Westerner, he is both related and not related to the parties.  And he has done much to distance himself from the Israelis, which seems intended to make him more trustworthy to the Arabs.  But he still appears biased to both sides: to the Arabs for his anticipated continued military support for Israel, and to Israelis for not making any demands on the Arabs to relinquish their commitment to destroy Israel, to prepare themselves domestically for peace, and to renounce terror to “build trust” with the Jews.

For many reasons (some already addressed in the earlier posts) Arabs do not trust Westerners, and if the choice is between forfeiting their honor by making peace with and via Westerners, or continuing to fight through their Arab/Muslim alliances forever, they will choose the latter.  PA President Mahmoud Abbass has run from US Vice President Joe Biden’s visit back to the Arab League to get their approval to continue negotiations.  This shows that the real movers and shakers who will (or won’t) give the green light to an Arab-Israeli peace process are not the Americans, but Abbass’s fellow Arabs.  Similarly, Obama’s attempt to woo Syria (evidenced by his sending John Kerry to Damascus and reopening diplomatic relations with hereditary President Bashar Assad) in an effort to lure it from the influence of Iran has already failed.  No sooner did Kerry return to the US than Assad announced that Syria is and always will be a staunch ally (read: client state) of Iran.

One additional point that I  think is worth noting is the difference in style of communication between Westerners and Arabs.  (Without a familiarity with this discrepancy, successful negotiations are unlikely.)  Patai goes into great detail about some of the vagaries of the Arabic language that contribute to Westerners’ sense of Arabic statements as verbal bluster.  He also quotes Arabist Edwin T. Prothro, who suggests that “persons interested in presenting the Arab point of view to Americans and the American point of view to Arabs … ‘should keep in mind that statements which seem to Arabs to be mere statements of fact will seem to Americans to be extreme or even violent assertions.  Statements which Arabs view as showing firmness and strength on a negative or positive issue may sound to Americans as exaggerated.’”  The opposite is also the case: “a statement which seems to be a firm assertion to the Americans may sound weak and even doubtful to the Arabs who read it.  If communications are to take place between peoples of different cultures, then attention must be given not only to problems of language codification but also to problems of culture and cognition.”

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