I was just watching CNN when I saw a report, Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister, who was supposed to be fearful of his life, though courageous enough not to be hiding, attending the Friday prayers in a mosque in the occupied territories.
I was thinking, God, it's so humiliating to be a Palestinian, living in a land like that. It's probably even more humiliating to be the prime minister in Palestine, to fear for your life, being supposed to be ruling some sort of a nation.
When one does something wrong, and the outcome is unsatisfactory, there are two options: do it again, or find out what you did wrong and change the way you did it. Here comes the unanimous flaw of the Arabs: They're continuing to do the same thing all over again, being humiliated again and again. They are persistent though. Some day they're probably going to make it, either annihilate Israel, or find some other formula to take the long-awaited revenge. How long it may take? Well, as long as there are Arabs out there, there will definitely be Jews. But maybe there can be a smart way.
Sit back Arabs, relax, calm down, and analyze the situation with the facts on the table! How many Palestinians are out there? Not that many actually. Not more than 3 or 4 million. Maybe a bit more if we count all the descendants spread all around the Middle East. Compared to the Arab population of the world there are few Palestinians.
When a person realises his past mistakes, accepts and learns to live with the losses and damages, and finds out how to go on, the good feeling of being smart that comes along is really nice and enjoyable. Arabs doing what I suggested above would definitely have this good feeling too.
It's quite simple, this type of warlord, strongman, Feudalistic patron, is never inclined to do good for others. Doing real good to the Palestinians would have one terrible plausible consequence at home. It would open up the mere possibility of normally agonised and dissatisfied citizens to demand some good for them as well. Good, in a ruthless world of Middle-Eastern political jungle would only come at the cost of having done bad to some other party.
This mentality is so strong that conspiracy theories are all over the place in the Middle-East. Even if one catches cold it is a conspiracy. And a Middle-Eastern ruler would never be inclined to lose his grip on his absolute control, doing himself wrong by doing some sort of right to his own people. Let's not forget, Middle-Eastern dictators are what they are because they are tough and ruthless and they don't let anybody else take their place.
All we can do is to watch for now, when the first big step will be taken in the Arab world.
