What Can the Arabs Do? By PATRICK SEALE

November 21, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/opinion/what-can-the-arabs-do.html?_r=0

What Can the Arabs Do?

By PATRICK SEALE

FACED with the carnage in Gaza, how should Arab states react? Heartbreaking TV pictures of death and destruction must certainly have aroused consternation and stirred the conscience of every family from Cairo to Baghdad, and from Riyadh to Rabat. What will Arabs now expect from their leaders?
To get some sense of Arab opinion, I conducted my own limited poll, phoning and emailing contacts in different Arab countries. I tried to understand how they felt about the punishment of Gaza. Was their reaction one of anger and a thirst for revenge? Or did they feel a painful sense of humiliation, coupled with impatience with their leaders?
The reaction of most of my correspondents was robust. Their view was that Egypt and Jordan should freeze their peace treaties with Israel and close the Israeli embassies in Cairo and Amman. “Do Arab leaders not understand,” one of them said to me, “that the new Arab generation, freed from the dictators of the past, will no longer tolerate submissive polices? Arabs and Muslims must now show their muscle.”