Annas [Archives:2003/647/Press Review]

30 June 2003
Main headlines:
– Yemeni popular artist Faisal Alawin arrested in Jazan, Saudi Arabia
– Turkey: Orders preventing activities in mosques during summer vacation.
Columnist Dr Hosni al-Jawshaie says in his article the first steps of conceding the right and dignity started with the visit to Israel made by the former Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat in 1977. Then the visit was received with severe opposition by all leaders of the Arab countries when they were in possession of the ability to take decisions. Their refusal of the visit was abrupt and resulted in transferring the Arab League to Tunisia where it stayed there for ten years before it return to Cairo. What are the reasons of this change in stands of those Arab leaders till the situation reached to discarding dignity completely and its absence in the Arab street? Certainly America and Israel have studied deeply the psychology of the Arab leaders and peoples. Or instance during the last 20 years there were no changes of leaders, they are almost the same faces and in some countries the political line is the same.
It seems certain that America has played a major role in changing the psychology of some Arab leaders. It has arranged agreements with some of these countries to neutralize or drive them out of the Arab Israeli conflict and then planned for neutralizing the Palestinian issue, the core of the conflict with the Arab countries. America arranged for Madrid conference in 1993 and the ''peace'' accords. After signing that agreement Palestine lost the world and Arab sympathy with it. Some politically weak Arab and African countries began racing to restore relations with Israel and here lies the danger behind those accords. After that America set the stage for controlling the Gulf oil wealth in the two wars there, the first in1991 and the second in the complete occupation o the entire Gulf region and with the help of these countries themselves, America entered Iraq.
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