The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman published an article on Wednesday (March 20, 2019) entitled "Watch out for the dilapidated pillars of the Middle East," which reviews the locations of failure and emergency situations The Arab region and the United States´ handling of its foreign policy with these grave developments, pointing out the major gaps in this strategy, including its applicability acceptance of the Trump administration´s position on the positions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on war and peace and its clear bias towards those positions.
"The American ambassador to Israel (David Friedman) - a former bankruptcy lawyer who worked with Donald Trump - is very moved by the movement of right-wing Jewish settlers to the point that it is more propaganda than settlement," Friedman says.
"And secondly, there has always been a kind of Israeli-Palestinian peace process pushing for a two-state solution, but today, in fact, it seems that the United States and Israel are busy looking for the best solution for one state, meaning permanent Israeli security control over the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Along with a form of deep Palestinian self-rule. "
Israel´s Trump ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, said in an interview with the Washington-based Washington Times last week that "the Palestinians can be given more autonomy and freedom of movement, as long as This applies without compromising on Israeli security issues. "He said that the Palestinians would abandon the idea of ​​cutting Jerusalem again after Trump announced his administration´s recognition of occupied East Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on December 6, 2017 and the transfer of the embassy on 14 May 2018 to coincide with the Palestinian Nakba Day .
"The Middle East´s policies have been shaped over the last half century by five fundamental pillars, but now they are all collapsing, as a new Middle East is emerging, but not necessarily that booming Middle East that it envisions," said Thomas Friedman, Many in the 1990s, where the new Middle East is shaped by what is being traded on Twitter (social networking) more than American diplomats, through unemployment more than terrorism, street unrest more than leaders in palaces, and through women more Of men.There has always been a deep American involvement in shaping the future of this region; but today, the United States does not even have ambassadors in Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan or Saudi Arabia, and the US ambassador to Israel - With Donald Trump - is deeply moved by the movement of right-wing Jewish settlers to such a degree that it promotes propaganda rather than diplomatic. "
"Arab governments have always been able to secure employment opportunities for their residents within state institutions or in the security services, jobs that can be delayed by the employee and leave early and work in another job beside them, but with low oil prices and an increase in the number of The population, almost every Arab country is trying to find out how to get rid of government employees and privatize the service sector. "
"What keeps him awake at night is only one thing, not a hasty organization or al-Qaeda, but the fact that 300,000 Jordanians are unemployed and 87 percent of them are between the ages of 18 and 39," the author cites Jordanian King Abdullah II of a group of US military visitors. "He said, referring to the sit-ins of unemployed students outside the King Abdullah Palace for weeks, and protest rallies throughout Jordan" by the unemployed, the hungry, the desperate "and that" at the same time, the unemployed began in Gaza last week / / Against Hamas´ economic mismanagement, and protests erupted Similar in the streets of Algeria and Sudan against the failed autocrats. "
The fourth pillar, according to Friedman, is "the collapse of the days when information was flowing from the top down, in which Arab governments could control the voices within their countries, but with the spread of social media applications (Twitter, Facebook, In the Arab world, the information is now moving horizontally and people are now publishing - with their real names - very offensive comments to their leaders.
Finally, men were able to control women through formal and informal religious, cultural and legal norms, but recent examples of young male-dominated escapades in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates encouraged many Arab women who were no longer willing to submit to male guardianship. However, without changing the laws of marriage, inheritance, divorce and child custody - all of which tend to favor men - not all women who excel in school will be able to realize their full potential in the labor market. At the same time, it is difficult for men to marry without a job "The presence of many men who have never been influential and never held a job and held a girl´s hand is a recipe for social unrest, especially when they are all involved in Twitter."
The writer wonders, where will this new Middle East go? "The leaders of the region are learning that they can not rely on the tools of the 20th century to keep the population quiet anymore," said Marwan al-Muasher, Jordan´s former foreign minister who now oversees research on the Middle East at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 2011 The fear barrier in many Arab countries, and the collapse of oil prices since 2014 to breach the financial charter as citizens now declare: If you can not guarantee me a government job, I will say what I want.
And about whether this means that Jordan, for example, needs to be transformed into a democratic state overnight? "This is not necessary, but there needs to be a greater process of power-sharing between governments and civil society institutions," he said.
The author wonders Are all these new news bad news? "King Abdullah has been slow to share power, but he is still an effective leader who is trying to develop a country of 10 million people and now hosts 1.3 million Syrian refugees," he says. Perhaps the most important of his initiatives is his attempt seven years ago to launch a technology center and new projects in Jordan. For the first time, Jordan has hundreds of start-ups independent of the government that deal with social problems as commercial opportunities, so it is not necessary that the new Middle East be doomed to turmoil only In Jordan, at least, the story has become the story of a race between many bad trends and a new growth mentality that is trying to expand. Jordan will receive about 20% of the electricity it needs by 2020; To recruit more young people in the private sector. "
"The problem is that there is not enough time, political reform has been delayed for a long time, and old cultural norms are still deeply rooted outside Amman, so Jordan has to do everything as it should, and it has to do it quickly," he concluded.
