It is no longer a secret that political division in our region, between “Defiance” and “Resistance” on the one hand, and the “Arab Spring” on the other, has come to correspond to sectarian division. Indeed, after years of glorifying Defiance and Resistance, Islamist political parties of Sunni affiliation, and most prominently the Muslim Brotherhood, have ended up directing criticism at the negative stance taken by those who raise these two slogans, most prominently Iran and Syria, as well as their allies, Hezbollah in particular. And after years of dialogue and of efforts to bring sects together and form a united front, and of praising the Arab Islamic Awakening, Iran, along with its allies in Syria and in Hezbollah, has begun to shed doubt on the intentions of those who are part of this Awakening, especially after the latter have come to power in Egypt and in Tunisia. They also declare their suspicion that the Arab Islamists have not defined a clear stance asserting their support of Defiance and Resistance, and are in fact heading towards dialogue with the United States and the West – that is if some of them are not actually working for the West, especially when it comes to Syria. What makes clear the correspondence between this sectarian division and the division between Defiance and the Arab Spring are the many ambiguities that surround the stances taken by the Hamas movement on the developments in Syria. In the past, Hamas's alliance with Syria and Hezbollah, and the fact that it received many forms of support from Iran, were presented as evidence to the fact that Defiance transcends sects and that any Islamic unity would fall within the framework of Resistance. Yet with the eruption of the situation in Syria in the way that it did, Hamas has disassociated itself from the regime in Damascus, and has abstained from offering it public support in confronting the opposition, of which the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood are considered to be the solid core, which leads one to believe that the sectarian factor plays a part in such a policy, more than its being a mere political stance. And if one adds the Iraqi government, headed by the Dawa Party, and the bias of Iraqi government policy on the side of the Syrian regime, the picture of the sectarian penetration of the stance on the Arab Spring becomes complete. And if there are exceptions to be noted on one side or the other, such as members of one sect being partial to the slogans of the other sect, this does not negate the fact that the main blocs within both sects hold political stances that correspond to their sectarian affiliation. It is evident that such a rift, with the growing crisis in Syria, the absence of quick solutions there and the rising tension between Iran and the West, as well as its repercussions on the Gulf region, threatens to ignite a sectarian civil conflict. Many also link the two issues of Iran and Syria, in addition of course to the domestic disputes in Iraq and in Lebanon, and consider those arenas to have become akin to communicating vessels. Indeed, what has in impact in one will quickly find its echo in the other. This requires a set of solutions, not mere dialogue between the sects, after politics has very deeply penetrated sectarian affiliation. And inasmuch as such a set would be focused on the contradictions between Defiance and the Arab Spring, as declared by Tehran which presents itself as the leader of the Axis of Defiance, the sectarian rift would widen. This is especially the case as the camp of Defiance has come to identify the Arab Spring's slogans of freedom, democracy and pluralism with affiliation to American hegemony and its plans – especially on the background of the enthusiasm shown by Turkey (with both its past Ottoman and current NATO implications) for supporting the Arab Spring. Even the Muslim Brotherhood has, within the framework of such an analysis, become an instrument in the hands of this hegemony and its regional significance, i.e. submission to Israel and opposition to Resistance. On the other hand, and as a result of such stances on change on the part of the camp of Defiance, Arab Islamists consider Iran and its allies to be standing in the face of the people's aspirations towards change and preventing the goals of the Arab Spring from being fulfilled.
