Could any of us have imagined, ten years ago, an Arab people, any Arab people, becoming as divided as the Egyptians, Tunisians, Syrians, Yemenis and Libyans, yet without the stance vis-à-vis the West or Israel being at the heart of this division? Could we have imagined any party on either side of the divide not blackmailing the other side by invoking accusations of a suspicious relationship with the West or Israel? True, remnants of this tendency can still be seen in the political and media discourse of the Syrian regime towards the opposition, and to a lesser degree in the opposition's discourse on the regime. Nevertheless, this does not constitute the main premise of the accusations exchanged by the two warring sides. In truth, one can say that the opposition is being primarily “shamed" by the regime for its alliance with Qatar and Saudi Arabia, while, on the other hand, the regime is being shamed for its alliance with Russia and Iran, more than the relationship with the United States and Israel is being invoked. This is happening in Syria, where there is an ongoing violent conflict, and where the political culture, inherited generation after generation, is tantamount to a rant deriding America and Israel, and warning against their infamous incessant conspiracies. It is sufficient, for the sake of comparison, to recall how “collaboration with the West" was the slogan that dominated the toppling of Nuri Said in Iraq and Camille Chamoun in Lebanon in the late 1950s, and the animosity to King Hussein of Jordan in the 1970s, not to mention the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981 as punishment for signing the Camp David accords. And until recently, the Baathist leadership in Syria shamed the Palestinian leadership for abandoning and betraying the Palestinian cause! But the picture today looks clearer and carries more significance in countries like Egypt and Tunisia, where the political struggle is sharp and comprehensive, and borders on violence yet without fully engaging in it in the Syrian manner. In ‘Camp David's Egypt,' the treaty is not cause for division between the two sides that the Egyptian people have rallied around. In Egypt, like in Tunisia, the voices summoning the slogans of old disputes are few and marginal, compared to those invoking new issues like: Islamization, Sharia, women's rights, the judiciary, the media, the economy, and so forth. Even in the economic aspect of the conflict, the dispute seems more attached, without comparison, to issues like competence, governance, corruption and nepotism, than to “imperialist looting" and “submission to the dictates of international institutions," claims that often lead to a radical position that breaks with the West. This transformation, no matter what the view on it is, reveals that the widest segments of the peoples of the Arab world have turned the page on the previous zeitgeist, which to a significant extent was imposed by the regimes. Instead, these peoples are now focusing on internal affairs in their societies, be they political, economic or cultural. Though this does not offer any guarantees for the future, the fact remains that what happened was a positive step that the revolutions of the Arab Spring managed to bring about, moving from external to internal concerns, from false to actual affairs, and from power-related to community-related focuses. It may be ironic here to observe that the opponents of the Arab revolutions have actually supported the latter in achieving the goal mentioned above: Indeed, Russia today does not claim, as it supports the Syrian regime, to be supporting the same old Soviet causes. Meanwhile, Iran is waging its war in Damascus as a purely Iranian interest, which has nothing to do with “exporting the revolution" or the Iranian clerical rule model. In the same sense, it is difficult for the shrewdest interpreters of old slogans to explain how the road to Jerusalem passes through Homs and al-Qasir in Syria.
