How difficult the Middle East is. It must find a formula for coexistence among Muslims, Jews, and Christians, and this is not simple. It has to find another formula for coexistence among Turks, Persians, Kurds, Arabs and others. Then it must find a formula for coexistence between races, nationalities, religions, and sects. And it has to find a formula for coexistence between Sunnis and Shiites, and this is also not easy. Long-lasting truces are deceptive, and might suggest that old conflicts have retreated to the history books. This is not true, however. At any sudden fork in the road, old feuds are rekindled, and rivers of blood flow. The nations that were born in the aftermath of the First World War kept those conflicts in check or gave them other names. But as soon as the machines of oppression collapse in these nations, the old demons resume their work. Clearly, we are on our way to a terrible Middle East, not a new one: A Middle East where the experience of coexistence between the various components collapses, portending torn countries and torn maps. We are most certainly facing something more momentous than the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of Yugoslavia. We are facing a Nakba, a catastrophe, and it would be no exaggeration to say that it is much worse than the Nakba of Palestine, despite the latter's horrors. We are speaking of the catastrophe of the collapse of coexistence, complete with violent cross-border platforms and aspirations dealing with existing maps like prisoners deal with the walls of their cells. Do not rush, dear reader, to accuse me of being a pessimist. The events I have based my conclusions upon are real and are widely publicized in newspapers and television screens, accompanied by a sea of corpses and statements promising wars that never end. A suicide bomber attacked a Shiite mosque in Kirkuk. Then there was a resounding response with attacks on Sunni mosques in Baghdad or nearby. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki accused the remnants of the Baath and 'sectarian hatred,' but his opponents responded by accusing him of ‘sectarian hatred' in turn. Demonstrators in Anbar deal with the Iraqi army as though it were a 'Shiite militia' or an extension of one. Iraqi Sunnis say they will not accept to be second-class citizens, which is what Shiites used to say in previous decades. We have moved from a problem of Arabs and Kurds, to a problem of Shiites, Sunnis, Arabs, and Kurds. It is as though the entire Middle East resembles the city of Kirkuk being disputed from within and without. The parties to the conflict in Syria are keen on warding off the characterization of being engaged in sectarian war. One side claims the conflict is a war against foreign terrorists, and the other considers it a revolution against the dictatorial regime. But how do we explain the presence of a Chechen jihadi in Idlib, a Libyan fighter who came to support the Sunnis, and the funeral of a youth in Basra who died defending the shrine of Sayida Zeinab? How can we also explain the funeral of a Sunni youth in Tripoli in north Lebanon, who was killed while attempting to sneak into Syria, and the funeral of a young Hezbollah fighter who died while performing his “jihad duty" in Syria? Why do Lebanese Sunnis support the revolution in Syria, while the Lebanese Shiites are against it? Why do the people of Alawi villages flee before the rebels arrive, and the people of Sunni villages, before government troops and their allies arrive? Do the slogans of ‘Mumanaa' – Arabic for defiance – and ‘resistance' suffice to explain the involvement of Iran and its allies in the Syrian conflict? A similar question can be asked about the other camp and the involvement of various parties on its side. In Lebanon, which was seen as a model and laboratory for coexistence, one can see many terrifying omens. Yesterday, I heard a leader in the Free Patriotic Movement, led by General Michel Aoun, accusing the other Christians of betrayal. Their sin was that they approved an electoral law that allows Muslims to have a large say in electing 10 out of 64 Christian deputies in parliament. Retreating to islands will neither solve Lebanon's problem nor the problem of minorities in it. The most dangerous issue in Lebanon today is the high number of risk-takers in an extremely fragile theater. Clearly, we are witnessing the collapse of the experience of coexistence. Our countries, communities, and armies are disintegrating. The immunity of international borders has fallen, and here we are, embroiled in a region-wide civil war thanks to the influx of cross-border schemes. I fear we may be on our way to an era full of statelets, militias, graves, and “pure" autonomous regions.
