Lately, the popular revolts we have seen in Tunesia and Egypt, and are currently witnessing in Lybia, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain, have been dominating the news. The Israel-Palestinian conflict, which up to a few months ago often took center stage in news coverage of the Middle East, has now gone onto the so called backburner. However, Middle East experts are already talking about what these revolutions mean for the Israeli-Palestinian relations.  

TEXT: Goos Hofstee

The overthrowing of long-serving dictators like Ben Ali and Mubarak, and the possible future liberation of Syria from Assad will mean a major shift in the balance of power in the region, and will have far-reaching consequences for the Palestinian struggle. First of all, the fact that long term US allies like Mubarak and Ben Ali have been disposed of means that the US has lost a big part of their power base in the region.  One of the reasons Obama was so slow to acknowledge the right of the Egyptian protesters and kept trying to appease and push for reforms instead of revolution was the fact that Mubarak was (one of the) the US’s lapdog(s) in the region. As long as Mubarak was in power, Egypt would not cause trouble, and the US would be sure of cordial relations between Egypt and Israel. Now that Mubarak has gone, the future of Egyptian-Israeli is uncertain. It is likely that the new Egyptian government will better reflect the will of the people, who have for years been calling for a stronger stance on Israel, a more independent foreign policy and less American influence. The fact that Egypt Air no longer includes Tel Aviv as a destination is illustrative of the new course of Egyptian politics with regard to Israel.
 
The impact of the revolutions in the Middle East on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is partly practical and partly a matter of momentum. The practical side means that the role and the impact of the US in the region has changed, the balance of power has shifted. The US will have to re-evealuate their  policies towards both the Israelis and the Palestinians. Their unfailing support of the Israeli occupation and crimes against humanity will have more severe consequences with regards to their position in the Middle East than before, when they had guaranteed backing of Egypt, one of the most important players in the region.
 
It is harder to lay the finger on the second aspect of the impact of the revolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The revolutions have created that vague, elusive, and fleeting thing called “momentum”. Momentum can change things that people thought unchangeable, can shake things up, turn things around, can awake things that have been dormant for years. The biggest threat posed by the Arab revolutions to Israel’s domination of the Palestinians is exactly this momentum. 

Israel’s occupation and continuous settlement, its crimes against the Palestinians have been able to go on as long as the balance of power in the region was clear. But over the past months, a page has turned. Things have happened that only a few months ago, no one thought possible. It has set the eyes of the world on the crimes that have been going on in the region for so long. In the light of these changes, with people struggling for their freedom, our attention should now also shift to the oppression that is still going on in that same region. In a Middle East where the masses, by their own actions on the streets, have captured democratic rights and made democratic values their own, the crimes of the so called only democracy in the region should no longer be without consequence.