The Arab Spring: The Root Causes?

Hamze Abbas Jamoul

At the end of 2010 and the beginning of the 2011, a series of demonstrations and protests began to rise in the Arab world. These protests have become known as the "Arab Spring" (Ashley 2011), or, as someone else called it, the “Arab awakening” (Aljazeera, 2011).

The Tunisian revolution that took place in the self-immolation of Mohamad Bouazizi on 18 December 2010 in protest of police corruption and ill treatment (Fahim, 2011 ), has shaken authoritarian leaders across the Arab world in areas such as Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain. In this article we will try to answer the following question: why did the Arabs rebel? The Arab world was living a very difficult economic and social situation as in Europe in 1848. Poverty, rising food prices, inflation, human rights violation, and high unemployment were the main phenomena the Arabs were facing.

In addition there was much corruption of Arab leaders as shown by some of the Wikileaks diplomatic cables. The main reasons of the Arab revolts are not limited to internal causes, so it is important to analyze the international causes such as the failure of the war on terror, the Iraqi war and the U.S.A - European strategy of the imported democracy. Another possible reason could be the failure of the peace process in the Israeli- Arabic conflict. 

1. The internal causes:

Throughout history, any revolution is a result of many events that completely change the nature of the society and its political life. The French revolution (1789-99), for example, was due to many factors such as economic difficulties, political rights and rising food prices (Sydenham1997).

William Shaub, in his article, The Roots of the Revolution in Egypt, has highlighted on the average per –capita and it's possible affect on the revolution. He wrote, “Egypt has had a massive income gap throughout Mubarak’s control, which is clearly the root cause of the original uprising. One half of Egyptians live on $2/day or less. The average per-capita income in the country is just $6,200." The two Russians researchers, A. Korotayev and J. Zinkina, in their analysis on the Egyptian revolution, affirmed that Egypt was one of the most fast growth of the world food prices, and that definitely had influences on destabilization of Egyptian sociopolitical system (Korotayev et al: 011).
Unemployment in the Arab region is also a major source of economic insecurity and for destabilization of any political system. According to Don Tapscott, "twenty-four percent of young people in the region cannot find jobs" (Guardian:2011). This percentage of young unemployment is very high and the Arab countries in the region have not been able to change this situation and create new jobs, especially after the world financial crises.

Political and human rights are fundamental for any society and Arab region lives a situation well described by Hisham Sharabi in his book Neo-patriarchy. " Even when most states arrived a very high level of democracy and political rights, the Arab region still suffers from bad political systems based on corruption, state of emergency laws, the lack of free elections and freedom of speech and religious fundamentalism " (Sharabi: 2006).

Egypt was no exception to this corruption and lack of political freedom. After the 1967 'Six Day War', for example, the emergency law number 162 of 1958 was issued. This law limited the freedom and "[gave] greater powers to the police, suspend[ed]certain constitutional rights in the name of security, allow[ed] the state to detain individuals and censor and close newspapers more easily and allow[ed] authorities to try civilians in front of military and security courts under certain circumstances” (Sehata: 2004). It is also important to bring to the light that in Egyptian political history many events outside of Egypt had an impact on democracy and political freedom, such as 9/11 attack in the U.S.A. This event and the ongoing “War on Terrorism” have been used as an excuse to increase the violation of the human rights and facilitated the role of the military court (ibid).

After all these internal causes of the Arab revolt, it is important to not underestimate the role of the technology and the social network (Facebook, Twiter ) that facilitated the communication between the protesters. For this reason, the governments in Egypt and Tunisia shut down the Internet during the last protest against Mubarak and Ben Ali, in order to limit communication between protest groups.

2. The international causes:

The geographic position of many Arab states protagonist of the “Arab Spring" lead us to analyze also the International causes of these revolts. Egypt is the biggest Arab state and it is the first state that signed a peace accord with Israel. At the same time Cairo during Mubarak regime enjoyed a solid alliance with the United States in addition to the high influence on Palestinian parties. To understand better the 25 January revolution in Egypt we have to focus on the relations between Israel and Egypt before the revolution. The best vision on the relation between the Hebrew state and the Pharonic one is the article of Benn Aluf, Israeli journalist, published on Haaretz.

The article, which appeared under the title "A prayer for the health of the rais," began by stating that "of all the world's statesmen, the one closest to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak" (Benn, 2010). Thanks to Mubarak, Egypt became a strategic ally of Israel, as well as Israel's primary supplier of energy. Egypt has also ensured Israel’s stability and security. As a result of all of this the author concludes, "were Israel's leaders given one wish, they might ask that Mubarak be granted immortality."( ibid).

This article show how much the ideals of Mubarak were from Egyptians will and dreams. Egyptians have always refused the Camp David peace agreement, and since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, “calls have grown in Egypt for ending the 1979 peace treaty with Israel” (Guardian, 2011).
In fact, on Friday 9 September 2011, “a group of 30 protesters broke into the Israeli embassy in Cairo and threw hundreds of documents out of the windows” (Ibid). The failure of the peace process between Palestinian and Israeli, the last aggression against Gaza on 2009 and against Lebanon on 2006 and the Lebanese victory against Israel, gave more reasons and courage to the Egyptians and Tunisian to demonstrate against their regime.

After the resignation of Ben Ali in Tunisia, and Mubarak in Egypt, much has occurred. Manifestations agianst governments have increased in number, seectarian clashes in Egypt have multiplied, and elections have been held in both countries amid an Islamic - elite political rule. Rather than holding a political position, this article wishes to go further - to give a scientific analysis of the events that have taken place, and evalutate the post-revolution period. The key question to adress is whether policy in Egypt and Tunisia changed in this transitional period?

It is perhaps too soon to adjudicate the work of the new political elite in both countries. However one thing is clear: The Arab people have changed and they will not accept the undemocratic politics of their countries' past. Should they be forced to, they will revolt again to protect their rights and claims.
Hamze Abbas Jammoul is researcher in conflict resolution.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  
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