In a recent article, Nir Hasson has
argued that Palestinians won a victory last week surrounding the Temple Mount
and that this might set the stage for perhaps more to come. The remarkable thing, according to Hasson, is
that though the Sheiks called for a ban on going up to the Temple Mount, they
did not lead the protests; it was in reality an uprising that happened among
the Palestinians themselves, or in other words, the people took the lead. Those involved were not all Moslem religious;
rather there were secular Moslems who feel a bond to the site, and so joined
the protest because of a feeling of unity and freedom.
If it is true that the uprising found expression among the
Palestinian people without continued leadership, it raises the question, what
were some of the other Arab nations thinking during the crisis and protests on
the streets? According to Zvi Bar’el, Arab
states feared that the Palestinian uprising would set off another Arab
Spring. Although Bar’el does not
substantially show that this was in fact the view among the Arab nations, he
does demonstrate that in large part many of the Arab nations remained silent,
for example Egypt, or were in effective even though they made strong statements
about the crisis, such as Turkey and Iran.
Nonetheless, I agree that seeing the Palestinian protest as they
unfolded surrounding the Temple Mount, did lead me to consider the question: is
this part of an Arab Spring?
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