Arab Activists Move From Street Protests To Basement Bomb-Making

by Rami G. Khouri

They may be focusing on the wrong issues, the wrong people and the wrong places. The Arab street -- masses of angry Arabs who would demonstrate against a U.S. invasion of Iraq and to any Arab state's that refused to oppose it -- no longer drives policy or events. Young bomb-makers in basements from Nablus to New Jersey do.

Sixty specialists from the United States and Islamic countries discussed Iraq, terror, Palestine/Israel, Arab governance and globalization in a meeting organized by the Saban Center of the Washington-based Brookings Institution. The discussion inevitably stressed the causes and consequences of the Arab street's widespread opposition to American and Israeli policies.

Certainly "the street" remains an important expression of the enfeebling and humiliating events that cause ordinary Arabs to feel such deep outrage, vulnerability, pain and dehumanization. But the center of gravity of populist Middle Eastern reaction to America and Israel has shifted from the street to young bomb-makers in the basements of buildings in Nablus and Nairobi, and in garages in New Jersey, Hamburg, Manila and Brooklyn.

These are the preferred places from where angry young men now use bombs against the Israeli occupation and subjugation of Palestinians, against the United States and its symbols of power or global reach, or against other targets whose purpose or symbolism remain unclear.

I have long, unambiguously condemned terror bombings as morally repugnant, politically unacceptable and absolutely unjustifiable, regardless of one's pain or the barbarism used by the other side. But such condemnation of Arab terror has become largely ineffective. Those who make the bombs are no longer in our universe or on the Arab street. They are in their basements and garages, because when they marched in the street nobody in Washington or Tel Aviv listened to them, and many of their own Arab governments easily prevented them from demonstrating.

That policy has passed on to us an ugly legacy of a dazed culture and its crazed men who kill civilians in the thousands, deriving from such deeds great satisfaction and even significant public acclaim.

Eliciting mainly American-Israeli indifference and Arab suppression when they took to the streets, these men left that romantic and failed arena and found new meaning in their basement bomb factories. They did this at first in small groups, and these in turn coalesced into a loose global network that carried out spectacular attacks. An American attack on Iraq would help push the next wave of young Arab men who were once solid students, hard-working young employees and enthusiastic voters down this gruesome path.

I fearfully predict that they will next engage in more elusive forms of indiscriminate urban terror against American and Israeli targets -- and perhaps against Arabs as well.

We have already seen terrible omens of this in Israel's recent arrests of a few Palestinian men who planned to poison water and food supplies in Israeli restaurants and hospitals. We also saw Kuwaitis shoot and kill American soldiers last week. Was this the Arab street's and basement's first convoluted response to President Bush's exhortation that the world must choose between being with or against the United States?

The world is not as simple as the American president's ideological diction dictates, and the sooner he appreciates this the safer we all will be.

In this cycle of bad policy and early, indiscriminate death, there is plenty of blame for all concerned, in the Arab world, Israel and the United States. There are no absolutes or innocents, neither in the basement nor on the road here. But there is also a way out -- by patiently, convincingly, retracing the steps that brought us here, and by undoing the many wrongs done by all parties en route.

We must get our young Arab men out of their growing number of basement and garage bomb factories. We must get our Arab governments out of their discredited pattern of false security based on freeze-drying our political and cultural life. And we must get Israel and the United States out of their fantasy world of exaggerated force and bravado, where the highest American and Israeli national leaders give the appearance of auditioning for roles in Marlboro Man commercials.

I want my Arab brothers and sisters out of their bomb factories, back on the street, and back where they belong: in colleges, sports clubs, art galleries, thriving businesses, voting booths and parliaments. Those whose actions contributed to sending them to the basement should work more intelligently to get them out of there. Because the next destination and targets in this terrifying journey will not be basements, garages, hospitals and restaurants, but something infinitely more ugly. This battle will not be won by the strongest military, but by the wisest, most humane and just policies that seek to promote the dignity and equality of all people.