Arab Media: New Player in the Quest for Peace

Twenty years after the Camp David accords, comprehensive peace in the Middle East is still not at hand, and Egyptian-Israeli relations are correct but not warm. Israel and Egypt continue to honor the provisions of their peace treaty, and the chance of war between the two nations, which loomed so large before the treaty, is virtually nil. But mutual suspicion is growing daily.

Egypt accuses Israel of retreating from its commitment, embodied in the Oslo accords, to make peace with the Palestinians, as the lack of progress has soured the average Egyptian’s view of the Israelis. Israel, meanwhile, detects a revival of pan-Arabism in the Egyptian foreign ministry. This view misses a bigger factor at play in Arab politics today. The rise of a new, market-oriented Arab media has bolstered Arab identity in Egypt and elsewhere and has ensured that the Palestinian issue remain the lens through which most Arabs, including Egyptians, see Israel and the United States.

Egyptian and Israeli views on the formation of Arab public opinion have always been at odds. For example, when negotiating the Camp David accords, Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat explained to Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin that the Egyptian public would not stand for some of the concessions Begin sought.

Begin’s reaction stunned Sadat. The Israeli leader asserted that Sadat could easily manipulate the beliefs and attitudes of his people. Hadn’t Sadat convinced Egyptians that the Soviets were their best friends, only later to cast them out as their worst enemies? Begin’s remarks so infuriated Sadat that the two men had to be separated for the duration of the negotiations at Camp David.

Even at the time, Begin’s views on the power of Arab leaders to shape public opinion were exaggerated. Sadat’s ability to move Egyptian attitudes was not unbounded. He could never have sold the accords to his people if Israel had not agreed to fully withdraw from the Sinai, or if he had not secured a symbolic commitment from Israel to accept Palestinian autonomy. Even with these Israeli concessions in hand, Sadat faced opposition at home and total rejection by the Arab world.

Today, Begin’s view, which still has its adherents in Israel and Washington, is even farther from the truth. An information revolution has taken hold in the Middle East. The power of government-controlled outlets to move public opinion, already shackled by inefficient and underskilled bureaucracies, has been weakened by the rise of new market-oriented media whose audience is the entire Arab world.

In the 1950s and 1960s, media in the Arab world aimed to bolster the interests of newly independent and vulnerable states. In the past decade, the proliferation of information technologies, coupled with the emergence of capitalist entrepreneurs, has given rise to media that are largely beyond the control of Arab governments. There are more than 50 commercial TV stations on the West Bank reaching a population of less than 2 million. The spread of satellite technology has spawned new print and television media, often centered in Europe, that reach the entire Arab world. Satellite dishes, including some locally produced low-tech versions, are inexpensive and readily accessible to the masses, even in Arab states that outlaw them. Use of the Internet is growing rapidly among elites.

The more commercially oriented media, like their Western counterparts, aim for the broadest possible audiences. Some even conduct market research. With competition keen, the new media offer an ever greater variety of programs, especially entertainment-oriented ones, to attract new viewers and listeners. Their quest for larger market shares usually means that they look for issues that unite, not divide; their audience is not Egyptian, Saudi or Jordanian but “Arab.” Because governments retain the power to limit media access to markets, especially print, the new outlets are mindful of the risks in taking on domestic issues that might offend governments. Yet, if governments clamp down too aggressively, consumers can always switch to a competitor. No Arab government, including Egypt’s, can control or ignore these trends.

These are not ideological media driven by pan-Arabism. Most Arabs identify, first and foremost, with their nation-states. But the more collective aspect of Arab identity, which has never disappeared, is indirectly strengthened by the new media. This byproduct has important foreign-policy implications.

Although Arabs are divided in their views of the Palestine Authority and its president, Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian cause has been assimilated into Arab identity in the same way that Jewish identity has become intertwined with the state of Israel. In many parts of the Arab world, the Palestinian issue is central, and because most Arabs are watching the same media, they have increasingly similar views on it.

Twenty years after Camp David, the formula Sadat carried to Jerusalem remains the prerequisite for a lasting Middle East peace: mutual acceptance. His powerful words to Israelis--”We accept to live with you in peace”--were coupled with his expressed conviction that, for Arabs, “the Palestinian question is the root of the core of the problem” and “as long as this problem is not solved, the conflict will increase and grow to new dimensions.”

The Oslo agreements were promising precisely because they were based on mutual acceptance, thus opening the way not only to Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation but also to a comprehensive peace in the region. This week, as President Bill Clinton meets with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, the regional repercussions of the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian agreements for the entire region must not be underestimated.*