Comment: Can the Arab East move past the mess it’s in? – Gulf Digital News

Comment: Can the Arab East move past the mess it’s in? – Gulf Digital News

Over the past few days, I’ve been catching up on news about depressingly familiar developments unfolding (or not) in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine/Israel, and Iraq.

Lebanon, still on the brink of collapse, can’t form a fully functioning government because sectarian elites seem intent on sucking the last bit of marrow from the country’s dying bones.

Sectarian gridlock, enforced by Hizbollah’s threats, prevents accountability for past crimes and has resulted in shortages of basic services, fuel, food, and money.

Even if the Lebanese succeed in winning control of gas fields in the Mediterranean, they have legitimate fears of a power grab by sectarian elites who will drain the proceeds to serve their own interests, rather than the country’s.

Syria is still at war with itself, with Russian, Iranian, Turkish, and American interests colliding and sometimes colluding in different combinations over the future of the tragic mess they (and the brutal Assad regime) all helped to create.

While this game of nations continues to be played, millions of Syrians remain destitute, either internally displaced or as refugees fearful of returning to their homes.

Iraq is paralysed, owing to the “genius” of the Americans whose “gift” to the Iraqi people was to mimic the French-created sectarian-based system of governance that