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Where Is the Arab Bloc that Championed the Palestinian Cause?
(Wall Street Journal) Jonathan Spyer - The U.S. peace plan won't bring peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but it may expose deeper processes of change underway in the Middle East. Both the Palestinian cause and the broader Arab political bloc that long championed it are in disarray, while the Palestinians are divided geographically. Viewing the power edifice that stood behind the Palestinian cause, Saddam Hussein's Iraq is a distant memory. Bashar Assad presides over rubble in Syria. Moammar Gadhafi's Libya is broken up. Egypt is Israel's strategic partner, enforcing its own partial blockade of Gaza. It has fallen to Iran and Turkey to continue the Palestinian fight. That non-Arab states must take up the Arab world's traditional banner of the Palestinian cause confirms that the old Arab order is gone. The writer is director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis.