Transcript
MARWAN MUASHER: To be a moderate in the Arab world can be described as an act of courage, a leap of faith, or maybe just plan suicidal. But there has never been a time in our region where moderation is more needed or where moderates need to speak out even more forcefully. This is a book about Arab moderation, the successes and the failures of Arab moderates, and a book that tries to explain where these successes have come about and why, and more importantly, why did the Arab center also fail in so many areas.
I argue of course in the book that first of all there is an Arab center. To most in the West an Arab center does not exist, Arab moderates are not there, and this is a region with a bunch of fanatics and where moderation does not rule. I try to argue on the peace process there has been not just Arab moderation, but in fact a very proactive moderate center that has put forward all the initiatives, let me say all the major initiatives, of this decade on the peace process has come from the Arab center, whether it is through the Arab peace initiative of 2002 where the whole Arab world committed itself collectively to a peace treaty with Israel, to security guarantees for all states in the region including Israel, to the end to the conflict, and to an agreed solution to the refugee problem. Then the Middle East Road Map that provided a road that would take us to the end of the occupation, a two-state solution, but would also implement among other things the terms of the Arab Peace Initiative and again commit the whole Arab world to a collective peace treaty with Israel.
. . . most important of all, this book talks about why the Arab center today is losing credibility at a very fast rate in the Arab world and it is doing so because that center has chosen to focus on only one aspect of moderation, which is the peace process and, indeed, as it has as I said made valiant efforts to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, but that core center has not been a center on other issues of importance to Arab society, political reform, good governance, economic wellbeing, and cultural diversity. In being selectively moderate and not solving what it has promised people it would solve which is the Arab-Israeli conflict, it has been painted successfully by its opponents as a compromiser of Arab rights, as an apologist for the West, as a center that has not delivered on anything; it did not deliver on peace, and it did not deliver on reform. I argue that for that center to regain its credibility and not only survive but thrive in the future, it must address all these issues. It must address issues of reform in the same way and with the same vigor that it addresses issues of peace.
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