Arab Spring

Heavy stuff Blog, real heavy,

 I suppose you are as aware as anyone of the ‘Arab spring’, aren’t you Blog? When it all started to gather momentum in Egypt a few weeks back, it reminded me of my brief 15 minute visit to that country. Yes, 15 minutes. Not a flying visit. I trudged in and I trudged out, I kiddle you not. The 6 day war had occurred only a few years previous, spent bullet cartridges and communications wires used by the military still littered some road sides on the West Bank. I travelled by bus down to Eilat a couple of days before Christmas. In those days Eilat had a couple of tourist hotels and not much else; it certainly hadn’t hit the popular package holiday market in any big way. Down the Red Sea coast (Gulf of Aqaba), about two mile or so, Taba was just starting to be developed as a tourist attraction. It was within spitting distance of the Egyptian border. There was little development of any note between Eilat and Taba except for a huge oil terminal and a small camp site with a few tentative businesses tempting the occasional tourist to view the beautiful corals of the sea through the bottom of their glass bottomed boats. The rest was desert; not the sandy desert of the cinema screen but a rough barren rock strewn nothingness of the Sinai Peninsula. Knowing I was camping in the area, an Israeli friend, a high ranking officer in the army, had lent me a military map with my promise that I would show no one. Unlike our O.S. maps, it relied heavily on shading to denote features. The day after pitching tent at the small site, only one other tent erected, I set off on a ‘12’, armed with my map and the sun for a long run through the parched inhospitable landscape to do a loop course which would bring me back out onto the coast, a couple of miles south of the camp site, a mile or two north of the border with Egypt. Well that was the plan. It was Christmas Eve. I returned a friendly wave to the occasional army outposts of the Israeli army, settled comfortably among the barren rocks, settled in their armchairs and shades outside their tents in a conscripted life of boredom. About 90 minutes later I was getting fairly close to the sea when I ran into a much larger army emplacement with plenty of barbed wire and bristling with antennae, much more of what you might expect a professional military post to look like at one of the world’s hot spots. I was not met with the cheery wave of the other posts but a menacing shout and a commanding wave of an automatic weapon. I knew they were not shouting at me in Hebrew. My map did not have a defined border so unwittingly I had strayed into Egyptian territory. I was approaching the border post from inside Egypt!

Surprisingly it took only a couple of minutes to sort out the misunderstanding, to have everyone laughing at my mistake with the surprisingly friendly Egyptian soldiers waving me through to their Israeli counter parts who also thought it some big joke! It did make me wonder about the content of what the newspapers and political commentaries were banging on about back in England when such a relax atmosphere existed on the ground.

That night, sitting on the beach waiting for Christmas Day to dawn, a terrific firework display took place. Impressively, huge fairly candles hung in the sky, lighting the sea and beach as bright as day, large fire crackers exploded in the sky cascading bright red vapour trails into the sea, roman candle-like fireworks whistled and bounced across the water towards the beach. It was all very impressive but unfortunately lasted less than 10 minutes. I did question why a Jewish country should go to such lengths for a Christian festival, given that we were some miles from any Christian shrine of substance which for obvious reasons, were crowded; the number of tourists locally could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Three days later I went to stay with my friend on his Kibbutz some miles north of Tel Aviv. The question of the relax atmosphere on the border and the Christmas Eve display came up during the course of my stay. With typical Israeli sang-froid, he suggested to me that there was no need for troops on the ground to be concerned about animosities. Everyone in Israel and Egypt wanted a quiet life. Let the press get hot under the collar to sell copy. Let the politicians talk and posture to gain re-election. Life was too short to worry about a stupid tourist getting lost in the desert. I was not lost I told him, it was his daft map. I thanked him and returned his precious map. There is a saying in the country that if you get two Israelis in a room arguing, you will get three points of view! I can easily understand. We agreed to differ! It was the same with the firework display ... in reality it was the Jordanian army in Aqaba setting off ordinance probably because they thought a diver or a windsurfer from the Israeli S.F. had attempted to penetrate their sea space. It was usually a false alarm he told me. The Jordanians were always very jumpy. The Israeli, Jordanian and Saudi Arabian borders all converge in the space of a couple of miles at this point on the globe, so tensions can be ratcheted up quickly if the politicians of any of the countries so wished. My friend pointed out that at trade level, relations were similar to the squadies - laid back; no one wanted trouble when a few shekels were to be made. Israel and Saudi Arabia did not get on politically. On a business footing, trade existed amicably if covertly. Oil for example, was loaded onto tankers in Saudi, sailed a couple of miles into international waters, turned around and docked to discharge in Israel, a direct journey of 4 or 5 miles, a circuitous route of 20 or so miles. International diplomacy was satisfied, oil had been purchased on the spot market, no overt trade went on between the two nations. The extreme political wings in both countries were kept quiet. A similar situation existed between Jordan and Israel who had for a number of years held a joint interest in exploiting the rich mineral content of the Dead Sea; it was in both countries’ interests so why rock the boat.

I always wondered after my stays, why the politicians couldn’t be as openly pragmatic as the citizens of their respective countries. At least the laid back approach of the ordinary soldiery of a few years ago, seems now to have spread to the ordinary populous of many Arab countries and perhaps they might, just perhaps, improve a situation where most politicians have postured and done little else.

     Philosophically yours, Colin.