No one in Washington can rely on the complaisance and submissiveness towards Israel and the United States that was one of the key features of the stagnant Arab order that is being challenged all over the region. What will replace it will be determined in the streets, as well as in the internet cafes, the union halls, newspaper offices, women’s groups and private homes of millions of young Arabs. They have announced that they will no longer tolerate being treated with the contempt their governments have shown them their entire lives. They have put us all on notice: “The people want the fall of the regime.” They mean by this the regimes in each and every Arab country which robbed citizens of their dignity. They also mean a regional regime whose cornerstone was a humiliating submission to the dictates of the United States and Israel, and which robbed all the Arabs of their collective dignity.
