I want to underline something very significant about the multiple crises now simmering in the Contested (once 'Fertile') Crescent that stretches from Egypt through Israel/Palestine, to a lesser extent Syria, and then finishes strongly in Iraq. That is that right now you have considerably heightened political tensions in that crescent, revolving principally around the question of whether US-Israeli power is to be succumbed to or resisted, that come on top of rapidly worsening economic conditions.
It is this combination-- plus of course, Pres. Bush's singularly ill-timed, and Israel-centered visit to the region this coming week-- that make the crises potentially more serious than any of the other internal crises of governance this region has seen in recent years.
Thus we have seen:
In Egypt, on May 4, the Muslim Brotherhood, which in terms of both economic and social policy is fundamentally very conservative, threw its weight behind the anti-price-rise stoppage called by non-MB networks of social-issues activists. That, after the MB notably stood aside from engagement in previous economics-focused public actions.
In Lebanon, we should recall the confrontations of recent days started with a nationwide protest against price hikes.
In Gaza and the West Bank, Israel's policy of tightly linking economic issues to issues of political control and domination has continued for so long, and with such viciousness, that it is now just about impossible to disentangle the two. But the economic-political combination there is particularly combustible right now.
In Iraq, the failure of the US occupation force to allow the rebuilding of a working, livelihoods-focused economy-- or indeed, we could say the decisions it took at so many levels to block the re-emergence of a functioning national economy-- has contributed hugely, and for more than five years now, to the occupation power losing its political legitimacy in the eyes of Iraq's citizens. Most recently, and most acutely, the economic/anti-humane suffering inflicted through the occupation power's aggressive pursuit of plans of military control and quadrillage in Sadr City have forced the whole situation there to a crisis.
What you have in all those parts of the now-Contested Crescent is a US-Israeli-dominated political order that has failed to meet even the most basic economic (let alone political) needs of local citizens.
You could describe this as a small subset of the global economic-political order, which is also to some extent US-dominated, though in the Contested Crescent the political, and therefore also the economic, domination is particularly extensive and all-encompassing.
Around the world, there have been signs of considerable pushback against US policies regarding, in particular, the very basic issue of very basic foodstuffs: policies that in recent months have helped to drive many parts of the low-income world toward starvation.
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