Mass demonstrations are popping up all over the country in defiance of Deraa and other military crackdowns:
Friday brought the largest anti-regime protest in the Syrian capital since protests against president Bashar al-Assad's decade-long rule began last month. Gunfire was reported in Damascus and in the coastal city of Latakia, with witnesses claiming that security forces have fired on protesters, according to the Associated Press news agency. … Al Jazeera correspondent Rula Amin, reporting from Damascus, said Friday's slogan is "solidarity for Deraa" – the southern city that has borne the brunt of a crackdown by Syrian security forces. The call for mass demonstrations was made in a statement on the Facebook page of Syrian Revolution 2011 which has called for protests for greater freedom inspired by uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world.
The above demonstrators are shouting, "The people want to overthrow the regime!" Amira Al Hussaini is collecting similar videos from around the country. EA has more footage from the latest Day of Rage.
What's interesting to me is not only how this extreme police state has shown itself vulnerable, but how its vulnerability has shifted the balance in the region, by, for example, giving Hamas an incentive to end the breach with Fatah. All of this, to my mind, is a good thing, even for Israel.
The emergence of a democratic Egypt acting as an independent state, rather than as a client puppet of the US, could be the critical step toward a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. It abolishes the hideous dynamic of Arab dictators constantly using Israel as a cynical distraction from their own incompetence and brutality. Now that the people of Egypt are actually in the driver's seat they can begin to assess the relationship with Israel more rationally – and begin to act as legitimate arbiters for the Palestinians – a natural role, suppressed by the Mubarak era.
Netanyahu, of course, can see nothing but danger. He has every right to be wary, but would be stupid not to see possible openings toward resolving the Palestine issue (presuming that he even wants to). But the US should be thrilled at the new possibilities this has opened up, despite the fact that its functioning as an extended tool of the Likud party has so weakened American influence in the region as a whole.
The exposure of American weakness toward Israel is, in my view, almost certainly why Arab opinion of Obama has sunk. The Arab world always knew, as everyone else did, that Obama's long strategy to reposition the US into a stronger position with the Arab and Muslim world would be put to its acid test on the Israel question.
Obama, so far, has failed that test, because the Israeli government's grip on the US government is far stronger than the president's foreign policy powers. But if he can leverage the democratic change in the region toward saving Israel from the dire consequences of its own paranoia, there is still a chance that this presidency could be transformational. My only fear is that domestic American politics will make it hard for Obama to achieve this in his first term. After which, the whole question might be moot, given Israel's propensity for enabling its enemies by clueless diplomacy and unending paranoia.
The Dish 