Kristian Coates Ulrichsen and David Held see the revolutions as but the start of a broad process of uneven, patchy and fragile democratization:
The course of events since the dramatic ousting of Presidents Ben Ali and Mubarak from power in Tunisia and Egypt, and subsequently Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, suggest that we may be witnessing a transition of elites rather than a democratic revolution. Elsewhere, autocratic regimes are fighting hard for their survival and Saudi Arabia is spearheading a counter-revolutionary pushback in the Gulf States while attempting to manage the direction of change elsewhere.
Joschka Fisher thinks they've already reshaped the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
The pressure of the Arab revolutions is transforming the Palestinians into a dynamic political factor. For example, in view of the looming fall of Syria's President Bashar Al Assad, the pressure of the Egyptian revolution, and the new role of Islamism in the region, Hamas' alliance with Iran is becoming increasingly problematic. It remains to be seen whether, in the end, the ‘Turkish course' will prevail against the radicals in Gaza or not. In any case, Hamas faces some risky and consequential decisions of its own — all the more so should its main rival, Abbas's Palestinian National Authority, succeed in its current diplomatic campaign at the United Nations. Obama had promised a Palestinian state within one year, and Abbas is now building upon that promise.
Meanwhile, the far right government in Jerusalem continues its policy of ethnic and religious social engineering beyond the 1967 borders in order to create a permanent Greater Israel. (For the perversity of that provocation, read Tom Friedman.) And Hussein Shobokshi tries to substantiate the claim that Assad's fall is, in fact, looming.
(Photo: More than a thousand Jordanian protesters demonstrate during a rally in support of the Palestinian cause, calling for the closure of the Israeli embassy, on September 15, 2011 in Amman, Jordan. By Salah Malkawi/ Getty Images.)
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