Historys hinges

That this is a pivotal moment in the history of North Africa and West Asia is obvious. For the first time in memory,the streets of the Arab world have,in near unison,erupted in protest. These countries have suffered from many deficits: of development,of connectivity,of gender empowerment. But perhaps the most glaring deficit has always been of governance and of accountability and perhaps this is the common thread that unites the diversity of anger on display in the streets of Beirut,of Cairo,of Tunis,of Amman,of Khartoum and of Sanaa.

Yet little more than this can really be stated with confidence. That is the one thing that is true of the pivotal moments of history,when events and futures balance on a knife-edge. Yet it is also human nature to search for parallels perhaps to explain,perhaps to comfort,perhaps to warn. Is this the Arab worlds 1989? If so,is it the 1989 of the Berlin Wall and Timisoara,as regime after authoritarian regime collapsed as an amazed world looked on? Or is it the 1989 of what they now,in China,call merely the June 4 Incident? For a parallel closer in space but perhaps not in time,is it the 1979 of the Islamic Revolution,as so many in the West and elsewhere fear? For Israelis,of course,the shadow is of the years of 1967 and 1973; will they once again,as then,be encircled by unfriendly regimes? And will the decades-long security they won in those years vanish in clouds of teargas and artillery smoke?

Yet while the parallels can be drawn endlessly,in hope and in fear,there is a limit to how much they will explain and predict. When you witness a hinge in history,embracing the moment requires the realisation that it can swing either way.