Arab World

Two ranking French Cabinet ministers flew to the Arab world Saturday. Premier Laurent Fabius arrived in Rabat, Morocco, on a 48-hour official visit. His talks will focus on economic issues. France is by far the North African nation's most important trading partner.

A 20-year-old Arab boycott of soft drinks giant Coca-Cola Co. is cracking despite the Arab League's refusal to remove it from its blacklist of firms who have had dealings with Israel. A TV advertising campaign has launched Coca-Cola in Bahrain, while bottling and canning plants are opening up in Persian Gulf states.

By blaming Israel for regional destabilization (letter, March 17), Eugene O'Carroll is being insensitive and unrealistic. Brainwashed Palestinian youths blow themselves up, taking hundreds of innocent Israelis with them (many young children, many deliberately maimed for life), yet O'Carroll further torments the victims by calling Israel the oppressor. Palestinian schools have reinstituted the teaching of hateful anti-Jewish lies popularized by the Nazis. If there were any defense for Palestinian actions, it would be that Israel started it. But the U.N. offered the Palestinians their own state in 1948.

Oil wealth and Western technology have now made camels, the traditional "ships of the desert," not only unnecessary but unwanted in parts of the Persian Gulf, a United Arab Emirates newspaper said Tuesday. The Dubai-based Gulf News said residents on the edge of the Emirates desert, where camels were once essential for survival, now consider the beasts a nuisance.

One night in May 1967, a few weeks before the Six-Day War, I was watching the news with my father, a Holocaust survivor. Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser had just shut the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping, expelled the U.N. peacekeeping force from the Sinai and massed troops on the border. A report from Cairo appeared on the screen, showing thousands of men leaping around banners imprinted with skulls and crossbones and chanting death slogans against Israel.

The elevation of 37-year-old Crown Prince Abdullah to succeed his father, Hussein, on the throne of Jordan is a stark reminder to the band of geriatric monarchs, emirs and presidents-for-life now in command of most Arab countries to put their houses in order. After having clung to office for two, three or even four decades, Arab rulers from the Persian Gulf to Morocco must face the inevitable: The time to pass the torch to a new generation is fast approaching.

Tunis spruced itself up for a gala event at the end of last month, the triumphant celebration of what Zine Abidine ben Ali has done since he deposed Habib Bourguiba last November. Tunisia has changed more in months than in the previous 30 years, and this is one of the most encouraging developments in the Arab world. But because no one has died and the jails are being emptied, the story has gone relatively unreported.

A second round of U.S. air strikes against Iraq met with growing unease Sunday in the Arab world, where there is a new conviction that the low-level attacks will only increase popular support for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

In July, 1967, a month after Jordan's devastating defeat in the Six-Day War, the British ambassador to Amman asked King Hussein how he felt about losing the West Bank and East Jerusalem with its Muslim holy places. "Good riddance," said the king. The ambassador duly reported the royal reply to his superiors, but few believed that Hussein had meant it. Now he has announced his relinquishment of all claims to the West Bank, and again few believe that he means it.

The first McDonald's hamburger restaurant in Africa or the Arab world opened in Casablanca on Friday. The owners of the 300-seat restaurant, at the eastern end of the Avenue de la Corniche a few steps from the beach, expect to serve up to 3,000 meals a day. An early customer appeared confused about the origin of the hamburger. "I've eaten hamburgers before, but I've never had an American meal," said Nafissa Elallam, a college graduate student. "Hamburgers are from Germany, right?"