FT.com / Comment / Analysis - At hand, an Arab awakening

Middle Eastern commentators look back 95 years to find a challenge to the established order as momentous as that now taking place. “This is history in the making, a replay of the great Arab revolt,” says Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi analyst, referring to the 1916 uprising against Ottoman rule that began in what is now his country.

Just as that uprising swept across the region, so too this year has one nation after another felt a new force. Since a vegetable vendor in a restive Tunisian town doused himself with petrol and burnt to death in a December protest against unemployment and corruption, the flame of popular defiance has travelled across the Arab world.

Hunkered down in his presidential palace in Cairo, 10km away from the centre of vast protests on Tahrir Square, Hosni Mubarak on Tuesday conceded that he would quit. Last night it remained uncertain whether his 29-year rule would endure even until elections due in September.

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