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Home » 2000 » #429 » International News » PALESTINE: Masses not impressed by Arab summit

BY SANA KAMAL

AMMAN — The outcome of the “emergency” Arab summit convened to adopt a unified Arab position towards the Palestinian uprising did not come as a surprise to most Arabs. But it was a great disappointment to those who had hoped that the renewed upsurge of Palestinian popular resistance to Israeli occupation might awaken the Arab leaders as it most certainly did the the Arab people, and prompt them to take serious and effective measures to confront and deter Israel.

The October 21-22 summit in Cairo confirmed the deep rift between the aspirations of the Arab people and the priorities of their leaders, above all their reluctance to cross the United States.

The massive demonstrations that have been held across the Arab world since the outbreak of the uprising on September 28 had demanded tangible Arab action: from severing ties with Israel and halting normalisation; to using the “oil weapon” and other sanctions to counter America's backing for Israel; to “opening the borders” for guerilla action or even bringing the Arab armies themselves into the equation.

The Arab summit stopped short of meeting the most modest of those demands, the closure of diplomatic missions. Instead, it called a halt to the establishment of new ties with Israel.

Oman had already shut its trade office in Tel Aviv and the Israeli one in Muscat a week previously, following street demonstrations. Tunisia decided to do the same just before the Arab declaration was announced, Morocco followed suit a day later, while Qatar was still “considering” such a move at the time of writing.

Jordan and Egypt were absolved of any commitment to break their diplomatic ties with Israel, which they argued they were bound by treaty to maintain, and were useful as a means of exerting pressure.

The summit sufficed with a warning that such action might ensue if Israel continued its onslaught against the Palestinians — which is exactly what it did, with renewed ferocity, within hours of the Cairo gathering ending — declaring that Israel would have only itself to blame for “any steps and decisions made by Arab states regarding relations with Israel, including their cancellation”.

In their televised opening speeches to the summit, the assembled Arab rulers or their representatives appeared to differ over what measures they wanted taken. The presidents of Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Sudan emphasised the need for sanctions against Israel, while their host, Hosni Mubarak, stressed the primacy of preserving the peace process. Yet the final communique was said to have been adopted unanimously, despite reservations on the part of some who favoured a tougher tone and more tangible measures.

They seem to have eventually agreed to the text due to other considerations, including a desire to show unity and avoid reviving inter-Arab antagonisms, including those dating from the Gulf War.

Iraq's second-in-command, Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, made a number of disparaging references to the timidity, inaction and subservience of other Arab regimes, and predictably invited them to join in a jihad against the “Zionist entity” to liberate Palestine.

But having participated at such a gathering for the first time in over 10 years, with its Kuwaiti and Saudi detractors in attendance, in practice Baghdad seemed more interested in using the occasion as an opportunity to return to the official Arab fold than to push its declared position on Palestine. Duri avoided raising Iraq's own grievances or demands or attacking its Arab adversaries by name.

Still, his tone was deemed sufficiently hostile by semi-official Saudi commentators to rule out any early reconciliation on that front.

Libya, represented by its Arab League ambassador, staged a walkout on the first day of the summit to avoid being associated with its decisions, or rather the lack of them, and to vindicate Colonel Muammar Qadhafi's boycott of the gathering. He had embarrassed the other Arab leaders by revealing days before that they had already effectively agreed to do no more than condemn Israel's behaviour verbally. During a live interview with the Al Jazeera satellite channel, he read out and ridiculed excerpts of the draft summit communique to illustrate his point, declaring that nothing short of an all-out struggle against Israel would produce results.

Token gestures

The perception among independent commentators and the general public is that far more could have realistically been done by Arab leaders to curb Israel's aggressive behaviour on the ground and intransigence in the negotiations. The “emergency” summit was not exactly convened in a rush.

President Mubarak had initially scheduled it for January, and although he brought it forward after street protests in Cairo and other Arab capitals escalated, that still left a two-week gap for Arab leaders to plan what to do. They appeared to be hoping that some way would be found in the interim to halt the “violence” in Palestine and thus reduce the pressure on them to act.

That was the purpose of the October 17 summit (with the Palestinian, Israeli, American and Jordanian leaders and the UN secretary-general) hosted by Mubarak at Sharm al-Shaykh, which was widely seen as having pre-empted the Arab summit and tied its hands. Indeed, Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah argued in Cairo that nothing should be done by the Arabs to undermine the Sharm al-Shaykh “agreement” which, they maintained, had committed Israel to desisting from the use of force against the Palestinians and lifting the siege on the territories — which they insisted was a priority.

Just days prior to the Sharm al-Shaykh meeting, Egypt had publicly ruled out hosting any such summit unless Israel complied with a list of specific steps, such as withdrawing its forces from Palestinian Authority (PA) areas, and before Arab leaders had a chance to meet to consider the situation.

The American persuasiveness that apparently changed Mubarak's mind was exercised immediately after Sharm al-Shaykh on other key Arab players. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was dispatched to Saudi Arabia, where she conferred with both Crown Prince Abdullah and Syria's Bashar al-Asad, who happened to be visiting the kingdom to discuss what line the Cairo summit should take.

The line eventually taken was undoubtedly strong in terms of verbal support for the uprising and condemnation of Israel's use of draconian force against the Palestinian population. But that smacked rather too obviously of rhetoric for domestic consumption, and could therefore backfire, fuelling public anger rather than assuaging it.

Accusations of tokenism were also levelled at most of the practical measures called for in the final communique. For example, the Arab leaders also demanded that the UN Security Council form an international tribunal on Israeli war crimes, provide international protection for the Palestinians under Israeli occupation, and participate in an international investigation into the latest confrontations — demands which analysts were quick to predict would simply be blocked by the US and duly forgotten.

Likewise, they decided to call a halt to the multilateral talks with Israel on regional cooperation, which had been going nowhere anyway. The one tangible measure they endorsed was a Saudi proposal to set up two funds for the Palestinians — earmarking US$800 million to preserve the Arab identity of Jerusalem, and $200 million to support the families of the Palestinians killed in the ongoing uprising.

Although Crown Prince Abdullah pledged Riyadh would pay one quarter of the amount, no other Arab leaders appeared to make solid commitments in this regard.

Being reasonable

Strikingly absent from the summit declaration was any reference to the role of the US in the Middle East and the peace process, which the Arab leaders reiterated they were committed to as their “strategic choice”. They had been expected at least to call on Washington to play the role of “honest broker” and signal displeasure with its biased management of the process, and their failure to do so will be seen as a measure of the American pressure brought to bear on them.

They had clearly ruled out in advance even hinting that continued American and Western backing for and indulgence of Israel might test Arab willingness to cooperate in restraining world oil prices.

Mubarak played the central role in determining the outcome of the summit. In interviews during the build-up, he stressed the need for Arab leaders to be “reasonable and practical” and avoid “emotive” decisions, and ridiculed those who had called for war with Israel or active Arab support for an armed Palestinian struggle.

While it is widely accepted, even in the current climate of public outrage and growing militancy, that such calls are indeed unrealistic, the perception will persist that lesser measures which would not have risked a military conflagration could have been agreed.

The Arab leaders' credibility, even legitimacy, stands to suffer from the impression that they balked at taking the minimum and “reasonable” steps that the masses, and the majority of political forces in the various Arab countries, demanded in order to at least push Israel towards committing itself to withdrawal from all the territories it occupied in 1967 and compliance with UN resolutions — as they had pushed Iraq to do after its invasion of Kuwait.

Some argue that the Arab leaders wanted to demonstrate moderation in order to give the Israelis a chance to reconsider their policies before the next Arab summit is held in Jordan in March. Critics counter by asking how many more Palestinians need to be killed before Arab leaders finally take serious action to stop the Israeli onslaught, which shows every sign of escalating.

[From Middle East International.] 

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