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Al-Ahram Weekly 17 - 23 February 2000 Issue No. 469 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 17 - 23 February 2000 Issue No. 469
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Are Arabs pursuing a mirage?
By Sherine Bahaa
Following the failure of his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak two weeks ago, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat appealed for "American, European and Arab intervention" in order to salvage the talks. That Arabs were last on Arafat's list was no surprise to many observers.
"What Arafat did is perfectly right," commented Gamil Mattar, a former assistant secretary-general of the Arab League and a political writer. "There is no longer anything like we used to call 'Arab political will', especially when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Any [Arab] country that tries for whatever reasons to intervene is faced with immense pressure to abandon its attempt," Mattar told the Al-Ahram Weekly.
Following Israel's latest aggression on Lebanon last week, the call for an immediate summit reverberated in the capitals of the Arab world, coming from several Arab officials and many of the region's newspapers. Since several Arab countries are directly involved in the peace process and their interests will definitely be influenced by its outcome, holding meetings to coordinate positions seems not only logical but also necessary.
With the lack of progress on both the Syrian-Lebanese and Palestinian peace tracks, along with the shocking statements made by Barak and his foreign minister threatening to "burn Lebanon's soil", several Arab observers have suggested that conditions are now similar to those of June 1996 when Arab countries held their first summit after a six-year hiatus. That meeting was held shortly after the election of former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, an ex-Likud leader, who had come to power raising slogans that made it clear, not only to Arab leaders but to the world, that he had no intention to work for peace.
"Solidarity and coordination among Arabs is a necessity," Palestinian Foreign Minister Farouq Kaddoumi told the Weekly in a telephone interview from the Palestine Liberation Organisation headquarters in Tunis. "Although we [Palestinians] made a mistake by disconnecting ourselves from other Arab peace tracks, we now need the Arabs," he said. Palestinian interests, according to Kaddoumi, are inseparable from those of other Arab countries: "We have to tell them that your [Arab] interests are in danger and you [Arab countries] have to pressure Israel."
In the 1996 summit held in Cairo, Arab leaders agreed to link normalisation of relations with Israel to the achievement of progress in the peace process on all tracks. After Barak led the Labour Party to victory in last year's Israeli elections, the United States resumed efforts to pressure Arab countries to normalise relations with Israel.
Again, continuous appeals for a summit have failed to come to fruition due to inter-Arab differences. Among the most prominent of these are the split caused by the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Syria's mistrust of the Palestinian leadership after it broke pledges to coordinate on the peace process.
During President Hosni Mubarak's most recent Arab tour, which included a visit to Syria, he was reported to have tried to resolve the differences between Damascus and the Palestinians. However, Egyptian diplomats said that more time is required to achieve this goal.
According to Egyptian officials, Cairo does not want an Arab summit to be convened amid such tensions since "differences among Arabs have the potential to cause such an event to fail," a foreign ministry source told the Weekly.
However, failure to hold such a meeting is "a big strategic mistake" according to a recent statement made by Foreign Minister Amr Moussa.
Another call has emerged lately proposing an Arab economic summit instead of a political one. Nonetheless, Egyptian officials insisted that this economic summit would never be a substitute for a political one.
According to Mattar, convening an economic summit was "a symbolic way to overcome the structural dilemma caused by the possible participation of Iraq," whose presence is strongly opposed by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, he is not optimistic that the economic meeting, which President Mubarak called for repeatedly, would take place as it does not fit within the United States' vision of the region. Instead, the world's only superpower is eager that the regional market be a Middle Eastern one -- including Israel and Turkey -- rather than an exclusively Arab one.
Mattar said that the US administration distributed a "non-paper document", through which it unofficially informed all Arab foreign ministers last year that "no intervention in any of the [Arab-Israeli] peace tracks will be accepted as this is solely the responsibility of the US." Mattar also asserted that no Arab meetings will take place unless their agendas are determined and approved by the United States. "Most Arab states call for an Arab summit, but every time such calls are made, they are linked to some restrictions or 'buts'." Mattar explained that convening such meetings has been made contingent on "thorough preparation", or "advance agreement on the agenda", or the "solving of inter-Arab differences".
For his part, Kaddoumi described the current Arab political situation as "miserable". He said that powerful parties like the United States and European countries can dictate the terms of inter-Arab relations. "Actually those parties are well aware that the Arabs do not agree among themselves on major issues," Kaddoumi said, explaining why Western countries do not take Arab calls for summit meetings seriously.
Mattar believes that an Arab summit will eventually take place, but it will be held at the request of the United States and it will be an event through which the American administration advertises regional approval of its vision for the Middle East. He said "An Arab summit will only take place when the peace process is about to end. Israel will likely ask for such a summit to get a collective commitment from all Arabs on the post-peace arrangements such as normalisation and ending, once and for all, any anti-Israel campaigns in the Arab media."
