11 - 17 January 2001
Issue No.516
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 11 - 17 January 2001 Issue No.516 |
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Pondering aid and support
Less than a week apart, senior Arab officials met for two sessions of the ministerial committee charged with following up the implementation of the Arab summit resolutions. While these meetings were essentially high-level brain-storming, they also helped formulate a minimum Arab consensus on a most fundamental Arab issue: the Palestinian-Israeli struggle and how to settle it. Moreover, they allowed for discussion on the ways and means required to grant Palestinians necessary economic aid.
In both meetings, participants agreed on two things: no Arab country should attempt to discourage the Palestinian Intifada, and financial aid should be secured directly to the families of those who died or were wounded in demonstrations against Israeli occupation and aggression.
However, there was disagreement on over how far the Palestinian Authority should go in negotiating or reaching agreement with Israel while the Intifada is continuing.
Yesterday a meeting was scheduled in the Tunisian capital for the foreign ministers of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Tunisia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. These are the members of the "follow-up committee" formed to assess the level of commitment to the resolutions adopted by Arab leaders in Cairo last October. These called for the extension of political and economic support to the Palestinian people and their Intifada against Israeli occupation. Also a member of this committee is the secretary-general of the Arab League, Essmat Abdel-Meguid.
The meeting was expected to focus more on the economic aspect.
Some foreign ministers did not attend the meeting. The conspicuous absentee was Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq Al-Sharaa.
"This is not a political stance. It is just that Mr Al-Sharaa has to be in Damascus to participate in high-level talks with foreign officials who are visiting," a Syrian source said, adding that Al-Sharaa had taken part in a similar meeting a few days earlier.
Last Thursday the "follow-up committee" held an urgent meeting at the headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo.
"This meeting is held at the request of Palestine to update the committee on the on-going developments in the occupied territories -- including the recent statements of the Israeli chief of staff which violate the logic and spirit of peacemaking," Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa told a press conference after the meeting.
"This meeting was also about the recent political developments," he added.
At the meeting, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat offered the nine foreign ministers and Abdel-Meguid a general reading of the US proposals for a final Palestinian-Israeli deal.
"The committee listened to Arafat's review of the situation [with regard to the Intifada and the negotiations] and decided to offer him support for the stance that insists on [retaining] Palestinian sovereignty in East Jerusalem and Al-Haram Al-Sharif [...] without any ambiguities involved [...] and the right of return for the refugees," Moussa told the press conference.
This said, participants in the Cairo and Tunis meetings do not know exactly what Arafat has in mind. "Originally this committee was supposed to be about the follow-up of the Arab summit resolutions on how to provide support for the Intifada, but now it also has to deal with the Oslo-based Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, and we don't really know how far Arafat would want to go with either," a Syrian source commented.
This line was also adopted by the Lebanese delegation in both the Cairo and the Tunis meetings. Most of the other participating countries seem willing to go along with what Arafat wants. Arab sources suggested that most of these delegations were inclined to encourage Arafat to give the US proposal a chance.
Egypt was -- as it always manages to be -- somewhere in the middle. "The fact of the matter is that in Cairo Arafat was clear enough about sticking to the fundamental principles that have to do with the core issues of Jerusalem, Al-Haram Al-Sharif and the refugees. There was nothing in what he said that suggested otherwise," an Egyptian diplomatic source commented.
"Moreover, the Arab summit did not suggest that the peace talks would be discarded. The line of the Arab summit is clear in saying that the Intifada came as a result of the imbalance that befell the peace process; and Arafat did not say that he wanted to end the Intifada," he added.
Foreign Minister Moussa and Abdel-Meguid were in agreement over their assessment: "This is an obvious moment of self-determination, and it is the Palestinians who will have to decide for themselves," Moussa said. "And we will support them," Abdel-Meguid added.
However, the secretary-general of the Arab League stopped short of saying whether or not his organisation and the Arab summit would support Arafat if he were to accept the US proposals as offered: with no clear reference to the right of return for refugees to their homes and lands from which they were forced out in 1948, and an ambiguous reference to the limit of Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem and Al-Haram Al-Sharif.
"This is precisely where we differ with many Arab countries: they say we support Arafat's adherence to the fundamental Arab principles, but we don't know for a fact if Arafat reads the Arab fundamentals in the same way most Arab peoples do," commented a Syrian source, adding: "In any event, whatever is agreed upon by this follow-up committee is not going to be used as a point of reference by Arafat in his talks with either the Americans or the Israelis."
The "follow-up committee" is scheduled to hold two more regular meetings before the next Arab summit convenes in Amman in March.
"We hope that [before then] we will have received some of the financial assistance we were promised in the Cairo Arab summit. We have not received anything yet," Palestinian Minister of Planning Nabil Shaath said last week.
The Cairo Arab summit had promised two billion dollars for two funds to help the families of the martyrs of the Intifada and to give a push to the Palestinian economy, which has suffered greatly under the retaliatory measures adopted by Israel. The Palestinian Authority has asked for this money to be put in its accounts, but the Arab League, upon the request of most donor countries, adopted a mechanism that does not give the Palestinian Authority direct control over this money.
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