18 - 24 October 2001
Issue No.556
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 18 - 24 October 2001 Issue No.556 |
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A peaceful weapon
While seriously contemplating the enforcement of an economic boycott on Israel, Arab countries are still treading carefully. Dina Ezzat reports
An Arab economic boycott against Israel is not about to happen anytime soon, as suggested by the results of the first meeting in eight years of the Central Office for the Boycott (COB). Arab officials who gathered in Damascus late last week for the meeting failed to issue any hard-line recommendations.
Only three of the 22 member states of the Arab League absented themselves from the meeting -- Egypt and Jordan, due to their peace commitments with Israel, and Mauritania, which maintains close political and economic ties with Israel. Ambassador Said Kamal represented the Arab League in the four-day gathering that closed on Thursday.
The meeting, argued Ahmed Khazaa, general commissioner of the Damascus-based boycott office, sent a "political message to Israel and to the international community that the boycott is a peaceful resistance tool against aggression and that this resistance will be reactivated and its performance improved."
Arab diplomats speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly agreed. "When you think of it, this is the first time in eight years that all Arab countries, with the exception of three, actually came to the central office meetings," commented one Arab diplomat.
But were any substantial decisions taken? The COB recommended several realistic steps to the Arab League secretary-general to reactivate a boycott against Israel. The most significant of these is a proposal for the Gulf Cooperation Council to annul a decision adopted in the early 1990s, when Arab-Israeli peace seemed to be in the making, to remove a boycott on all non-Israeli companies that are fully or partially related to Israeli businesses. If turned into a resolution, this could mean serious losses to many international companies.
The league's secretary-general, however, is not obliged to make a decision on the suggestions before next March, when the next Arab summit convenes in Beirut. "The last Arab summit in Amman made a decision to re-invigorate the boycott against Israel and, technically speaking, it is the next summit that should make a decision on the recommendations," one Arab source said.
Informed sources tell the Weekly that diplomatic efforts are being exerted to encourage Egypt and Jordan to attend as observers at the next COB meeting, due in six months. According to one source, "If the approach at the meetings is reasonable and realistic, keeping in mind that Arabs resort to boycott as a peaceful weapon to achieve peace, perhaps these two countries could attend as observers next time the meeting convenes."
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