4 -10 April 2002
Issue No.580
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 4 -10 April 2002 Issue No.580 |
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This way and that
Gamil Mattar* tries to decipher conflicting signals
The plan was to hold regular summits, rotating the venue among Arab League members, and that is what happened, in a sense. The summit was held at its scheduled time, but not where it was originally meant to take place. The UAE ceded its turn to Beirut, citing such reasons as the need to pay tribute to Lebanon, which had not had the opportunity to host an Arab summit for nearly half a decade, and the only Arab nation to have used armed resistance successfully in compelling Israeli occupation forces to withdraw from its territory.
The recent summit, then, was destined to be stamped by special circumstances. Preparations for it got underway amid the general anxiety that has pervaded the region since 11 September. In the wake of those events, the US declared war on terrorism and on all those who harbour or finance terrorists, have not declared terrorism their number one enemy or dare to sympathise with its goals, and encourage religious extremism. Suddenly, many Arabs and some Arab governments and organisations found themselves facing one or more of these charges, and thus became potential targets. The sword still hovers and panic prevails.
A more peculiar, indeed, extraordinary, circumstance of the Beirut summit was that the US actually encouraged the Arabs to hold it. We all know that the US uses appropriate means when intervening in Arab summits, as it undoubtedly does in meetings held in Europe or Africa. Superpowers do not want to deal with resolutions that could be detrimental to their interests, and so they quietly go about using their good offices among the friendly nations participating in these events to forestall any such unpleasantness.
The days preceding the Beirut conference were markedly different in this respect. US meddling was an open secret, as assorted news agencies broadcast reports of US envoys touring the capitals of those Arab nations involved in the preparations. More unusual, indeed, were reports that the envoys had sought to soothe Arab tensions and exerted a measure of pressure on Israel to ease its assault against the Palestinians in the final hours before the conference. In short, Cairo, Beirut, Amman, Riyadh and the assorted Gulf capitals knew that Washington wanted the summit to go ahead, with as few hindrances as possible to its predetermined objective: adoption of the Saudi peace initiative with no major amendments.
When such special circumstances prevail, a summit is bound to be bizarre; and when the unique atmosphere enveloping Beirut became a little too strange for comfort, participants began to worry. They began making last-minute excuses, all the more unconvincing in that they seemed entirely unjustified. Thus did the summit, which many Arab and foreign powers hoped would be well attended, barely achieve a quorum. The question echoed throughout the Arab world: How is the summit supposed to reach a consensus on the main item facing it now that the participants -- who had all declared their positions beforehand -- have decided to stay home? The answer to that will have to be postponed, along with the answers to the many other questions raised by the actions of the participating countries and their leaders, not to mention the host country and its senior officials.
An inordinate number of unthinkable factors converged upon this summit. Washington was pushing for it. The participants supported the proposal that had prompted Washington's support. Israel, for a few hours, seemed prepared to respect the US's wishes, and Sharon even offered to meet and talk with Arab leaders. In other words, Israel made a demonstration of respect, albeit with a smirk, for the summit whose success Arab "realists" were doing cartwheels to ensure. This was the moment for the Arabs unanimously to iterate their desire to live in peace with Israel, if Israel would only withdraw to the pre-June 1967 borders.
For the summit to succeed, the Saudi proposal would have had to remain that vague. The summit was not to broach the details that concern negotiators. For that price, the Arab offer was packaged for US acceptance, and Washington seemed ready to market it to Jews in the US and then in Israel. At least, many observers believed that the summit would ratify this new and realistic step without further ado. Then came the shocked realisation that the Beirut summit was as subject to conflict as many of its predecessors. Suddenly, the summit that seemed to contain all the ingredients necessary to satisfy Washington, the summit all the realists and pragmatists in the Arab world were set to promote, degenerated into two camps: one loyal to the US's goals, the other supporting various other ends, with no possible meeting point between.
The Palestinian right to return, for instance, has been amputated of much of its legal, humanitarian and historical substance. Oddly, many Arabs have taken part in this surgical intervention for various reasons. The most prominent of these reasons has been "realism;" the most humane, the question of where the Israelis (and especially imported Russian and Ukrainian non-Jews) will go if all the Palestinians return to their homes and their land.
At any rate, the summit could not have worded its resolution on the right of return more inappropriately. It rejected "all forms of naturalisation that conflict with the particular circumstances of the Arab countries concerned." The reference here was clearly to Lebanon. It has been suggested, perhaps correctly, that the summit members wanted to compensate Lebanon in some manner for the Arab aid that never reached it, despite previous summit resolutions promising this aid. Whatever the case, this phrase was an insult to the conference and the higher purpose the US and the new Arab realists hoped to achieve. It summed up collective disregard for one of the most fundamental Palestinian rights -- that of return -- in order to placate Israel.
One participant confided that he felt as though the summit had passed two separate resolutions, or as though two separate conferences had been held, geared toward two different audiences. The closing statement, he observed, was as hard-line as the Beirut declaration was moderate. True, the texts were so phrased that neither nullified the other. The contrast merits consideration in a broader context, however. The massive cancellations (all for feeble pretexts), the initial refusal to air Arafat's address from Ramallah, the demonstrations that erupted in Arab capitals hours before the summit was due to convene (or that Arab governments authorised after having prohibited such demonstrations throughout most of the Intifada), and the fiery harangues delivered by several of the summit's participants: these are but some of the manifestations of the momentous confusion, if not pure chaos, that prevailed.
In their closing statement, the heads of state emphasised the need to differentiate between terrorism and a people's legitimate right to resist foreign occupation and to take up arms in self- defence. They affirmed the right of the Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian people to resist Israeli occupation and aggression, and condemned attempts to undermine this right. They condemned the state terrorism perpetrated by Israel and declared that including legitimate Arab resistance in the new definition of terrorism would constitute the "unlawful obfuscation of Israeli occupation and state terrorism." The leaders meeting in Beirut further declared that any attempt to use the fight against terrorism as a pretext for an attack on any Arab country would constitute "an assault on the security and stability of the region."
These statements are in conflict with Washington's position. In fact, they have quite a defiant ring. Do these pronouncements indicate that the Arabs can handle an extremely precarious regional and international situation? Or are they the contortions of a prey caught in a trap?
* The writer is director of the Arab Centre for Research and Futuristic Research.
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