Unforgivable!

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There is a striking resemblance between the US vetoing the resolution before the Security Council condemning Israel's assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and the Tunisian decision to abandon the Arab summit. Notwithstanding the difference in intentions, both contribute to isolating the Palestinians and depriving them of the bare minimum of solidarity, whether on the part of the international community or the Arab world. The position of the Bush administration is neither strange nor new. What is unsettling, rather, is the failure of Arabs to integrate and confront the unparalleled challenges at hand.

Few commentators would have expected the summit to yield decisive results or extract the Arab political order from the black hole in which it has remained since Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Yet, whatever its pretext or justification, nothing will make the decision to ditch the summit acceptable. What otherwise is the point of dialogue and diplomacy, talk of a unified fate, common causes and an objective assessment of the dangers surrounding the Arab world? Postponing the summit can only exacerbate crises of confidence within Arab ranks.

Such crises are likely to give way to a corresponding series of popular protests as Arab peoples vent their discontent. Do not expect, following Tunis, people to rest content in their usual inert state, subject to what is happening around them. Governments will be held responsible for these failures and defeats. It is only to be expected, as a result, that oppositional movements, headed by Islamic fundamentalism, will gain further clout over the entire Arab political arena.

A closer look into the nature of political society today reveals that there are no ideological struggles going on -- not one of the struggles undertaken by the prevalent political or social forces in the region has any popular, ideological or economic import; nor do they have relevance to creed, understood in a precise sense. They are, at bottom, squabbles for power among those who contrive to deploy the historical or spiritual symbols of a legitimate struggle. And the failure of the Arab summit, combined with Washington's bias towards Israel, may well result in an upsurge of such squabbles, leading the region into further deterioration and chaos, whether politically or strategically related.

Some believe that the summit has resulted in the loss of little other than form, since the statements and recommendations issued by the summit would have remained, as always, nothing but words -- a waste of ink, paper and shelf space. Yet it is in form as much as content that the Arab world must measure up to present circumstances and act on them.