THE 19th Arab League summit that just concluded in Riyadh may be judged, in retrospect, as the point of time when we Arabs, as a political entity, acknowledged that 62 years was too long a period for our only pan-Arab body to play adolescent games. The description is not flattering. But it is accurate for a body whose responses to the numerous crises that the Arab people lived through since its formation in 1946 — from civil wars to occupation — have been nothing more than rhetoric and resolutions that nobody cared about.
But this summit, all agree, was different. The difference was in the air. It was business, driven by a sense of crisis that every attendee brought with him. King Abdullah, quoting the Qur’an, set the tone: “God does not change a people until they change what is in themselves.” Others responded, because he was articulating their and their peoples’ fears, frustrations and hopes. The message was: it is for us, Arabs, to heal our wounds. Nobody will do it for us. King Abdullah pulled no punches when he said, “The real blame is to be put on us Arab leaders. Our continuing differences and refusal to adopt the means of unity have made the Arab Ummah lose its trust in our credibility...” It is a frank admission so contrary to our time-honored political culture of blaming the other.
This willingness to take responsibility manifested itself in the summit’s dealing with all issues. Darfur was a good example. Sudan is set to be the theater for the next foreign intervention, because we Arabs failed to act when disputes over land rights turned into a racial war there. The Arab League should have stepped in to settle such a dispute in an Arab country where Muslims were killing Muslims. Instead, we looked the other way.
This has been the same case in Somalia. Mass butchery has gone on there for 16 years, and we have had nothing to say. The result is foreign powers occupying the land and enforcing their own brands of peace, tailored to their regional and global interests. Do we have grounds to object?
In Palestine, it is the same: a flood of words, no effective action. The first time we put anything on the table was when King Abdullah, then crown prince, presented his initiative at the Beirut summit. Since the proposals were just, they are now being recognized, in the words of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as “the basis” for the Middle East peace process. Now, even Washington and Tel Aviv have begun to see “positive points” in them. The lesson here is that nothing will happen unless we take a united stand.
As for Iraq, King Abdullah did unembellished truth a service when he called the presence of foreign troops there as “illegitimate occupation.” The bloodshed in Iraq, though it started with the invasion, is an Arab problem. The immediate test of the Arab League’s post-summit maturity would be its ability to save Iraq from the murderers who are drowning it in innocent Arab blood.
