Arab League impotence continues & What a mess the Arab world is in
If such a message had been delivered to Johnson and if had believed that Arab leaders were united on the matter and serious, he would have replied to this effect: “Give me two or three weeks, perhaps a little longer, and I’ll do what you want.” (Johnson, who had given Israel the green light to attack Egypt and only Egypt, was fully aware that the conflict of June 1967 was a war of Israeli aggression not self-defense).
If the boot had been on the other foot – I mean if Zionism’s decision makers had been in the Arab position – they would have played the oil card.
Question: Why did Arab leaders, through the Arab League, not do so?
Again the long answer is in my book. The short version of it is in two parts.
The first is that when Israel closed the Palestine file with its victory on the battlefield in 1948, the Arab regimes secretly shared the same hope as Zionism and the major powers – that the file would remain closed. The Palestinians were supposed to accept their lot as the sacrificial lamb on the altar of political expediency. (Thereafter, and despite some stupid rhetoric to the contrary which gave apparent substance to Zionism’s propaganda lies, the Arab regimes never, ever, had any intention of fighting Israel to liberate Palestine. It was only in Zionist mythology and brainwashed Jewish minds everywhere that the Arab states were committed to driving Israel’s Jews into the sea).
The second is the nature of the deal the rulers of the oil-producing Arab states struck with America. In effect it boiled down to this. As long as the Arab regimes which mattered most guaranteed the flow of oil at prices America and the West were willing to pay (and spent billions buying American military hardware), America and the West would not challenge their authoritarian and repressive rule.
The conclusion invited is that corrupt and repressive Arab regimes betrayed their own masses as well as the Palestinians. (But why should I be so hard on Arab leaders? Isn’t that the way the world works? Could it not be said that governments almost everywhere, including and especially America, dance to the tune of wealthy elites and powerful vested interests of all kinds and are betraying the best interests of the vast majority of citizens?)
It was with all of the above (and much else) in my mind that I watched and listened live to the opening and closing sessions of the Arab League’s 25th Summit in Kuwait.
With one exception the speeches, poorly delivered, were the opposite of inspirational. Words for their own sake and not for real commitment. When I heard, “We congratulate our brothers in Egypt for what they have achieved”, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. What has been achieved in Egypt? Apart from the killing and arresting to put the Muslim Brotherhood out of business for the time being, the ground has been prepared for the coming to power of another tyrant who might well be more repressive than any of his predecessors. Congratulations for that?
There was much talk of the “phenomenon of terrorism” and the need to combat it. The more I thought about what I heard and the more I reflected on what is happening in the Arab world, the more it seemed to me that the Arab League’s definition of terrorism is any manifestation of people power, even peaceful manifestations, in support of change in the way Arabs are governed.
The exception was Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN peace mediator for Syria. He dared to say, “People are asking for change.” (I imagine that most Gulf Arab leaders present regarded that as a deeply subversive statement).
At the time of writing the divisions within the Arab League seem set to widen.
On 5 March, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from Doha because of Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Jazeera’s coverage of events in Egypt. Prince Saud al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s ailing foreign minister, apparently said that severance of ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, the closure of Al-Jazeera (in Egypt only?) and the expulsion of two U.S. think tanks – the Brookings Doha Center and the Rand Qatar Policy Institute – would be enough to prevent Qatar from “being punished”.
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