The first meeting of the Arab League in three
years took place on November 1 and 2.
The venue was Algeria, chosen to commemorate its War of Independence
against France, which began on November 1, 1954.
On this
occasion, although all 22 member nations with the exception of Syria were
represented, the usual turnout of kings, sheiks, emirs and presidents was far
from complete. One long-time absentee
was Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
Syria’s suspension from the League, imposed in 2011 for the regime’s
brutality against Arab Spring activists, was not lifted despite the best
efforts of Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune. He had attempted earlier in the year to
persuade other Arab states to readmit Syria, but major Arab states, including
Saudi Arabia and Qatar, support Sunni Muslim rebels fighting al-Assad.
Morocco’s King Mohammed
VI was not present. Algeria
and Morocco are currently at daggers drawn over a variety of issues, not least
Morocco’s claims on Western Sahara.
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman (MBS) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) leader, Mohammed bin Zayed,
both decided not to attend. Their
absence, and indeed that of the King of Morocco, forced the attention of
members and observers to the great elephant squatting in the room throughout
the conference - the Abraham Accords, a phenomenon beyond the bounds of belief
at the last Arab League summit in 2019.
It
was on September 15, 2020 that the Abraham Accords were signed in a ceremony
hosted by the US in the White House. As part of the agreements, both the
UAE and Bahrain recognized Israel's sovereignty, opening the way for establishing
full diplomatic relations followed by highly lucrative trade, economic and
hi-tech deals. Since then, Morocco and
Sudan have signed up to the Accords, while other Arab states, including Saudi
Arabia, Oman and Qatar have gone a long way toward normalizing business and
security relations with Israel.
In signing the Accords,
none of the four Arab states renounced their support for Palestinian
aspirations. All, though, had determined
that a settlement of the Israel-Palestinian issue was not an essential precursor
to adopting a pragmatic view of the benefits to be derived from cooperating
with Israel across a whole variety of fields – not least in opposing the
ambitions of Iran to dominate the region.
This was not the opinion
of much of the membership of the Arab League, and certainly not that of its
host, Algeria’s President Tebboune. In
his opening remarks Tebboune asserted: “Our main and first cause, the mother of
all causes, the Palestinian issue, will be at the heart of our concerns and our
main priority”. In the event, though, ways
of advancing the Palestinian cause were not discussed, nor did members address the
chasm separating Arab states over normalization with Israel. The conference maintained a precarious
balance by simply ignoring the difficult issues, and issued a final declaration
that confined itself to reiterating the League’s full support for the
establishment of an independent state of Palestine within what it termed “the
1967 borders” (although borders they never were, as the 1949 Israel-Jordan Armistice
Agreement made very clear).
In accordance with its
long-established practice, the League sidestepped the glaring anomaly between
supporting a two-state solution and supporting the “Palestinian cause”. The “cause” is to establish a sovereign
Palestine “from the river to the sea”; the two-state solution requires the
recognition of a sovereign Israel on land which the cause regards as
Palestinian. Any Palestinian leader who
signed up to a two-state solution would be regarded as a traitor to the
Palestinian cause.
Palestinian aspirations and the Abraham Accords were not the only delicate issues that the League failed to confront head-on. Another was the relationship between the Arab world and Russia in view of the invasion of Ukraine. The League meeting took place against the backdrop of rising inflation, food and energy shortages, drought and the soaring cost of living across the Middle East and Africa. Comment during the conference did not move far beyond Tunisian President Kais Saied’s remarks in his opening address. The war in Ukraine, he said, "has exacerbated the food and energy security crisis." Several Arab countries are heavily dependent on Ukrainian and Russian wheat exports, and members concentrated on how to relieve the shortages.
As for supporting the
Ukrainians, the Arab world has been notably deficient. The West quickly united
against Russia after it invaded Ukraine,
but many in the Arab world hesitated. The first Security Council resolution
against the invasion of Ukraine was proposed on February 25, and the UAE, a key
US ally, abstained. On February 28,
Egypt called for a meeting of the Arab League to discuss the situation in
Ukraine. A statement issued after the meeting failed to condemn Russia’s
invasion, and offered little support to the Ukrainians.
Arab states clearly wanted
to keep their options open and avoid alienating Moscow if at all possible. That
soon changed. It was made clear to the Arab states that if they wanted to maintain
their close ties with the West, neutrality was not acceptable where Russia’s
invasion is concerned. So when the UN
General Assembly resolution condemning Russia passed overwhelmingly on March 2, its backers included the UAE,
as well as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Clearly, Western – particularly American – pressure
had succeeded.
Even so, during the
conference Arab leaders simply ignored the rights and wrongs of Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine. They chose not to discuss, let alone support, Ukraine in
its fight against its Russian invaders. The final declaration made no mention
of the war, nor has any Arab country up to now offered military aid to the
Ukrainians.
The Arab League has
elevated equivocation to a fine art.
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