When the Arab League was established on 22 March 1945, the drafters of its charter did not include a provision stipulating at what level member states should represent themselves in the league's council, the highest body in the hierarchy of that regional organisation that was founded in order to strengthen inter-Arab relations to the highest possible degree and to help resolve disputes that might erupt between member states. Due to the lack of such a stipulation, it took over half a century before the member states could agree on an amendment to the charter obliging them to hold regular meetings at the summit level at least once a year. In 2000, the Arab states agreed on a ‘Special Annex', the first article of which states that the Arab League Council “shall meet at the following levels: a) The level of kings, presidents and emirs of the Arab states or persons to represent them at the summit level; b) The level of foreign ministers or persons representing them; and c) the level of permanent envoys.” The third article states that the council shall meet at the summit level on a regular basis in an ordinary session once a year in March. If necessary or in the event of new developments concerning the welfare of Arab national security, it may hold extraordinary summits upon the request of a member state or the secretary-general and the approval of two-thirds of the member states. Since 2000, the member states adhered to these provisions. Arab summits have been held regularly every year, apart from in 2011 due to the Arab Spring revolutions that toppled the heads of state of the ruling regimes in three Arab countries: Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. No one can dispute the fact that the periodic convention of the Arab Summit is an achievement that could help develop joint Arab action given the existence of the necessary political will. However, it is not sufficient, in and of itself, to achieve this purpose. Therefore, the periodicity of Arab summits has remained a fragile achievement and it is little wonder that it recently suffered a major setback. This year's ordinary summit was supposed to have been held in Morocco at its stipulated time in March 2016. Yet, only weeks before then, the Arab world was taken by surprise by Rabat's decision to back out of its obligation to host the summit. The Moroccan Foreign Ministry issued a statement justifying its decision as follows: “The Arab Summit cannot be an end in and of itself or be turned into a mere meeting occasion. There do not exist at the present time the objective circumstances to hold a successful Arab summit, capable of taking decisions commensurate to the situation and that respond to the aspirations of the Arab peoples. In the absence of important decisions or tangible initiatives that can be submitted to the attention of the leaders of Arab states, the summit will be merely an occasion to approve ordinary recommendations and to deliver speeches that give the false impression of unity and solidarity between the countries of the Arab world… The Arab world is passing through a fraught phase. Indeed, it is the hour of honesty and truth. The leaders of the Arab states cannot simply undertake, once again, a bitter diagnosis of the realities of the divisions and disputes that riddle the Arab world without presenting firm and resolute collective responses to address that situation, whether in Iraq, Yemen or Syria where the crises are growing increasingly complicated due to the many regional and international manoeuvrings and agendas. Nor can the leaders stand by, hands bound, in the face of the economic and social problems of the Arab peoples, or restrict themselves to the role of bystander helplessly observing the tragedies that strike the Arab citizen at his very core.” The Moroccan Foreign Ministry statement was both shocking and candid: shocking because it reflected a disregard for the principle of the regularity of Arab summits and a blatant refusal to abide by it, and candid because of its determination not to deceive the Arab public and to inform them frankly of the truth regarding the tragic conditions in the region, conditions that appear beyond the capacity of Arab summits to handle with the necessary competence. As such, the Moroccan Foreign Ministry statement sounded an alarm, warning that the Arab regional order is teetering, incapable of addressing its structural problems and in desperate need of a rescue operation and a comprehensive repair process. In fact, had Mauritania not stepped forward to host the 27th annual summit, Arab Summit meetings may have been indefinitely deferred and the cause of collective Arab action may have been cast back to square one. It is worth noting here that the problem of the lack of a provision in the Arab League Charter obliging member states to hold regularly scheduled summits would not have been solved had member states themselves not felt the need to meet at the summit level. That need was expressed on several occasions. The first Arab summit meeting was held in Inshas in 1946, at the request of the Egyptian king. It was an emergency summit to discuss the situation in Palestine as the result of the increasing waves of Jewish immigration. The next emergency summit was held in Beirut, in 1956, at the request of the Lebanese prime minister, in order to discuss the tripartite invasion of Egypt. However, attempts to institutionalise and regularise Arab Summit meetings only began to bear fruit in the mid-1960s. In 1964, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel-Nasser called for an Arab summit to respond to Israeli threats to divert the course of the Jordan River and Arab states responded to his call. What was new, this time, was that this summit — for the first time since the founding of the Arab League — adopted a resolution calling for Arab summits to be held at least once a year. Although the Arab states did not strictly implement that resolution, the Arab League began to date its ordinary sessions from that summit in Cairo which, in the Arab League literature, is referred to as ‘the first Arab Summit'. Between that first Arab Summit in Cairo in 1964 and the recent 27th summit in Nouakchott, summits have been held in most Arab capitals, but most of them have been emergency or extraordinary summits. It is impossible to deny that in volunteering to host the last summit at the last minute, Nouakchott performed a noble act for which it merits great credit, as it rescued the principle of regularly held Arab summits. However, the response on the part of other member states was not commensurate to that nobleness and spoke of those states' interest in merely keeping up the appearance of collective action as opposed to the substance. Accordingly, the 27th summit in Nouakchott can hardly be taken as evidence of a return of vitality to the Arab regional order. In fact, the opposite is probably the case. Only a handful of Arab heads of state showed up at that summit and most were from the more marginal states. As a result, the summit looked more like an Arab foreign ministers' convention and this was reduced to a day instead of two, giving the impression that the participants were in a rush and eager to get some routine business or formalities over with. So, Arab leaders were unable to rise to the demands of the moment, which was reflected, very clearly, in the closing statement produced by this summit. Although the meeting in Nouakchott had been billed as the ‘summit of hope', it was unable to take a single step capable of reviving some hope among the Arab peoples in the possibility of a better future. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that, after that summit, the Arab peoples emerged more depressed and more lost than ever. The closing statement of the Nouakchott summit contained no agreement on any effective mechanism for resolving the crises and civil wars raging in Syria, Libya, Yemen and Iraq. It merely appealed to all parties concerned to sustain efforts to reach peaceful solutions to those crises. On the Palestinian cause, which the official rhetoric of all Arab states still emphasise as the Arabs' first and central cause, the Nouakchott Summit was not even in a condition to confirm its commitment to the Arab peace initiative adopted in Beirut in 2002. It offered nothing to that cause but its desire to express its welcome of the French initiative. What was particularly strange is that the statement made no reference or allusion to the ‘Joint Arab Force' that Egypt had proposed and that was approved in principle in the Sharm El-Sheikh Summit last year. When the Arab League secretary-general was asked why no mention had been made of that force in the closing session, he took refuge in the confidentiality of some resolutions. This can only mean one thing: recourse to deception as a means to cover up failure. The league, in the past, failed to create an Arab Court of Justice, an Arab Security Council and an Arab Common Market and, now it looks like it will fail to create a Joint Arab Force. This is why we cannot rule out the possibility that the Nouakchott Summit will be the last Arab summit. The writer is professor of political science at Cairo University.
