Since its establishment in 1945, the Arab League has held more than 40 summit meetings. Of these, 27 have been ordinary and the rest emergency or extraordinary summits. In the latter category fall the conferences held before the first Arab summit of 1964, such as the meeting held in 1946 to discuss developments in Palestine and the Beirut conference of 1956 occasioned by the Tripartite Aggression on Egypt. A number of other meetings held after the first summit also enter into this category. They include the conference convened in Cairo in 1970 to consider the repercussions from the armed clashes between the Palestinian resistance and the Jordanian regime (the “Black September” events) and the conference convened in Riyadh in 1976 to consider the repercussions of the Lebanese Civil War. Then there was a train of emergency meetings that began after the first Fez Summit in 1981 failed to produce a consensus over the Fahd Initiative for a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. These meetings lasted until the Arab League Charter was amended in 2002 to provide for regularly held summit meetings. Analysis of these summit meetings reveals that in general Arab summits, whether ordinary or extraordinary, have convened at an average of at most one every two years. Ordinary summits have met on average once every three years and emergency summits once every five years. No Arab summits of any sort were held in 25 out of the Arab League's 70 years of existence. There have also been extensive intervals in which no summits were held. The longest was from 1947 to 1955 (nine years), the next longest from 1992 to 1995 (four years) and the next after that from 1997 to 1999 (three years). Some years have seen more than one summit. In 1964 there were two, one in Cairo in January and the second in Alexandria in September. The same applies to 1990, in which one summit convened in Baghdad in May and the second in Cairo in August. All the summits held during the long 18-year period from 1982 to 2000 were emergency summits. The convention of ordinary summits, which only began in 1964, ground to a halt in 1981 when the Fez Summit failed to find a unified Arab position on a solution to the conflict with Israel. Ordinary summits only resumed following the amendment of the Arab League Charter in 2000. Recently there has emerged the need for specialised summits to resolve issues of a technical nature. Two summits have been held so far to address economic, social and developmental issues. The first was in Kuwait in 2009, and the second in Riyadh in 2013. The Amman Summit in 1980 accorded particular attention to socioeconomic questions; however, that attention soon petered out and was only revived a few years ago. The spread of terrorism in the region during recent years has elicited calls to dedicate Arab summits to ideological and cultural issues. This suggestion has been gaining increasing support. A number of observations can be made based on the frequency and general nature of Arab summits. First, the idea of a summit meeting has not been able to acquire a systematic, institutionalised nature since the league's founding since most Arab leaders have preferred bilateral or limited multilateral consultations. They have never been enthusiastic about conferences held under the auspices of the Arab League because they believe that these work to aggravate disputes rather than to solve them. Many have also harboured suspicions that various parties in the Arab region or elsewhere have worked to channel them to the service of special agendas or interests. Arab governments did not commit to the principle of periodic summits until 2000. That commitment almost broke down following Morocco's refusal to host the 2016 Summit. There are no serious guarantees that the Arab countries will continue to respect the principle of periodicity in the future. Second, external factors have had a crucial impact on Arab summits in terms of their ability to convene and the efficacy of any decisions or resolutions they reach. The impact of these factors only receded with the adoption of the principle of periodicity in 2000. That said, the Arab countries have generally set aside their differences and embraced calls for a summit whenever any one of them has been threatened from abroad. The examples of this are too many to enumerate. Third, domestic crises in certain Arab states have had long-term impacts on the ability of Arab summits to convene and on their efficacy. Examples include the Black September events in Jordan that triggered the Cairo Summit in 1970 and the civil war in Lebanon that gave rise to the summit in Riyadh in 1976. The Arab Spring revolutions also generated circumstances that weakened or even paralysed joint Arab action and facilitated the penetration of foreign powers into the domestic affairs of the Arab states. Legal issues: It is worth noting that legal disputes erupted from the start on the status of Arab summits. Some held that they were meetings of the Arab League Council convened at the summit level. Others countered that they were separate diplomatic meetings independent from the league. This dispute was only resolved with the amendment of the League's Charter to establish summits as the highest authority in the organisational structure of the league. As most of the summits held before 2000 were emergency summits dedicated to discussing specific crises instead of following through the implementation of Arab League programmes, most resolutions addressed only the outward symptoms of the crisis that precipitated the summit meeting concerned. The agendas never extended to probing the sources of the crises and formulating remedies for their root causes. A survey of the history of Arab summits reveals that they have been held to discuss issues that have fallen into four categories. First, there have been questions related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The 1946 Arab Summit convened to address the question of Jewish immigration and the potential effects of the possible creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. After the creation of Israel, and after that state had embarked on a series of wars and armed engagements against neighbouring Arab states or with the resistance movements, numerous conferences were convened to respond to the new developments. Later, when certain Arab countries or organisations, such as Egypt, Jordan and the PLO, began to enter into separate peace agreements with Israel, summits were held to respond to the effects of those agreements. When sharp disputes over the question of who represents the Palestinian people are added to the issues addressed by Arab summits and summit resolutions, it can be seen that questions related to the Arab-Israeli conflict have dominated the activities and resolutions of the summits from the beginning and have meant that this conflict has made its presence felt at some level or other at every summit meeting. Second, there have been issues related to crises that have erupted between the Arab states and regional or international foreign powers. Among the many examples that could be cited here are the Tripartite Aggression against Egypt in 1956, the Iranian occupation of the Emirati islands in 1972, and the Iraq-Iran War from 1980 to 1988. This category also includes crises triggered by accusations against Iran for meddling in the domestic affairs of Arab states, notably Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Bahrain. Third, there have been inter-Arab conflicts. Some of these have escalated into armed clashes, such as the border dispute between Morocco and Algeria in the early 1960s, or the current dispute between these two countries over the demands of the Polisario organisation. Other examples are the fighting that erupted between the Jordanian regime and the Palestinian resistance in September 1970, the outbreaks of hostilities between North and South Yemen before and after unification, and the 15-year civil war in Yemen. Arab summits were convened especially or resolutions were adopted in regular summits to address some or all of these disputes and conflicts. Fourth, there have been questions related to Arab cooperation and integration in various domains, to reform of the Arab League, or to the development of institutions for joint Arab action. Arab summits have been convened or resolutions adopted at regularly scheduled summits to address such diverse matters. Most Arab summits have convened to address matters related to the Arab-Israeli conflict or to mechanisms for collective Arab action. However, these summits have succeeded neither in improving the management of the Arab-Israeli conflict nor in advancing Arab integration. It therefore seems clear that the regularity of Arab summit meetings is not in itself an answer to the challenges facing joint Arab action, which desperately needs some alternative formula to the Arab League and its current organisational structure. The writer is professor of political science at Cairo University.
