Are Arab countries adapting to new regional dynamics? Yes and no, writes Dina Ezzat Two main Arab issues are high on the agenda of the international community and the UN Security Council: the Arab-Israeli conflict and the situation in Darfur. During their extraordinary meeting Sunday, and through consequent consultations this week, Arab countries displayed determination to pursue a plan adopted a few weeks ago to present the Security Council with an Arab vision on how to reach a fair, negotiated settlement to the entire Arab-Israeli conflict. "We are not going to the Security Council to get yet another [unimplemented] resolution on the Arab-Israeli conflict," said Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa. He added, "nor are we going there in the naïve thought that our mission is easy or can necessarily be accomplished." According to Moussa and several Arab foreign ministers, the main objective of the new Arab attempt to directly engage the UN Security Council is to get the world to accept that Arabs are no longer prepared to play the game of endless negotiations with Israel through dishonest brokers. Speaking during the opening session of an extraordinary ministerial meeting that convened in the Cairo headquarters of the Arab League, several ministers seemed keen to underline that after having dedicated, since the Madrid Peace Conference, over a decade to negotiations based on ever changing -- some suggest, ever worsening -- parameters, Arabs need to forge a new dynamic if a fair settlement to the conflict with Israel is to be achieved. The new ground rules that Arabs seem set to play by will not exclude traditional, Middle East-based, direct talks with Israel. It will not enforce unity on the Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese tracks of peace negotiations. Nor will it exclude the obvious and unavoidable leading role of the United States. It should, nonetheless, as some informed diplomats have suggested, break the monopoly of the US over the brokering of peace talks after American policy has proven antithetical to peace in the Middle East. The objective is to have the entire UN Security Council, especially all permanent members, on board and working towards a resolution of the Middle East file. Over the past few weeks, several Arab capitals have been working hard at drafting a vision for action. This vision is essentially based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338. It also dwells on the concept of land for peace and the Arab peace initiative that upon its adoption at the Arab summit in Beirut in 2002 offered Israel an unprecedented opportunity to enjoy normal relations with all 22 members of the Arab League in return for returning Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese territories it annexed during the 1967 War and agreeing to a negotiated settlement for millions of Palestinian refugees. As such, this vision offers fairer terms than those under which Palestinians have negotiated with Israel during the past few years. Some Palestinian officials complain that the Palestinian Authority was negotiating for whatever it could get rather than what it should legitimately get. This, they say, is about to change when a collective Arab delegation, which will likely include Moussa, Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad Ben Jassim, who currently holds a seat in the Security Council, and UAE Foreign Minister Mohamed Ben Zayed, arrives in New York towards the end of next month or early October to address a special session of the Security Council which Arabs are asking to have convened at a ministerial level. Speaking to the press during their participation in the extraordinary meeting in Cairo Sunday, Moussa, Jassim and Zayed all affirmed their confidence that the "ideas" to be proposed by the Arab delegation to the international community will not fall on deaf ears, even if they may not be entirely accepted. The three senior Arab diplomats spoke on the basis of their experience in New York earlier this month when they managed to dilute, if not wholly, the pro-Israeli bias in UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which set the framework of the shaky ceasefire presently holding between Israel and Hizbullah. Consolidating this fragile ceasefire and returning Shebaa Farms from Israeli occupation to Lebanese sovereignty are items on the agenda that Arabs are currently drafting. "We are not all going to be talking before the UN Security Council to argue our case, although most of us will be there to take part in the UN General Assembly meeting. Only the delegated few will do so," said Mohamed Ben Issa, foreign minister of Morocco. "Arabs will be talking to the world in one voice -- something that they have only recently started to do," he added. A similar approach was proposed during the Cairo ministerial meeting by Qatar's foreign minister on resolving the dispute between the UN and the government of Sudan on the issue of Darfur. The UN wishes to send international troops to Darfur, in west Sudan, to monitor the commitment of the Khartoum government and armed rebels to end attacks on civilians. The Sudanese government continues to oppose the presence of international forces in Darfur. The Qatari proposal was well received by the foreign minister of Sudan and others. "We can do such things. I have little faith in the neutrality of the UN Security Council but this seems to be something that we have to work on and work on together in a united way," commented Libyan Foreign Minister Abdul-Rahman Shalqam. It is a big question, however, whether or not this unified Arab façade can hold beyond the end of hostilities in Lebanon. Some Arab diplomats suggest that it will be difficult to get all Arab countries to actually agree on a unified working paper that the Arab League could propose to the Security Council on either the Arab-Israeli conflict or any other issue of regional contention. For some, the seeming Arab composure of the past few weeks was only a result of the devastation that Israel inflicted upon Lebanon during the 34-day war and the damage that the image of many Arab regimes sustained as a result of their failure to reach out to the Lebanese people and for their criticism of Hizbullah's political and military calculations. The same diplomats refer to the Cairo ministerial meeting Sunday to argue their case. Many referred to an encounter had between Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit and the Syrian head of delegation, Permanent Representative Ahmed Youssef, over how to qualify the Lebanese resistance in a resolution that Arab foreign ministers adopted to declare continued solidarity with Lebanon and commitment to reconstruction efforts. Described by many as an unnecessary argument over whether or not to deem the Lebanese resistance as "chivalrous", the encounter was not so much prompted by the wish of Syria to bestow honour on the resistance and Egyptian reluctance to follow suit. Quite to the contrary, some of diplomats say, Egypt was happy to give the Lebanese resistance this symbolic qualification. Rather, it was the tone in which Youssef spoke that prompted Abul-Gheit to remind all participants that behind Egypt was decades of exceptional bravery in war and peace to retain all its sovereign territories. The episode is only an indication of the level of unease between Cairo and Damascus following last week's speech by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad that included a stinging attack on all Arab countries that did not take the side of Hizbullah in the early moments of Israel's war on Lebanon. Al-Assad's speech did not upset Cairo exclusively. Many Arab capitals, not least of which Riyadh, were angered by this speech. The low level of representation of the Syrian delegation, many diplomats agree, was only an attempt by the Syrian foreign minister to avoid a volley of criticism that he anticipated over his president's statements. Arab diplomats affirmed that during a round of talks with Arab leaders, including President Hosni Mubarak, the emir of Qatar attempted to contain anger over the speech. Some diplomats expected a successful outcome to this mediation. Many referred to statements made earlier in the week by President Mubarak to affirm the need to maintain the maximum level possible of Arab unity and others made later in the week by Mubarak's spokesman Suleiman Awad to affirm the president's determination "to rise above trivial issues" as clear indication that Qatari efforts paid off. But the question remains whether Egypt has managed to narrow the gap within the Gulf Cooperation Council -- with Qatar on the one hand and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait on the other -- over the approach towards Iran. The second grouping perceives -- perhaps through an American lens -- Iran as a political threat, whether through its influence over Shia minorities in concerned countries or its nuclear programme that some officials in Riyadh and Kuwait City perceive as a bigger threat than an unaccounted Israeli nuclear military arsenal. This week, Mubarak held consecutive talks with Saudi, Kuwaiti and Qatari officials. According to Awad, the Iran file was on the table. As to the possibility of a full Arab summit -- proposed separately by Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia -- there is no indication that it will convene any time soon. There is not even indication that a limited summit for the countries directly involved in or concerned with the Arab-Israeli conflict is in the pipeline before the Arab delegation heads to New York with its vision for peace. Meanwhile, many of the old divisive issues -- economic as well as political -- remain between Arab states. Even on the strategic front, that the head of the Palestinian delegation, Farouk Qadoumi, entered into a discussion -- or felt obliged to -- Sunday with some participating ministers in Cairo over the qualification of the peace process -- dead, aborted or expired? -- may appear unsettling to some. It would seem that some work remains to be done before a credible joint "vision for action" is within reach.
