Arab leaders are scheduled to head to Tunisia next week to attend the Arab League (AL) summit. Slated for 31 March, the summit is being held after US President Donald Trump officially recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, sparking anger across the region. Tarek Fahmi, head of the Israeli Research Unit at the National Centre for Middle East Studies, says Arab countries must arrive in Tunisia with a clear action plan and “present two options to the world: a threat to withdraw the Arab initiative, and an alternative way to resolve the issue if we do”. Fahmi also believes Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri's trip to the US — he left for Washington on Monday — offers an opportunity to understand more of Washington's so-called deal of the century and how the Trump administration squares this with its position on the Golan Heights. A number of Arab countries, Egypt among them, have expressed their firm rejection of the US decision to recognise Israel's sovereignty over the Golan. Egypt's Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Friday stressing the Golan is occupied Arab territory and reiterating UN Security Council Resolution 497 of 1981 which declared the Israeli Golan Heights Law, the legislation Israel passed to effectively annex the Golan Heights “null and void and without international legal effect”. Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Abul-Gheit condemned Trump's recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory on Monday, saying the decision does not change the status of the Golan. Rakha Hassan, a member of the Foreign Ministry's Council for Foreign Affairs, hopes the Arab League will take decisive action during the summit but worries about the level of representation planned for Tunisia. “Unless Arab leaders form a committee to review their relations with the US any decision taken is unlikely to go beyond denunciation of the US announcement,” he said. According to Hassan, leaders may adopt measures on the inter-Arab level such as readmitting Syria to the League, or in collaboration with other powers like Europe, Russia or China that also oppose the US decision. In a trilateral meeting held this week in Cairo President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, King Abdullah II of Jordan and Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi expressed hope that the summit in Tunisia will lead to Arab solidarity being restored and enhance joint action within the framework of the Arab League. Although the joint communiqué issued after the trilateral meeting did not directly address the Golan issue the three leaders stressed their determination to cooperate with other Arab countries to restore regional stability and find solutions to the crises affecting Arab countries. They expressed their commitment to a just settlement of the Palestinian issue, including a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, in compliance with international laws and relevant UN resolutions. Late last week Trump declared it was time “to fully recognise Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights”, claiming the area was of critical strategic and security importance to Israel. On Monday, during Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington, Trump signed a proclamation officially recognising the Golan as Israeli territory. Hassan attributes the timing of the dramatic shift in US policy to several factors, among them Trump's currying of extreme right support for his re-election. Trump was also keen to boost Netanyahu's chances in next month's Israeli elections. “The Arab world is engrossed in internal problems, civil wars and inter-Arab conflicts, and traditionally pivotal causes have become marginal. The Palestinian cause has become less important to the Gulf states which now consider Iran, rather than Israel, as enemy number one,” says Hassan. Israel occupied the Golan Heights during the 1967 War and annexed them in 1981, a move that the international community has steadfastly refused to recognise. This week's US recognition of Golan as Israeli territory is intended to send a number of messages to the region, argues Fahmi. “Trump is telling the region that the US will not halt its support for Israel, whether Netanyahu wins or loses, and that he wants to finalise the so-called deal of the century and impose a settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in a way that bypasses the Palestinians' right to an independent state.” Syria described Trump's proclamation as a “blatant attack” on its sovereignty and territorial integrity. In the Golan itself Druze Arabs also rejected the move while Israeli settlers welcomed it. UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Monday that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had stressed there was no change to the status of Golan. “The UN's policy on Golan is reflected in the relevant resolutions of the Security Council and that policy has not changed,” Dujarric said. Turkey denounced the US recognition as unacceptable. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ankara would oppose the move at the UN while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the decision had taken the region “to the brink of a new crisis” and Ankara would never allow the legitimisation of the occupation of the Golan Heights. Iran characterised the announcement as “illegal and unacceptable”. “The personal decisions of Trump... will lead to a crisis in the region,” said Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman. Russia pointed out that any change in the status of the Golan Heights directly violated UN resolutions. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused Trump of stoking an already tense situation in the Middle East. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) said the move was evidence of Washington's unremitting bias though no member states have yet made unilateral announcements. The announcement was received with similar indignation by the EU, France and Germany. In December 2017 Trump sparked a similar international outcry when he recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, paving the way for the US Embassy to move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It is obvious that Trump is taking a series of unilateral steps, says Fahmi. “He started with Jerusalem and met with muted opposition. Now he is moving to the Golan file.” Fahmi now expects Israel to begin building new settlements in the Golan, declare both Jerusalem and the Golan Heights as non-negotiable areas, and step-up settlement construction in the West Bank. “These steps clearly undermine the prospects for the White House's deal of the century, prepared by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. They can also be seen as paving the way for approval of Israeli rule of the West Bank. Whatever deal is going to be announced will then consist of no more than a list of security arrangements. There will be no land for peace.”
