Arab influence on developments in their region is close to insignificant. Dina Ezzat reads with dismay The declining political weight of the Arab world in its entirety is not breaking news by any standard. The stories of conflict, failure and ineptness assembled in the press this week from across the Arab world are for the most part old news -- if not very old -- such as the continued Israeli occupation of Arab territories. What is surprising this week, however, is that Arab countries are all but entirely absent from having a say (forget about decision) in the development of crucial regional affairs despite the fact that 22 out of the 25 countries of the Middle East are Arab. As such it was non-Arab Iran, Turkey and Israel that are currently in charge of deciding the tempo and direction of action in the Middle East. With the exception of the attacks launched in Iraq against American troops, and a few threats of attacks against other Middle East-based US facilities including those in Algeria, it was very difficult to spot any serious Arab action in Arab-Israeli conflict frontiers, the Iran-Iraq-Turkey triangle, the Gulf region (which has six Arab Gulf states with strategic ties with the US), North Africa and the Horn of Africa (the crucial backyard of Egypt). So while the Shanghai Organisation strictly opposed any US military attacks against Iran, the Arabs, as noted on Friday by Raghda Durgham, the perceptive diplomatic correspondent and analyst of the London-based daily Al-Hayat, were just about looking out of the window in some other direction. And as Durgham stressed, while Iran was playing for time to influence the large Shia constituencies in many of the Arab Gulf countries to lobby against any potential assistance by their governments to a US strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, "Arab leaders, especially of countries that are immediate neighbours to Iran, have not yet contemplated wise and profound strategies for their potential approach on the Iranian nuclear and regional strategies" or for that matter with regards to any possible Iranian-Western confrontation. This poor Arab performance, Durgham and other commentators noted with dismay, was in stark contrast to the active involvement of many regional and international parties in the development of the Washington-Tehran give-and-take. Moreover, as Tel Aviv and Washington were discussing the fate of the Palestinian Hamas government, as Tel Aviv and Ankara were debating the destiny of a joint water resources project that could undermine the rights of Syria and Iraq, and as the US and France resumed their arm twisting of Damascus, Arab capitals seemed numb to any coherent reaction. Worse, next to stories on the escalating Israeli aggression against Palestinians and threats of drawing of unilateral Israeli borders, the Arab press carried statements by Kurdish leader Massoud Barazani arguing there was nothing wrong with pursuing relations with Israel. Meanwhile, as prominent Egyptian commentator on African affairs Helmi Chaarawi noted in the daily Al-Ittihad of the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, while many non-Arab parties were closely debating potential intervention in the renewed civil war in Somalia, Arabs were absent from the scene of action. "The Arab League is demanded to promptly call for a new accord conference on Somalia to prevent a new wave of illicit foreign intervention," Chaarawi pleaded. The Arab League was not short of statements on developments across the region. In the papers every day, there was a statement or other from the organisation speaking against a military approach in handling the Iranian nuclear file, calling for accord in Somalia, Sudan and Iraq, and promoting friendly relations among all Arab countries, not least of which between Syria and Lebanon. However, the daily Qatari Al-Sharq asked Hesham Youssef, chief of the cabinet of the Arab League: what is it specifically that the Arab League is actually doing on the ground on any of the pressing regional matters that keep evolving from the Horn of Africa to the north of Africa? And why not dismantle the Arab League if Arab countries have failed to get the organisation to address, not to mention solve, basic regional problems? Youssef argued, "There are so many disappointments, shortcomings and failures that merit realistic analysis and treatment . " However, he added, the way forward -- or rather the way out -- is to get the Arab League to press upon Arab countries to get closer to discuss their regional concerns before things take yet a new turn for the worse. What is perhaps most shocking is that such total Arab political ineptitude comes at a time when US policies on the Middle East are in "unprecedented weak shape" as qualified by Youssef Al-Dini in an opinion piece run by the London-based daily Asharq Al-Awsat on Saturday, and at a time of declining US interest in the Middle East as Mohamed Salah, Al-Hayat 's Cairo bureau chief observed, also on Saturday, in his news analysis, "The end of the broader Middle East". Sadly enough, and maybe significantly enough, this week the Arab press remembered the nakba or calamity of 1948, the scars of which are visible to this day in the Arab world.
