In the Arab press, Dina Ezzat found few signs that the Tunis summit was to anyone's liking It comes as no surprise that the Arab press this week dedicated most of its attention to the Arab summit that convened in Tunis. And it was also no surprise that for the most part the press, especially on the opinion pages, had few kind words for this, the highest Arab congregation. The negative reaction was in the air even before Tunisian President Zein Al-Abdine Bin Ali declared the summit open on Saturday morning at the Palace of Conferences in Tunis. "The summit of incompetence and humiliation" was the headline of an article published in the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi on Saturday morning. The author of the article was Editor-in-Chief Abdel-Bari Attwan who rarely has anything positive to say about Arab governments. As always, Attwan accused Arab leaders of failing to live up to the expectations of Arab people or even to seriously deal with the daunting challenges facing the Arab world in Palestine, Iraq and Syria. Attwan also accused Arab leaders of stalling on reform and prejudged the summit as a failure even before it started. "It is obvious that the Arab official regime as presented in the Arab summit does not want to show any competence in handling any of the serious challenges ahead of it," Attwan said. According to Attwan, this incompetence is not the outcome of "a real inability" on the part of Arab governments but because Arab governments are "quite comfortable to hide behind their alleged inability to act. For them, this is a good pretext to maintain inaction." Echoing the voice of the Arab man on the street, Attwan predicted, "At the end, the summit will affirm the state of [official] Arab incompetence. It will offer Sharon and Bush more concessions and it will offer nothing to the Arab street. This is why nobody in the Arab street cares about this summit whatsoever." Those who describe Attwan as one of the harshest critics of Arab regimes must have given an honourable mention to Maamoun Fendi for his article on the opinion pages of the London-based, Saudi-run Asharq Al-Awsat on Monday morning. Fendi qualified the summit as more of a "bottom rung than high-level event". For Fendi, a keen advocate of closer Arab-Israeli and Arab-American ties, there was nothing in the summit that made sense. The agenda was pointless, the performance of Arab officials below average and proposals for Arab League reform as presented by its Secretary-General Amr Moussa were "void of taste and flavour". Moussa's nine proposals to reform the League, including the establishment of an Arab Parliament, Security Council, Court of Justice and joint economic system, "read like a menu in a Chinese restaurant... too many items that, in the end, cannot satisfy the hungry", wrote Fendi. Unsatisfactory was also how Rozana Boumoncif described the final communiqué of the Arab summit. In her article in the Lebanese daily An-Nahar on Monday, Boumoncif argued that the communiqué beat around the bush and failed to demonstrate commitment. The one thing that the Tunis communiqué was clear about, Boumoncif conceded, was the messages of moderation sent to the US. Boumoncif could not have missed that while the final communiqué, and for that matter the resolutions of the Arab summit, clearly refer to the US when requesting closer communication and coordination with the Arab countries on Middle East issues, the summit failed to identify the US by name when it addressed its practices, be it in relation to the sanctions it recently imposed on Syria or the abuse and torture US soldiers had inflicted upon Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib prison. According to Boumoncif, the Tunis summit like every summit before it, is more of an event for the West than for the Arabs. "The Arab summit gets hardly any attention from the Arab street [since it does not really address its interests] but it gets considerable attention in the West since it gives Western countries the guidelines of Arab foreign policy," Boumoncif wrote. The failure of the Arab summit to take adequate -- not to mention firm -- stances on the atrocities committed by Israeli and American troops in Palestine and Iraq is something that many Arab commentators addressed in their press this week. In the daily Al-Bayan of the United Arab Emirates, the President of the Egyptian Press Syndicate Galal Aref argued that it was this systematic failure on the part of Arab governments to offer the proper reply when Arab peoples are subjected to humiliation that has caused a state of public apathy. "If I was setting the agenda of the Arab summit, I would have certainly included as the first article the following question: Why have the Arab masses refrained from demonstrating against the unprecedented atrocities that we have recently been watching in Palestine and Iraq?" However, in his article, "The sound of silence" Aref warns Arab governments against being misled. Current apathy, he said, is not an indication that the Arab masses are about to give in to the humiliation they are being subjected to. This silence will not last for long, Aref argued. And when the Arab street breaks its silence, he predicted, it will mean it is time for massive changes to come into effect. "The sound of silence of the Arab street should be heard [by Arab governments].... before it is too late," Aref concluded. An exception to this mood of dissatisfaction could be depicted in the Tunisian press. Typical of the press of the country that hosts the summit, the Tunisian press was heralding all sorts of feel-good news. The headlines, the reporting and the opinion pieces in the heavily state- controlled Tunisian press was all rosy. A good example of what the Tunisian press said this week about the Arab summit could be found in the editorial of Al-Sabah. On Monday, in its editorial, "The summit of seriousness and success", Al-Sabah said the participation of a considerable number of heads of state was a positive sign. And the obvious sign of success, Al-Sabah argued, were the resolutions passed by the summit. Al-Sabah concluded that the summit lived up to the expectations of the Arab people. The paper, however, failed to share with its leaders the rationale behind such a positive conclusion.
