The Libyan leader embracing the Egyptian and Yemeni presidents while Arab League officials watch from the background, along with African leaders all smiling wide, was a front page photo in nearly all Arab newspapers. The group photo taken at the end of the Arab-African summit held in Sirte, Libya, contrasted sharply with the headlines of fears, pessimism and divisions among Arabs and Africans as well as between each group. 'Fear and alarm over the division of Sudan' wrote the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat in its banner on Monday. 'Stalemate in Sirte' wrote the Al-Khaleej Times in its editorial. Arab pundits were mostly critical of the futility of Arab meetings and resolutions. Commenting on the calls during the summit to change the name of the Arab League to the Arab Union, Ghassan Charbel wrote in the London-based daily Al-Hayat. "It is not enough to change the name of the Arab League in order to change the bleak Arab reality." In 'The house and the neighbourhood' Charbel wrote that it is obvious that what links an Arab to his fellow Arab residing in a neighbouring country certainly surpasses what links a Frenchman to a German. Yet despite what links one Arab to another, there seem to be great distances separating the countries. Charbel also wrote that it is not enough for the Arabs to adopt the "Arab Union" designation in order to show that we have become peers of the European Union. He explained that Europe is different in terms of its political, economic, and social development, as well as its decision-making mechanism, the role of its public opinion, and its awareness of common interests. Charbel added that the Italian and French presidents can hate each other, but they have no right to close borders, organise upheavals, or shake stability. Charbel also wrote that he is not sure the African Union experience was brilliant enough to emulate. "While it is true that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi holds a record number of unions, it is also true that his method is not the shortest path to arrange the house or good neighbourly relations," he wrote. In the London-based daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi Abdel-Bari Atwan wrote that calls to change the name of the Arab League reminds him of a popular joke that someone called Samir Al-Homar (Samir the donkey) suffered from the subtle mocking of his companions, so after long years of endurance he changed his name to Samer Al-Homar (Samer the donkey.) In 'The summit of Sirte: bankruptcy and indecision,' Atwan wrote that since it was established 70 years ago, the problem of the Arab League was never in its name but in the Arab leaderships and governments represented in the league's members. Atwan singled out the league's internal system, its staff and its consecutive secretary-generals as being part of the problem. "Through the years, the league has become reminiscent of the futility of the Arab regimes, a small portrayal of its bureaucracy. The reform of the league is thus impossible without a total reform of the Arab system," Atwan wrote. In 'The summit of small hopes' Mohamed Salah wrote in Al-Hayat that the gathering ended as it had started -- without any breakthroughs in disputed issues between Arab states. Salah wrote that while the main issue facing the emergency summit in Sirte regarded developing the Arab system, "the Arab summit ended without being developed at all and the Arab system will remain as it is until the next summit" despite the fact that the issue has been on the table for many years, being deferred from one summit to another. Salah also said the Sirte Declaration had been written and prepared before the leaders met and its contents distributed to those following the summit after the meeting of foreign ministers which had preceded it. Salah added that some had waited for any of the leaders to request changing a word, a sentence or an expression in the declaration, all in vain. In Asharq Al-Awsat, Abdallah Iskandar lamented that "there is nothing like the extraordinary Arab summit and the Arab-African summit in Libya to reveal the depth of loss in the present state of affairs of Arab countries." Iskandar explained that he is not referring to the talk reiterated in Arab summits about the Palestinian cause and how to manage the conflict with Israel "as such repetition has not been prevented by Arab consensus over the centrality of the issue, its importance and its use in every quarrel and in every alliance." Rather, the Arab loss, according to Iskandar, has become apparent in two other issues: the relationship with neighbouring countries and the second regarding the African continent. "The Arabs have, in their current meetings in Sirte, whether with each other or with African leaders, been unable to define their view of what their relationship with their neighborhood should be. And it is not certain that they may have, together, thought about this issue before," Iskandar wrote. Iskandar wrote that it is feared that bringing up this issue was driven by the host, the Libyan leader "who seeks to play a certain role, riding his theory of the 'United States of Africa', and that the Arabs accepted to discuss it only in order to indulge him." "If true," Iskandar wrote, "this reveals yet again the state of nonchalance in dealing with issues of such importance." In other words, Iskandar explains, the issue of the relationship with the neighbourhood was not put forward as a result of defining the Arabs' own interests and of objectively examining how to exchange them in a stable manner within a regional framework, as is the case all over the world. Rather, it was put forward as a result of momentary political insistence, the elements of which are likely to vanish with the first change in the situation. Wrote Iskandar, "this reveals the fragility of the image the Arabs display to themselves and to their regional neighbours."
