While Syria emerged unscathed, the Damascus Arab summit is more proof that ossified Arab ruling orders are out of touch, writes Ayman El-Amir The 20th Arab summit conference ended in Damascus with no surprises but with a few casualties. One of the victims was the decades-long charade of Arab solidarity that governments had been pandering. Arab countries that symbolically boycotted the conference by demoting their representation as a way of punishing Syria, the conference's host, cut off their nose to spite their face. They seriously undermined whatever is left of official pretensions to Arab unity, weakened the rickety institution of the summit conference, and created wounds that will take time to heal. What started in 1964 as a summit meeting to defend the River Jordan against Israeli projects to divert its course ended up, in 2008, as but a modest attempt to save whatever remains of convivial inter-Arab relations. Meanwhile, as regime solidarity evaporated, Syrian diplomacy scored a victory. Arab regimes were never without their disagreements or mutual distrust. These were sometimes personal and at other times stemmed from foreign loyalties. In briefing former Syrian president Hafez Al-Assad on the plan for the October 1973 War, the late Egyptian President Anwar El-Sadat cautioned him not to divulge any details to a certain head of state in the neighbourhood because "the whole plan will be in the hands of Israel before the end of the day". Then there was the suspension of Egypt's membership in the Arab League for 10 years starting in 1979 as punishment for signing a peace treaty with Israel. Now, some Arab regimes, including the US-defined "moderates", wanted to punish Syria because they claimed its loyalists in Lebanon blocked the election of a new president there. Without the participation of a new Lebanese president, they argued, the summit would not make sense. So the kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, stayed away, sending representatives of a lower level to the "summit". It was a tactical political error that neither punished Syria, the summit, nor improved their leadership position in the Arab world. The move could also be reciprocated in future summits until, by time, the spat fizzles out. On the other hand, Qatar, a rising political star in inter-Arab and international relations, was represented by none other than Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the emir of Qatar. While Qatar had to be represented in stature being due to host the next Arab summit in Doha, the presence of Al-Thani was also a sign of leadership in times of deep inter-Arab crisis. This sense of crisis preceded the Damascus summit and was reflected in the flurry of activities, visits and consultations among activist Arab leaders. On the other hand, the United States made sure its presence was felt. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was hovering in the wings to ensure that no US allies got out of line. This was visible in her superfluous visits to Israel and the Palestinian Authority on the eve of the summit, her meetings with King Abdullah of Jordan and her loitering around during the summit's meetings. The inflicted sense of crisis that prevailed prior to the summit, which Arab League Secretary- General Amr Moussa called in his statement to the conference a "lack of trust among Arab states", did not disrupt the conference's proceedings and Syria's political prestige did not suffer. However, the introduction of a mechanism to avert the deterioration of inter-Arab relations was telling. According to Moussa, the rift in inter-Arab relations was one of the most important topics discussed by the summit. It has also been included in the summit's plan of action on the same level as the key issues of Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon that were discussed in the final closed session of the conference. The lacklustre ritual of an annual Arab summit conference, which was introduced and endorsed in Cairo in 2000, has overrun its usefulness. Key Arab issues are rarely resolved in large-scale meetings, even when they are convened at the summit level. The rift between Fatah and Hamas, for example, was debated to a near successful conclusion under Yemeni patronage, preceded by the Mecca Accord and the so-called "Cairo Understandings". The Lebanese presidential crisis could not be resolved by all the Arab leaders put together, simply because they had conflicting perspectives and interests in the way the problem may be resolved. Lebanon has defied all Arab and non-Arab mediation and exhausted everyone's patience, including the stamina of Moussa. Only the Lebanese themselves, as President Bashar Al-Assad put it, are capable of solving this "inter- Lebanese issue". Somalia, located in the Horn of Africa, is too distant to visit and too chaotic to venture into. It is primarily an American-Ethiopian-Islamist concern. The perennial Israeli massacre of the Palestinians and the expropriation of their lands has become an intractable issue. The conference assured the US and Israel that the Arab peace initiative adopted by the 2002 summit conference "was still on the table", depending on Israel's fulfilment of its obligations. The only thing Arab leaders tolerated and welcomed was the influx of all sorts of visiting US officials who toured the region every other week and met with whatever Arab official they wanted to see to expound American policy and to expand American interests. However, even the Damascus summit could not adopt a strong enough statement demanding full and immediate US withdrawal from Iraq, as some US presidential hopefuls dared to do. The pomp, security and media attention Arab summit events receive from year to year is grossly exaggerated. For opinion, just ask the layman on any street in any Arab capital. The US lobbied hard to make the Arab summit conference in Damascus a failure and thus prove it could isolate Syria for its policies in the region. It failed. When asked in a press conference about the impact of Condoleezza Rice's lobbying in the region against the summit, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moallem responded dismissively: "Forget about Rice. The summit was a success." The only puzzling question that remained was: What did the eight Arab leaders who boycotted the conference achieve by their absence? The summit's concluding statement, the Damascus Declaration, made shy emphasis on "good neighbourly relations with Iran". This was an understatement that did not measure up to the centrality of the issue in the future of the Middle East/ Gulf region. A regional alliance including Arab states, Iran and Turkey would be a key to resolving most of the region's problems, including Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, oil and the disputed Gulf islets between Iran and the United Arab Emirates. What impedes such an alliance are US imperial ambitions and rabid Israeli desire for expansion and dominance. Both schemes are feeding on Arab weakness, self-doubt and distrust. The problems that the organisation of the Damascus summit encountered, as well as its outcome, have a silver lining: they call for rethinking the whole institution of the summit conference. Clearly, Arab leaders will jealously guard this ritual as a sacred cow, even though its rationale and effectiveness have been steadily declining. It will have to be rethought in light of the lessons of the war in Iraq and failure in Lebanon, not to mention the emerging role of Iran. The paradigm of national and regional security needs to be seriously re-examined, independent of the old colonial legacy and neo-colonial hegemony.
