Giving Voice to the Arab League: Who Failed?

By Peter C. Valenti

The Arab League ended its two-day summit in Algiers on March 23 with a reaffirmation of its 2002 resolution offering a comprehensive end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It goes without saying that this 2005 reiteration is a significant act on the part of the Arab League. What is even more significant, however, is not just that the mainstream U.S. media generally ignored the importance and equitable solution that this proposal represents, but that there also was virtually no reporting of the Israeli government’s dismissal of this latest League extension of an olive branch—just as the original 2002 initiative also received very little media coverage.

Often named after the Saudi prince who proposed the resolution, the “Crown Prince Abdullah initiative” was and remains the best offer ever extended to Israel by all Arab states. Replicating U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338—each authored by Washington—the 2002 League initiative is based on the land-for-peace formula: Israel withdraws from all territories it occupied in 1967, allowing for the creation of a Palestinian state, and in return Israel would receive recognition and peace with the entire Arab world. A just solution for Palestinian refugees, Jerusalem, and territorial adjustments is a necessary component of the initiative, of course, but it also is structured to allow for flexibility and compromise on these issues.

While discussions on other issues such as Lebanon and reform in the Arab world were inconclusive, the Arab League did affirm its support of Syria and opposition to the U.S. imposing sanctions on the country, as well as call for the continued unity of Iraq. Furthermore, in a surprise move, League Secretary-General Amr Musa announced the impending formation of a regionally elected “Arab parliament” to serve in an advisory capacity to the League.

Instead, what was highlighted in both U.S. and Israeli governmental and media reaction to the summit was the absence of League consideration of a proposal by Jordan’s King Abdullah II. He had suggested that the League normalize relations with Israel without the Jewish state having first to return lands occupied in 1967. Algerian Foreign Minister Abd al-Aziz Belkhadem famously stated this “will not be the summit of normalization.” With the failure of the League to accept Abdullah’s proposal, which both the U.S. and Israel strongly supported, as well as the absence of other topics on the League’s agenda, U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli commented, “We think that was a missed opportunity…I would say that the final [League] communiqué did not have anything noteworthy, one way or the other, to comment on.”

The Arab League is stigmatized and effectively ignored in the U.S.

In a classic example of doublespeak, Ereli later added in regard to the League’s reaffirmation of its 2002 peace proposal, “I’m not speaking non-supportively of it. I’m just saying that I’m not aware that this proposal right now is going anywhere.”

Arab writers—and most Middle Easterners in general—realize that Washington usually is dismissive of any initiatives proposed by the Arab League. The mainstream U.S. media often take their cue from this attitude, describing League meetings in such negative terms as “impotent” and “squabbling.” Indeed, media coverage of League summits is slight, and lacking in sophisticated (if any) analysis of resolutions or the opinions expressed by League member states. Furthermore, if one does find a “survey” of Arab reaction to the League in the mainstream U.S. media, it is almost entirely cherry-picked for its negative and critical content. On all these above points, the March 24 New York Times coverage of the League is an excellent example.

Since the Arab world generally is better conversant with U.S. events and politics—unlike the average U.S. citizen, whose only idea of Arab opinions is probably lumped under the negative moniker “the Arab street”—Arabs are quite aware that the League is stigmatized and effectively ignored in the U.S. This partially explains some of the criticism directed at the League by Arab writers. By definition, to be effective the League’s decisions must make an impact on the political landscape, which many U.S. administrations have ensured will not be the case.

Additionally, a large part of the so-called “rancor” or divisiveness among Arab states at League summits is due to their respective positions vis-à-vis the U.S. and its foreign policies. The 2003 summit was an excellent example, finding Arab states divided both in terms of those who were overtly or covertly aiding the impending U.S. war against Iraq (such as Kuwait and Qatar) versus those who opposed all such measures, amid a general sentiment that the war on Iraq was inevitable and Arab efforts were powerless to stop it.

The deep structural problems related to U.S. hegemony and alliances in the region that characterized the 2003 summit and often plague other League summits require sophisticated analysis, not the vapid observations of most U.S. media, which dismiss these debates as petty “Arab squabbles.” By contrast, in his March 23 op-ed in the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi, Yusuf Nur Iwad addressed the overarching influence of U.S. foreign policy on the League’s ability to enact change or influence in the region. The League is operating in Bush’s world now, he pointed out, and “The common denominator shared by the Arab nations is [their attempt] to satisfy the United States. Of course, the U.S. doesn’t need these nations, but it does want one thing from them: normalization with Israel and ending the state of war [with it] even if there is no exchange for this [normalization].”

“Nothing for Free”: Arab Steps in Exchange for Israeli Steps

In fact, the common U.S. media description of the League summit as a “failure” actually reflects the attitude that the League did not fulfill the Bush administration’s expectations, or agenda, for what the League “needed” to do. Thus the League’s so-called “failure to deal with reality” equates to acting independently of Washington’s foreign policy dictates. According to many Arab writers, however, the main failure has been on the part of the U.S., the so-called peace broker, to moderate (or even criticize) blatant Israeli disregard for Arab League peace initiatives—not to mention countless U.N. resolutions.

Many Arab newspapers cited statements made by Israeli officials dismissing League efforts as evidence that Israel is not engaging the Arab world. The March 23 editorial in Saudi Arabia’s progressive al-Watan is typical: “Israel greeted the Algeria summit with its announcement rejecting the Arab [League] peace initiative, which the Beirut summit had ratified in 2002, while claiming through the statement of [Israeli] Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev ‘that the proposal in its current form will not amount to anything.’ This exemplifies Israeli obstinacy, accompanied by insincerity, because the fundamental articles in the Arab initiative, which pertain to Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and the establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem and a just solution for the refugee problem, are in their entirety based upon international law and U.N. resolutions.”

The editorial added that the other Israeli announcement, made just prior to the convening of the League summit, that it will be adding another 3,500 housing units to West Bank settlements is further evidence of the country’s disdain for reaching any agreement with the Arab world, and the world community in general.

In his various statements about the Arab League, Regev tapped into much well-worn Orientalist discourse about Arabs. Dismissing Arab League efforts as “anachronistic” and demonstrating “inverted logic,” the Foreign Ministry spokesman attempted to divert any substantive media and political discussion or focus from the issue that is the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict: Israel’s occupation of Arab lands. Meanwhile Arabs across the Middle East applauded Amr Musa’s oft-quoted statement: “Israel is still building settlements and the barrier. They don’t deserve anything…If they had taken any step, we would have taken a step.”

For example, the respected editor Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid echoed this sentiment as well as turning the spin doctors of Washington and Tel Aviv on their heads. In his March 24 op-ed in the Saudi Asharq al-Awsat he wrote, “Amr Musa is right in his position against the suggestion to initiate normalization with Israel in order to facilitate the stimulation of peace negotiations. Musa says no normalization without a price, which is in other words yes to normalization if they are tied to valuable Israeli concessions.”

Regarding normalization, the word continually used by Arab writers was “free”—as in “freebie.” Responding to Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, who described the League decision as evidence of Musa’s hard-line influence, the March 26 editorial of the United Arab Emirates’ al-Bayan called for Shalom to recognize that “the opinion [expressed] in the Arab rejection of free normalization with Israel…is evidence that the only real way to attain a just and comprehensive peace [is one which] imposes obligations on all sides, and not the Arabs alone.”

Not Enough?

Although Arab writers in general commented positively on the summit, several were critical as well. At the end of the spectrum was the kind of criticism found in Yusuf Nur Iwad’s previously mentioned article in al-Quds al-Arabi. He directed his anger at the Arab media coverage of the summit which, he wrote, “practiced intellectual deception on the Arab community by giving this summit an importance it didn’t deserve.” He went on to cast doubt on claims of Arab unity, pointing out that some League members still have no trading ties with each other and have stringent visa policies for entrance of citizens from other Arab nations.

In Mursi Ata Allah’s opinion, the League did not focus enough on reform issues. In his March 24 op-ed in Egypt’s al-Ahram, he noted that much of the talk of democratization in the Arab world was “sidelined,” even though the slow pace of democratization is “one of the most important causes for social, cultural and developmental backwardness.”

Jawad al-Bashiti sarcastically appraised the League proposal for an “Arab parliament” in his March 25 op-ed in the Palestinian al-Ayyam. While welcoming the idea, he noted that Arab governments “have decided to grant their peoples ‘the conditional right’ to choose their parliamentary representatives, in other words the representatives of the governments of these peoples, yet they themselves—the [Arab] leaders—are free from playing this ‘democratic electoral game.’”

Not even the affirmation of the 2002 peace proposal was spared. For example, despite the League’s snub to the Jordanian normalization proposal, the March 24 editorial in Jordan’s Addustour saw the summit as a positive symbol of the united resolve of the Arab world in reconfirming the importance of the 2002 summit’s peace initiative. Yet, the editorial noted, an element was missing from the League strategy. Specifically, “the summit resolutions disregarded Israel’s previous rejection of the formula of the Arab initiative.”

This sentiment was echoed by Ahmad Amrabi in his March 26 op-ed in the UAE al-Bayan. “It is an equally divided deal for the two sides, that is a measure for measure to reach justice,” he wrote. “However it offers a ‘carrot’ without carrying a ‘stick.’”

Peter C. Valenti, a free-lance writer and translator, teaches Islam and Modern Middle East History at New York’s New School University.