Arab Summit in Amman Scene of Hard Talk, Failed Iraq-Kuwait Détente, New Alliances

By Andrew Hammond

The Arab summit on March 27 and 28 in Amman was like its predecessors—it pleased few and was overtaken by events. The Arabs came out with fighting talk in favor of the Palestinians and disagreed over Iraq, the Americans tried to scupper the proceedings, and the Israelis responded once it was over with militant activity that showed up the emptiness of Arab rhetoric.

Yet, at the same time, it still made a difference in its own little way, for it maintained the Arab line on Palestine in the face of Israel’s attempts to force the Palestinians into a settlement on Israel’s terms. It also was moderate enough to give the Egyptians and Jordanians space to bargain with the Bush administration during subsequent trips to Washington, aimed primarily at boosting both countries’ economies by securing more trade with the U.S. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in particular wanted to be able to speak to the Americans in the name of the Arabs about the violence in the occupied territories. To that end Cairo has argued publicly that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon—who concluded a successful trip to the White House the week before the Amman gathering—should be given a chance, and the summit didn’t essentially deviate from that line.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat came away happy with condemnations of Israel and more promises of financial support. “The leaders denounce Israel’s continuous aggression against the Palestinian people and its violations of human rights, especially the collective punishment and continued attacks on vital institutions which constitute war crimes against humanity and racist practices,” said the final communiqué. In addition to pledging $180 million to support the Palestinian Authority’s budget for the next six months, the leaders also expressed their “dismay” at the veto the United States cast at the United Nations during the summit, preventing an international observer force from being sent to the occupied territories.

Perhaps Arafat’s biggest gain, however, was reconcilation with the Syrians after years of enmity with former President Hafez Al-Assad. Arafat was expected to visit Damascus within a month for talks with Hafez’s son and successor, Bashar, aiming to finally coordinate with the Syrians over Israel—a significant event indeed. The rapprochement with Damascus will take Arafat somewhat out of the moderate Egyptian-Jordanian orbit—which seeks a resumption of talks with Sharon via a cooling off of the intifada—and finally create a link among the Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese tracks. For their part, the Egyptians see such a link as delaying a final Palestinian-Israeli deal and reducing Egyptian influence in the Levant.

Radical Palestinian groups and public opinion around the Arab world was damning on these words, however. “The Arab summit was unfortunately disappointing to the hopes of our Palestinian people and our Islamic and Arab nations,” said Ahmed Jibril, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s General Command. “The Arab leaders, namely those of Egypt and Jordan, did not dare to even suspend, let along cut, diplomatic ties with the Zionist enemy.”

The United Arab Emirates newspaper al-Khaleej said: “The summit did not meet the aspirations of the Arab street, nor did it draw up a complete strategy to confront the terrorist Ariel Sharon.”

Which is just what the Egyptians and Jordanians want. Mubarak rather bluntly revealed the two faces of Arab rhetoric when he told a Newsweek interviewer that week: “I hear what I want to hear at the Arab summit. What I don’t want to hear, I just don’t.”

Alongside the rhetoric on Israel, the summit failed to agree on the wording of an agreement between Kuwait and Iraq, still at loggerheads after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of the Gulf emirate. Despite repeated attempts by a host of Arab leaders, the summit could not get the two countries to approve a joint formula calling for an end to U.N. sanctions on Baghdad and guarantees that its 1990 invasion of Kuwait would not happen again. Led by Jordan’s King Abdullah, Arab leaders spent hours huddled in hotel suites picking over possible wordings. The wrangling went on until shortly before the final summit session, when Abdullah presented Iraqi delegation leader Izzat Ibrahim with a text with the comment, “Take it or leave it.” Iraq rejected it, but agreed to further discussions beyond the summit, delegates reported.

It was the “first step in the 1,000-mile journey toward reconciliation,” as one analyst put it. There was even a rare handshake between the Saudi and Iraqi foreign ministers. Baghdad had sought a demand for an unconditional end to sanctions on Iraq and condemnation of the American- and British-imposed no-fly zones in the north and south, but refused Kuwaiti demands that reference be made to efforts by Iraq to help find the 600 Kuwaitis still allegedly missing from the 1991 war to evict Iraq from Kuwait. Of course, the Americans had tried to sour the chances of unity over the sanctions by leaking days before the summit ideas on a modified embargo.

Libya’s Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi did his best to make a mockery of the Arab leaders before Arab public opinion. Live television broadcasts of the opening speeches had to be cut when Qaddafi’s turn came, as he demanded a closed session for his diatribe. “We have been hearing the same statements of Arab bravery and valor for 30 years. For 30 years we have done nothing, which drove me to Africa. I wish the Arabs would come with me,” he said.

He also derided the Palestinian and Arab demand that the al-Aqsa mosque in the old walled city of Arab East Jerusalem end up under Palestinian sovereignty, a huge sticking point in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations which broke off in January without agreement, before the despised Sharon came to power. “The hell with it. Either you solve it or you don’t. It’s just a mosque and I can pray anywhere,” he reportedly told Arab leaders.

On top of that, Qaddafi stole the limelight with public appearances around Jordan during the two-day proceedings, turning up in the Jordan Valley, at a banana plantation, the Dead Sea and an Amman doughnut shop. He joked with astonished ordinary Jordanians, and the Arab satellite channel TV cameras followed him everywhere.

An Unintended Finale

But the summit’s unintended finale showed how quickly events can move on the ground and the grand gestures of summitry seem obsolete. A wave of suicide bombings against Israelis during the summit by the radical Palestinian group Hamas led to an Israeli air and sea bombardment of Arafat’s security force buildings in Gaza and Ramallah. The American response was fury at Arafat.

“The signal I am sending to the Palestinians is stop the violence and I can’t make it any more clear,” President George W. Bush told reporters the next day. Assistant Secretary of State Edward Walker told members of Congress: “We have seen absolutely no response from Arafat to our urgings to him to help bring the violence to a stop…In fact he has called for the continuation of the intifada.”

This uprising, according to the American thinking, is inherently wrong, equated with suicide bomb attacks, and within Arafat’s power to end. Nevertheless, Mubarak headed to Washington on March 31, intending to explain the true facts of the situation in the region so that Bush can finally formulate his Middle East peace policy. The Egyptians may be out to calm the situation at present because they see how easily it could escalate.

In his Newsweek interview Mubarak chose to announce directly for the first time that “my son is not going to be the next president,” referring to Gamal Mubarak, whose increased political role in recent years has led many Egyptians to conclude Mubarak was grooming him as his successor. Mubarak then added, “We’ll try to find a successor.”

The hint taken back in Cairo was that Mubarak will try to find a vice president from the military, because Egypt doesn’t yet see that the Arab-Israeli conflict is heading toward a situation where Egypt would feel comfortable with a civilian leadership. Leading political writer Mohamed Sid Ahmed wrote in the April 5 Al Hayat: “Sharon has removed all justification for the argument that appointing a military man as vice president would go against the requirements of peace in the Middle East, because the future is moving toward a polarization and an intensification of the confrontation, not toward a climate of understanding and mutual trust.”

Andrew Hammond is a free-lance journalist based in Cairo.