The Arab summit today was truly surprising and from what has been 'said' so far it seems that finally the Arab leaders are saying what the people want to hear, and are actually doing what the people want them to do as explained later on.
The tone against the Israeli aggression on Gaza by Arab leaders has increased from the past where condemning Israel's actions was the most thing we as Arabs would have expected from our leaders, but from what we have heard so far it has been completely different. President Bashar Al Assad gave a speech a couple of days ago that reminded many Arabs of the old tough and unforgiving speeches that were made by our leaders during the period when Arab Nationalism dominated the political atmosphere of the Arab world. Maysaloon has already given a great analysis of President Bashar Al Assad's speech, to add to Al-Asad's speech would be King Abdullah's speech today during the Arab Summit in Kuwait, where for the first time the Saudi Arabian diplomacy was completely absent in King Abdullah's speech which had some extremely inflammatory comments about the Israeli aggression on Gaza, referring to the Israeli's as a 'mob', and to its actions on Gaza as collective massacres and said that "what the torah tells the Jews is an Eye for an Eye and not an Eye for an entire city of Eyes" referring to the massacres unlike what most analysts thought he said that it referred to the "Arab Unity" in some way. He also added that the Arab peace initiative will have to be 'pulled away from the table' in other words an end to the peace process that was proposed by the Arabs 7 years ago.
The question is, why the change in the Saudi Arabian speech from one that blamed the resistance in Gaza a couple of weeks ago for what is happening to one that had harsh words against the Zionist mob?
In my opinion, the answer is simply the Arab people. The anger and rage from the Arab people across the 'Arab world' that was reflected in the demonstrations had a significant effect. If we consider that even in Iraq a country that is occupied and is itself fighting off an occupation, people went on demonstrations against the Zionist aggression which shows that the true enemy in the eyes of the Arabs are Israel first and foremost, and that whatever happens to the Arabs from calamities is on one side and whatever Israel does is on a completely different side.
The Arab leaders have most definitely felt the rage of the Arab people and I am sure that this is what has pushed them to reading out such inciting speeches against Israel, especially when we are talking about a country with the political weight and presence in the region such as Saudi Arabia. Now whether those speeches are just 'words and no actions' is still to be seen, but it is very encouraging to see that the Leaders of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Qatar, which have been in disagreement on the stance that the Arab world should be taking since 2006, have had lunch together which might signal the end of the mutual political boycott of the two camps. Lovely.
2 comments:
Yes Gaza is an important issue that Arab leaders took dicission in harmony with the Arab public opinion, but there other things that can enhance the dicission which is to form a kind of Arab unity in dealing with Israel in case repeat the agression on Gaza or any other Arab teritory, some sort of a treaty of defens between Arab countries.
If im not mistaken doesn't that already exist?
The Syrian army in the 80's went into lebanon under the joint arab defense treaty to stop the civil war.
The problem is that this treaty has been sidelined ever since Egypt and Jordan signed peace treaties with Israel. There has been talk of late to re-initiate the treaty, but unless Arabs understand that they are alone and that not America or Russia will ever help them, properly in defeating Israel militarily then there is no point of reinstating this treaty.
copy of the treaty:
http://www.arabsummitsyria.org/index.php?d=224&id=18
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