The Arab League and the Palestinian Cause: Between Arab Fragmentation and Absence of Will

●      Jared KushnerKushner, the former U.S. President Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, and the architect of the Deal of the Century, introduced new standards and rules for engagement with Arab states while his father-in-law was in the White House, based on the logic of each state’s direct national interest in return for normalization with Israel, “without using the Palestinian fig leaf” — it was “Kushner normalization: reconciliation in exchange for interest.”!

●      It seems that the saying of the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, on the eve of signing the Camp David Agreement in 1978, that ninety-nine percent (99%) of the keys to the game in the Middle East are in America’s hands, still stands. Consequently, and as a result of this belief of the late faithful president, ninety-nine percent (99%) of the keys to the relationship with America and access to it are in Israel’s hands; and, acting on this wisdom, Arab states hasten to normalize with Israel to gain entry to the high threshold — “the White House”!!

●      The League of Arab States, the symbol of Arab solidarity, has unfortunately become the tilted Arab support....that has no color, no taste, and no smell in the international arena, nor even in the regional arena. It has proven that it...delays rather than advances....! After succumbing to the manipulations of the American administration and Israel, through the Arab financial elite states and other Arab states long loyal to the West, they managed to control the levers of this League’s decisions, provoke division among its members, corrupt its administrative system...and intervene in drafting the texts of its closing conference communiqués. The League has thus...become...a tool of division...not a tool for cohesion! Slack and faltering in defending Arab causes, and especially the Palestinian cause.! Do not expect good from it..!

●      For example, the League of Arab States’ reaction regarding the genocide war being waged by the Israeli occupation army since October 7 until now (20/12) — no Arab summit on a ceasefire was convened regarding the genocidal war that Israel is waging against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip...since October 7 — until now... except after 34 days from the start of the Israeli massacre against the Gaza Strip, besieged for more than 16 years... with Western support and participation led by the United States... Knowing that the Arab summit did not convene alone on 11-11-2023 in Riyadh due to member states’ disagreement over the final communique; therefore Saudi Arabia decided to convert it into an Arab-Islamic summit.... This summit, which represents more than one and a half billion people, did not succeed in stopping the firing, and it formed a committee emanating from the conference composed of a number of states participating in the joint summit, chaired by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to pressure the United Nations to stop the firing. Time passed...and the committee could not stop the firing up until now after more than 75 days since the start of the genocidal and destructive war carried out by the Israeli occupation army in the Gaza Strip... Noting that the League of Arab States condemned the killing of Israeli and Palestinian civilians, and demanded the release of all detainees unconditionally (i.e., the Israeli captives held by Hamas after October 7, and not the thousands of Palestinian detainees held by the Israeli occupation authorities before and after October 7)!

●      Past Arab summit conferences were not in a better state than the present; for example the Arab summit convened in the city of Fez in September 1982 after more than 90 days from the start of the Israeli army’s invasion of Lebanon, and the siege of its capital Beirut in June 1982, aimed at eliminating the Palestinian resistance in Lebanon. The outcomes of the summit were the endorsement of Prince Fahd’s initiative, then Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, which he announced in November 1981. This initiative implicitly declared recognition of Israel for the first time.., in its provisions by acknowledging the right of all regional states to exist, in return for establishing a Palestinian state on the territories of June 4, 1967... Israel was not held accountable for its crimes in Lebanon, and the massacres it committed against Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila..!

●      The Israeli occupation imposed the siege on the Gaza Strip in 2007 after declaring it a hostile entity. This siege was followed by the 2008/2009 war on the Gaza Strip, whose goal was to eliminate Hamas and end its rule. Wars on the Gaza Strip followed, destroying Gaza and committing massacres by the Israeli occupation army in its wars on the Gaza Strip in the years 2012, 2014, 2019, and the Israeli genocidal war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continues to this day, in the face of an official Arab silence resembling the silence of graves... Indeed, the resistors were even condemned as terrorists for the resistance operation on October 7..2023!

●      The Rafah crossing is a test for the League of Arab States, where Egypt, a prominent and influential member of the League, announced that it cannot open the Rafah crossing wide because it is tied to Israel by the Camp David Agreement — all this while the Palestinian people are besieged without water, food, medicine, or bread...and without shelter — noting that this crossing is the only outlet for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to the outside world..

●      Arab political presidential leaders have been assassinated, whether by hanging as happened with the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, or by imprisonment, siege, and death by poisoning before the Arab and Islamic world and the entire world — as happened with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Indeed, an Arab leader was assassinated by the intelligence agents of a great power while he was in the custody of angry and mobilized masses: Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi. The same occurred with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who was removed from office and imprisoned humiliatingly...and later died. This was following what was called the Arab Spring in most Arab countries, where Arab masses were moved by an external actor under the name of overthrowing despotism and moving to democracy. These revolutions were paid for to broadcast creative chaos and fragment the Arab world — not for its good — and the League of Arab States did not engage effectively to uphold Arab rights and confront all external interventions..!

●      The League has fragmented, after not long from its establishment in 1945, into groups, councils and unions among some of its member states. The Gulf Cooperation Council, the Arab Cooperation Council, and the Moroccan Union Council were formed, and these unions had their own particularities and selfishness that distanced them from common Arab solidarity and thereby weakened the role of the League of Arab States...... As the United States stoked the fire among its members, there are member states of the League that are supportive or even loyal to the United States and Israel, and other states that oppose them... Thus it sowed division among them.....what began in secret.. ....ended publicly long ago!! ...to the point that some League members openly allied and fought with the United States against their partners in the League of Arab States. The war on Yemen by the “Arab Coalition” led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2015, and the wars on Syria, Iraq and Libya and their occupation, are examples of the bitter division and armed conflict among members of the League of Arab States....!

●      The League of Arab States was founded on March 22, 1945, under British auspices for its establishment, and its basic statute contains provisions on Arab solidarity, including the Arab joint defense. It has 22 members, and the population of the League’s states is approximately 438 million people, making its population rank fourth in the world after China, India and the European Union. The total area of its states is 14 million square kilometers, ranking it second in the world in terms of area, after Russia!

●      Below I present a list ranking the League of Arab States’ members by the frequency of hosting summits since the League’s founding until now: Egypt ranks first, having hosted 10 Arab summits on its territory during the period from 1945 to 2023. Morocco ranks second, having hosted 7 Arab summits on its territory. Third in rank is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which hosted 6 summits; then Algeria and Jordan, 4 times each; Tunisia and Iraq, 3 times each; Lebanon, Qatar and Sudan, twice each; while Libya, Kuwait, Mauritania and Syria each hosted the Arab summit once. It was noted that the first time the Arab summit was held in Saudi Arabia was in 1976 since the League’s establishment..!

●     The Arab League fell silent, did not speak its word, and did not attempt to influence stopping the foreign hands behind what was called the creative chaos... Iraq was occupied, Syria was destroyed and occupied, half its people were displaced, apart from the massacres in both countries... and the Arab League activated its system... it raised its voice against Syria.. and expelled it from the Arab League.. rather, some of its members’ financial elites even took charge of smuggling extremist groups (ISIS and other extremist groups) to create creative chaos... and to destroy Syria.. which provided the United States with a foothold to occupy Syrian oil wells, which it still holds, under the pretext of fighting ISIS.. that America created and spread! ..and the Arab League had neither sense nor news..!.....moreover the former US President gifted Jerusalem and the Golan to Israel.. and the Arab League did not utter a word! In addition to the “Deal of the Century” announced by former US President Trump.... which most Arab leaders supported.. despite it destroying the Palestinian cause from its roots!..

●     The Khartoum resolutions’ three no’s in 1967 (no peace, no negotiations, no recognition of Israel) did not hold for long.!!.. they began to disintegrate from 1978, after the signing of the Camp David Agreement between Egypt and Israel,

The US Secretary of State AlexanderHaig called for the creation of a new Middle East in April1981, during his visit to several countries in the MiddleEast. The response came from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as Prince Fahd, then Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, announced the first Saudi Arab initiative... in August 1981, but without referring to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in his initiative; the initiative for the first time affirmed the right of all countries in this region to live in peace. That initiative sparked disagreements at the 11th Arab Summit held in the city of Fez in November 1981, which led the League to decide to postpone its sessions until the 12th Arab Summit actually convened in the same city of Fez in September 1982, and it was.... the first summit in which Israel was implicitly recognized, after it included a reference to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)..!

●     As for 2002, a second Saudi peace initiative was witnessed by Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz.. (which is recognition of Israel and full normalization with it in return for establishing a Palestinian state on the borders of June 4, 1967.. pursuant to UN Security Resolutions 242 and 338) at the Beirut summit conference in 2002.. and the late Palestinian President was prevented from attending this conference personally. It was said that Sharon prevented his travel, threatening not to allow him to return to Ramallah, and he attended remotely via closed-circuit television.. He was assassinated in 2004 by poisoning, after being besieged in the West Bank in Ramallah for 3 years at the presidential compound in Ramallah from 13-12-2001 until his martyrdom by poisoning on 11-11-2004.., and strangely the majority of Arab leaders did not contact him during that time, for fear of the United States and Israel...! Thus the Arab League could not do anything, not even a telephone call... to the late President Yasser Arafat!

●     The Arab concessions then began to follow from the Arab countries... and the issue of the refugees, as stated in the two Saudi initiatives.. that refugees have the right to return for those who choose, and compensation for those who do not wish to return!. Accordingly UN General Assembly Resolution 194 was not mentioned in Prince Fahd’s 1981 initiative..., nor was it mentioned in Prince Abdullah’s Arab Initiative in 2002.., despite that, the two initiatives were not accepted by the United States and Israel.. normalization processes were then arranged, and normalization is nothing but one of the results of such meddling by the American ladle in the Arab League’s cooking pot.!!.. Thus the solution to the Palestinians’ problem was bypassed.. and its proportionality, especially after the events of September 11 in the United States.. which were labeled international terrorism.. and the Arab and Islamic world was accused of exporting and financing the terrorists who blew up the New York towers... Arab and Islamic states.. which were blackmailed by the United States of America!! ... and the Abraham Accords were concluded between the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain with Israel, with Saudi Arabia allowing Israeli aircraft to use its airspace on its Gulf flight. Then Morocco obtained US recognition of its sovereignty over Western Sahara in exchange for normalizing with Israel, and Sudan obtained normalization in return for being removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and having US sanctions lifted from it!

●     Despite all this Arab League failure to stop the massacres against the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli occupation army... the Palestinian people remain faithful to their belonging to the Arab and Islamic nation... and their determination in this matter does not waver, no matter how painful and distressing the official Arab and Islamic shortcomings are... rather they are driven by hope for change and the emergence of solidarity instead of fragmentation and disintegration..! As for the Arab League in its current state, it is neither nutritious nor satisfying!

●     References: several reliable sources