The Arab summit in Damascus this weekend will be the latest in a long list of Arab summits — many of which have been so predictable that the Arabs watching it on TV must have either fallen asleep or switched channels to watch a soap opera.
While some of these summits have produced political landmarks in the Arab world that are talked about even today, some others have shocked the Arabs as they have brought their leaders' mutual mistrust out in the open.
Against this backdrop, even the smallest result from this summit would be worthwhile, especially with Lebanon stuck in a political standoff between its Iran- and Syria-backed opposition and the majority backed by Saudi Arabia, US-occupied Iraq wavering between civil war and reconstruction, and Palestine looking as grim as at any time in its sad history.
The purpose of the formation of the Arab League, according to the 1945 Pact of the League of Arab States, was “to strengthen the close relations and numerous ties that bind the Arab States''.
The Arab League has not lived up to this aim but the organisation has, nonetheless, served a valuable purpose by being the only forum through which the Arab world has expressed itself and articulated its desire to share many common interests.
When the Arab League was founded, Egypt and Iraq were still monarchies, large parts of the Maghrib were under colonial rule and most Gulf states were controlled by the British.
The first meetings were attended by the heads of government rather than the heads of state.
The launch session in Egypt was attended by legendary figures of the 1940s' Arab politics, including then Egyptian prime minister Nahhas Pasha, Lebanese prime minister Riyad Al Solh Bey and Iraqi prime minister Hamdi Bahjaji, who was accompanied by the country's former prime minister Nuri Said.
When the summits began, many members of the Arab League were under British influence and, for two decades, the League was a minor force.
But all that changed following the revolutions in Iraq and Egypt and owing to Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser, who led the Arab world into its post-colonial surge of optimism and leadership — and into the Non-Aligned Movement during the 1950s and 1960s.
However, all that changed once again in June 1967, when Israel invaded and occupied the West Bank, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula.
“Three Nos'' of Khartoum
In August 1967, Arab leaders met for a summit in Khartoum, which is remembered to this day as the event that brought the Arab states together and where they affirmed their unity against Israel by the adoption of the dictum of “Three Nos'': No peace with Israel, No recognition of Israel and No negotiations with Israel.
These three points summarised the strategy under which the Arab states agreed to “unite their political efforts at the international and diplomatic level to eliminate the effects of the aggression and to ensure the withdrawal of the aggressive Israeli forces from the Arab lands which were occupied in the aggression of June 5''.
The Khartoum summit also insisted on the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country. It was, however, the next summit — in 1968 — in Rabat that finally recognised the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and gave it membership of the League.
The Khartoum summit was also the first time the “oil weapon'' was discussed. The ministers of finance, economy and oil of the Arab countries had recommended to their leaders the suspension of the pumping of oil, which could be used as a weapon in the battle against Israel.
However, the summit came to the conclusion that continuance of the pumping of oil could be used as a positive weapon. It considered oil as an Arab resource and made clear that the revenue from oil would be used to strengthen the economies of those states directly affected by the battle against Israel and which had lost economic resources.
Arab summits have not usually been very good at solving Arab disputes but the first emergency Arab summit of September 1970 in Cairo stands out for its success.
At this meeting, Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser managed to get King Hussain of Jordan and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat to stop the fighting that the countries were engaged in.
In what is now known as “Black September'', Jordan had mobilised its forces in an attempt to prevent the Palestinian military from operating against Israel from within Jordan's territory.
The summit paved the way for a truce and, eventually, also succeeded in enforcing a disengagement.
After the end of the 1973 October War, US president Richard Nixon's secretary of state Henry Kissinger started his famous round of shuttle diplomacy, seeking a comprehensive, multilateral peace between Israel and all Arab frontline states. This multilateral route failed and the new Carter administration switched tactics and sought separate bilateral agreements.
But even the Americans, just as the Arabs, were stunned when Egypt's president, Anwar Sadat, made an unannounced visit to Israel in November 1977.
Sadat, in his address to the Knesset, the legislative branch of the Israeli government, spoke of the need for peace and insisted on the formal Arab position of a full “land for peace'' deal.
Sadat had given up on American diplomacy and, although he tried to back the orthodox Arab position, was in a hurry and made peace with Israel in 1979, despite not having any Arab partners.
This unilateral action by Egypt flung the entire Arab world into chaos and, as a result, Egypt was suspended from the Arab League.
Egypt's unilateral action also resulted in the splitting of the Arab League over one of its fundamental tenets, which was to resist Israeli occupation.
Egypt used to be the traditional leader of the Arab League — as both the most populous and the most politically adept nation. However, Camp David left a power vacuum in the leadership of the League, which gave Saddam Hussain's Iraq a chance to move up from its secondary status.
Sadat's actions were also one of the reasons for his death. He was assassinated on October 6, 1981, by Islamist radicals opposed to both his peace plans with Israel and his regime and policy of working closely with the United States.
Egypt's suspension from the Arab League continued for ten years until 1989, by when president Hosni Mubarak's patient diplomacy with all the Arab states had brought them around and Egypt was brought back into the fold.
However, Egypt has never recovered the ascendancy it had before, mainly because its deal with Israel has left it with no political option other than to support peace and the American position in most things. This gave Saudi Arabia the opportunity to become the leading Arab state.
Fahd Peace Plan
In 1982, Egypt's unilateral peace with the enemy and its suspension from the Arab League were still very fresh in everyone's minds.
More violence was rocking the Middle East: Israel had occupied south Lebanon and Iraq had attacked Iran, setting in motion what was to result in years of bitter fighting.
Even while chaos prevailed, the 1982 Summit in Fez stands out for the adoption of the Fahd Peace Plan, under which the Saudi king summed up how the rest of the Arab world — Arab countries other than Egypt — might eventually consider peace with Israel.
His plan required Israel to withdraw from the territory it occupied in 1967, dismantle all the settlements it had built since 1967 and establish an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, recognising the Palestinians' right to self-determination.
As the occupation in Palestine continued during the 1980s and the Lebanese Civil War was fought to exhaustion, the next flashpoint became Kuwait and Iraq.
Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait in 1990 and, in 1991, was expelled by the Multi National Forces. In 2003, Iraq was invaded and the country came under the control of a US-led coalition.
It was after this bitter experience of the invasion of Iraq and the consequent collapse of civil society in that country that the March 2002 Beirut summit was held.
Although the summit was dominated by questions about ways of dealing with the sudden, overwhelming American military presence in the heart of the Middle East, the summit also took a long, hard look at the region's most intractable problem: How to achieve peace for Palestine.
Saudi suggestion
Saudi Arabia's then Crown Prince (now King) Abdullah had discussed a peace plan in several forums. It appealed equally to both the pragmatic conservative Arab states — by suggesting readiness to work with Israel under certain conditions — and the more revolutionary ones — by insisting on the country's total withdrawal from its post-1967 territory.
In addition to being a good plan, it also bridged the gap in the Arab world, which was struggling to reach a unified position over Iraq.
The Abdullah Plan called on Israel to withdraw from the territory it occupied in 1967, remove its settlements in the area and accept a Palestinian state.
What was new in his plan was the promise that if Israel withdrew from the territories and recognised Palestine, the Arab world would “consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended and enter into peace with Israel'', including “establishing normal relations''.
This formula offered complete peace, including open trade and full recognition with free movement of people and goods. It took the Fahd Plan as a basis but moved much further with the proposal of full and normal peace.
Despite being presented to Israel, this plan never got very far since the country dismissed it and refused to retreat from all the territories. Also, Israel has never stopped building settlements on the West Bank.
Israel's continuing refusal to offer even a small grain of hope to a just settlement has meant that the Arab plan remains only a plan.
Summit of failure
One of the summits that has become memorable for its failures is the Jeddah summit held in August 1990: It was held after Iraq invaded Kuwait. Several Arab states refused to attend that summit.
However, a few days later, another summit, a tumultuous one at that, was held in Cairo.
During this summit, the delegates of Kuwait and Iraq — represented by the Emir of Kuwait and then Iraqi vice-president Taha Ramadan — hurled insults at each other over the invasion.
The summit of 2003 at Sharm Al Shaikh, too, was notable for an exchange of insults — this time between Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi and then Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia (now king), Abdullah.
Libya had been following its wayward course through decades, frequently putting Gaddafi at odds with fellow Arab leaders. Never was this more obvious than when he exchanged insults with Abdullah.
The rancour between the duo was set off by Saudi Arabia's suspicions of a Libyan plot to assassinate Abdullah. Gaddafi added fuel to the fire by making accusations about the foreign and American troops in Arab states on the eve of the Iraq invasion.
Neither the Egyptian hosts nor the Bahrainis, who were chairing the session, managed to contain the situation.
“King Fahd told me that he would cooperate with the Devil to protect his country,'' Gaddafi alleged. This comment was seen as an insult to the king, particularly since he held the revered position of Custodian of Islam's Two Holy Sites.
And Abdullah retorted: “Who brought you to power? Don't talk about matters you cannot prove. Your lies precede you and the grave is ahead of you.''
At this stage, the session was taken off air as the state-owned Egyptian TV decided that this was all too much for the Arab world to hear live.
Since that day, Abdullah and Gaddafi have neither sought nor found any common ground.
In the aftermath of the summit, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal commented on why Gaddafi had failed to apologise, saying, “He who does not have the characteristics of men and does not have noble principles, cannot do such things''.
This row harked back several decades to the 1971 summit when Gaddafi had a heated exchange with Jordan's King Hussain about the bitter fighting in September 1970 during which King Hussain forced out the Palestinian forces operating from northwest Jordan.
That row and the 1971 summit were important since they marked the point of no return for the two strands of Arab states — the more conservative presidencies and monarchies, and the more revolutionary regimes. Up till then, their shared interest in supporting Palestine had hidden their deep differences and different long-term interests.
Arab League summits
1. Cairo January 13-17, 1964
2. Alexandria September 5-11, 1964
3. Casablanca September 13-17, 1965
4. Khartoum August 29, 1967
5. Rabat December 21-23, 1969
6. Cairo (1st emergency summit) September, 1970
7. Algiers November 26-28, 1973
8. Rabat October 29, 1974
9. Riyadh (2nd emergency summit) October 17-28, 1976
10. Cairo October 25-26, 1976
11. Baghdad November 2-5, 1978
12. Tunis November 20-22, 1979
13. Amman November 21-22, 1980
14. Fes September 6-9, 1982
15. Casablanca (3rd emergency summit) September 7-9, 1985
16. Amman (4th emergency summit) November 8-12, 1987
17. Algiers (5th emergency summit) June 7-9, 1988
18. Casablanca (6th emergency summit) June 23-26, 1989
19. Baghdad (7th emergency summit) March 28-30, 1990
20. Cairo (8th emergency summit) August 9-10, 1990
21. Cairo (9th emergency summit) June 22-23, 1996
22. Cairo (10th emergency summit) October 21-22, 2000
23. Amman March 27-28, 2001
24. Beirut March 27-28, 2002
25. Sharm Al Shaikh March 1, 2003
26. Tunis May 22-23, 2004
27. Algiers March 22-23, 2005
28. Khartoum March 28-30, 2006
29. Riyadh March 27-28, 2007
30. Damascus March 29-30, 2008
Note: There were two summits before those listed above, but since they were in the very early days of the League they are not considered part of the list of Arab League summits.
1. Anshas, Egypt May 28-29, 1946
2 Beirut, Lebanon November 13-15 1956
Source: Arab League
