I've held a dim view of Arab summit meetings ever since I was in Amman,
Jordan, back in the mid-1970's, on death's doorstep with a 104 fever due to
some mysterious malady I picked up in the mountains of north Yemen.
Jordan's late King Hussein declared an emergency Arab summit to deal with a
crisis over the Palestinians. In those days, always scare hotel rooms in
the Arab World were worth more than human life. Burly security agents
summarily threw me out of my room. I spent 18 hours shivering on a bench
at Amman airport with all my clothes piled on top of me for warmth,
watching Arab delegations sweep into Amman for an vocal orgy of bombast and
empty promises.
A quarter century later, nothing has changed. Last week, the Arab states
held a two-day summit in Amman, the first since the 1991 Gulf War, aimed at
harmonizing inter-Arab regional relations, aiding the embattled
Palestinians, and ending America's relentless punishment of Iraq. The
result: another embarrassing failure that showed the Arab states'
weakness, disunity, and continuing dependency on the United States.
Iraq and Kuwait remained at scimitar's drawn, unable to resolve their
bitter feud. The 22-member Arab League promised US $40 million a month to
the Palestinian Authority, which was bankrupted by Israel's cutoff of
remittance payments. According to the UN, 38% of Palestinians are now out
of work; one million live below the poverty level.
But then Arab diplomats did their usual backstabbing by leaking to the
press that the money might not be forthcoming because of corruption in the
Palestinian Authority - as if other Arab states were any less corrupt. A
billion dollars grandly promised by the Arab League last October to the
Palestinians was, as usual, a mirage.
This summit of the impotent was primarily motivated by the surging tide of
anger across the Muslim World over Israel's increasingly brutal repression
of rebellious Palestinians, which last week included assassinations, air
and artillery bombardments, and shelling by tanks after the deaths of an
Israeli infant and two teenagers. Arab regimes, fearing their people's
fury would be vented against them, had to show they were doing something to
aid Palestine. The something amounted to the usual ritual condemnations of
Israel, followed by a good lunch.
Days after the summit ended, the United States heaped humiliation on its
Arab `allies' by vetoing the dispatch of a United Nations observer force to
the Israeli-occupied territories. Since the end of the Cold War, the US
has cast five UN vetoes, four to block international action against Israel.
President George Bush, echoing the Israeli line, went out of his way to
blame the crisis in the Israeli-Occupied Territories on PLO chief Yasser
Arafat.
Calls across the Arab World for an oil embargo or boycott of US goods to
support the Palestinian `intifada' goods fell on deaf ears.
The reason was painfully clear: most Arab regimes are too beholden to the
US to do more than make peeps of protest.
Egypt, with 38% of the Arab World's population, relies on $2.1 billion in
annual US aid for over half its food and arms. This aid is controlled by
Congress, which, on Mideast matters, gets its marching orders from the
powerful Israel Lobby. Thanks to the 1978 Camp David Accords, Israel
gained de facto control of Egypt's food jugular vein. Egypt's military,
which keeps President Husni Mubarak's regime in power, is armed by the US,
but kept on a very short leash by limited supplies of US spare parts and
munitions. Consequently, Egypt cannot wage a major war against Israel, but
is only capable of attacking Libya or Sudan, both US enemies.
Jordan is in much the same fix. Sixty percent of its people are
Palestinians. The US-armed and financed beduin army keeps King Abdullah
on his throne. American aid allows Jordan's economy, ravaged by the embargo
of Iraq, to limp along. Both Egypt and Jordan, always described as
`moderate Arabs' by the US media, signed peace treaties with Israel - under
political and financial pressure from the US, which also holds their debt.
Saudi Arabia is the Germany of the Mideast: rich but politically powerless.
The Saudis even deny ammunition to their meager armed forces, lest they
try to overthrow the monarchy, relying on beduin militia and the US for
protection. Kuwait and the Gulf Emirates, terrified of both Iran and Iraq,
have simply gone form being British protectorates to American ones.
Iraq lies in ruins. Syria, the only Arab nation beside Egypt with real
military power, and one of the few Arab states not under the tutelage of
America's Oil Raj, is nearly bankrupt. Its army and air force are stuck
with obsolete, 1960's vintage Soviet weapons that are three generations
behind Israel's hi-tech, US-supplied arsenal.
Economic strength underlies military power. Amazingly, the combined
economies of the entire Arab World, including North Africa, some 240
million people, are only equal to that of Spain's 39 million inhabitants,
and smaller than Canada's. The Arab World cannot even feed itself, and
produces next to nothing. As one cynic noted, the only technology
developed by the Arab World in the past fifty years is the car bomb.
As Israel blasts the wretched Palestinians and hints at attacks against
southern Lebanon, Syria, and even distant Iran, the Mideast states dither
in fear, confusion, and mutual suspicion. The non-democratic regimes that
misrule the Arab World can't decide which danger is greater: an enraged,
belligerent Israel or their own angry people.
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2001
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