Arab leaders will need answers to big questions

Taylor Luck previews the annual Arab Summit this week in Amman

Syrian president Bashar Al Assad will be a topic of discussion at the Arab Summit in Amman this week. SANA Photo

As Arab leaders and other decision-makers gather in Amman this week for the annual Arab Summit, they need more than a consensus. They need a breakthrough.

As crises continue unabated and foreign powers step up their influence – and interference – in Arab affairs, it is time for the Arab League to live up to its charter and to set unified policies for Arab states and defend their interests before they are dictated to them by foreign powers.

Although often rife with divisions, combined with a flair for the dramatic by some long-time Arab leaders, previous Arab Summits have resulted in some breakthrough compromises and set policies followed for years.

After the losses of the 1967 war, Arab states issued the “three no’s” that would be the standard in policy towards Israel for nearly three decades: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiation with Israel.

The policy even led the Arab League and some states to sever ties with Egypt after Cairo ratified the Camp David Accords.

In subsequent Arab Summits in the 1980s, Arab powers worked on initiatives and diplomatic efforts to end the civil war in Lebanon and helped lead to the Taif Agreement which ended the conflict in 1989.

In Beirut in 2002, Arab League members agreed to the landmark Arab Peace Initiative, under which all Arab states would recognise and establish normal relations with Israel in return for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories and recognition of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Even as it failed to influence outside dynamics shaping the region, the Arab leaders have presented a united front and provided a message to the West.

In 2003, as the United States invasion of Iraq loomed, Arab leaders used the summit to object to the Iraq war while calling on Saddam Hussein to comply with United Nations resolutions and inspectors in an eleventh hour attempt to avert war.

Yet as the Arab leaders convene in Amman on Wednesday, the key players in the crises crippling the region are increasingly non-Arab.

Iran continues funding and arming proxies in Syria and Iraq, flexing its military might from Iran all the way through Lebanon. Turkey has reasserted itself as an economic and military power, flooding Arab markets with Turkish goods and placing Turkish tanks on Syrian and Iraqi soil.

Russia has emerged as a new player in the region, looking to influence developments from Syria to Israel/Palestine to the coast of Libya.

Rather than acting like business as usual, it is time for Arab leaders to address increasing interference head-on. And it all starts with Syria.

The spectre of Bashar Al Assad will loom large as it has for the past four years. Seemingly on the verge of winning a five-year civil war, bringing Russian and Iranian influence to the heart of the Levant, Mr Al Assad is becoming both a player and a pariah.

In line with an Arab League decision in November 2011, Mr Al Assad was not invited to attend in Amman. But Arab leaders must nevertheless come to a firm and final conclusion on Mr Al Assad’s fate. Either it should support his remaining in power for an interim period – a condition being forced into reality by Russian and Iranian military support – or stand strong that he should step down, using the full force of their diplomatic, political and economic might.

Anything less than a unified Arab stance on Syria will leave the Arab League even further behind rapidly changing developments on the ground.

After years of leaving the conflict to simmer on the back-burner, Arab leaders must finally put their diplomatic and political efforts to bring stability and unity to Libya. Despite backing by the UN, the West and several Arab states, the UN-recognised government of national accord is losing ground, while Russia is bolstering its military and logistic support of Khalifa Hafter’s forces. Rather than let Libya become another Syria, Arab states should act now.

Importantly, Amman will also prove a chance for Arab leaders to reassess their ties with the US and the Palestinian cause.

Instead of having a final settlement dictated to the Arab world, Arab leaders have a chance once again to dictate their terms to ­Israel and the West.

If the two-state solution, and with it the Arab Peace Initiative, is truly dead as Donald Trump’s US administration and the Israeli government claim, Arab leaders must propose an alternative.

Arab leaders should be cautious when the summit turns towards the subject of terrorism and ISIL. Terrorism should be addressed, but not allowed to overshadow the economic, political and social causes affecting 360 million people across the region.

Arab leaders should use the summit as an opportunity to define what does and doesn’t constitute terrorism, to take away the use of the term as a blanket definition to further western, Russian or Iranian interests and deny the legitimate demands of citizens across the Arab world.

After decades of struggles, the Arab League and the Arab world is no longer risking divisions; it is risking irrelevance. The former can be solved, the latter may be permanent. Amman could be one of its last chances to prevent a loss the region may not recover from.

Taylor Luck is a political analyst and journalist in Amman