GAZA CITY, March 21, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – Hours before the start of the Arab summit in the Algerian capital, Palestinian experts said the incumbent Arab regimes have crumbled and cannot stand or even counterattack mounting American pressures, let alone helping restore usurped Palestinian rights.

“The regimes have indeed lost their balance after the recent US onslaught on the region,” Salah Al-Baradweil, the chairman of the Palestinian National Assembly for Culture and Thought, told IslamOnline.net Monday, March 21.

“The Palestinians should not pin high hopes on those collapsing regimes, who are preoccupied with one and only thing: how to protect their thrones.”

Ahmed Al-Deek, member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, does not expect much from the Algiers summit, slated for March 22-23.

“It will be a mirror image of past summits, which failed to take meaningful decisions to address the Arab crisis,” he told IOL.

“The outcome of the successive Arab summits is a natural result of the crisis suffered by the region and its leaders.”

Veteran Palestinian peace negotiator and politician Haidar Abdel Shafi agreed that the current Arab regimes cannot help the Palestinians in their distress.

“We as Arabs have great untapped potentials which, if exploited, can yield great results,” he said.

He appealed to the Arab leaders not to leave the Palestinian Authority prey to the US administration and its chief ally Israel.

“Believe me don’t waste your time by tuning in to the summit,” Qassem said.

Abdel Sattar Qasem, professor of politics in the Nablus-based Al-Najah University, had a piece of advice to the Arab peoples.

“Don’t waste your time by tuning in to the summit,” said Qasem, who vied in the Palestinian presidential elections and lost to Mahmoud Abbas.

He said the current regimes are “impotent” to even serve their peoples before proffering a helping hand to the Palestinians.

“These regimes are toeing the [US] line; hence, we should expect nothing of them,” he told IOL.

On the resolutions of the summit, the Palestinian expert said they would be toothless.

“And if they proved effective, they wouldn’t come into effect because only Israel and the US pull the strings.”

Qasem had some blame for the Palestinian leadership.

“It set the tone of defeat and gave the Arabs justifications to normalize ties with Israel,” he argued.

Egypt and Jordan have sent back their ambassadors to Tel Aviv for the first time in four years.

Some reports suggested that Israel some Arab countries have recently been working on normalizing relations behind closed doors.

Deek called on the Arab leaders not to “reward” Israel without a price.

Nevertheless, Baradweil and Deek agreed that there is still a glimpse of hope at the end of the tunnel.

Baradweil underlined the need to exploit the ceasefire pledged by resistance talks in their Cairo meeting to prove that they are peace partners as well as the US limbo in Iraq.

“It [the truce pledge] could cool down the US war on the Palestinians,” he said.

MP Deek was hopeful the Arab leaders would at least support the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and employ their clout with the Bush administration to press Israel into withdrawing from the occupied territories.

“At the diplomatic level, I believe that the Arab leaders can pressure the quartet committee [comprising the US, the EU, the UN and Russia] to that end.”

The Palestinian lawmaker also wished that the Arab leaders would translate their financial pledged into action to support the sluggish Palestinian economy, highlighting the daily predicament of Palestinians to eke out a living.

“There are Arab countries that support the Palestinian cause, thought it is not enough,” he said.

“But we should also put things into perspective as we don’t have a magic wand to make our dreams come true.”

The Palestinian MP, meanwhile, urged the Arab leaders not to “reward” Israel without a price.

“If they want to sell an initiative to the US concerning Israel, there should be in return a handsome gain for the Palestinians,” he said, referring to a controversial peace plan proposed by the Jordanians to the Algiers summit.

The plan, which has been revised after fierce opposition from most of the Arab foreign ministers, originally called for not linking the normalization of relations with Israel to full withdrawal form the territories occupied in the 1967 war, but rather to the planned Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip in July.

Arab leaders, at the 2002 Beirut summit, unanimously offered Israel normal relations if it withdrew from the territory it occupied in the 1967 war and allowed the Palestinians to set up an independent state with occupied Al-Quds (East Jerusalem) as its capital.