CAIRO — The creaking railway carriage of peace
has already derailed and there is no way of putting it back on track.
Arab League (AL) Chief Amr Moussa may have not been
prescient when he voiced out the previous pessimistic statement
Saturday evening, July 15, but he was just reacting to what he has
seen during an emergency Arab Foreign Ministers' meeting at the
Cairo-based Arab League.
The Arab Foreign Ministers did not like to go
beyond an old Arab official position of denouncing Israel's
aggressions and declaring support to the
"steadfastness" of the Lebanese resistance, repeating the
hoary old clichés.
This has driven Moussa's hopes about peace to the
Styx.
"All the mechanisms, including the (Middle
East) quartet have failed the peace process or contributed to burying
it. The only way to revive the peace process is to take it back to the
Security Council," somber Moussa said.
Since Hizbullah took prisoner two Israeli soldiers
on Wednesday, July 12, Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed up to
100 people, including women and children, and rained destruction down
on Beirut infrastructure.
Israel has also been leading a punishing air
campaign in Gaza since an Israeli soldier was taken prisoner by
Palestinian fighters on June 25, sparking the worst
Israeli-Palestinian crisis in months.
Both Hizbullah and three Palestinian resistance
groups, which claimed the prisoner-takings, have demanded the release
of Lebanese and Palestinians, chiefly juveniles and women, in Israeli
jails.
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"Some states have taken hasty decisions that weakened the Arab position," said Mualem.
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The Arab Foreign Ministers' pronouncements during
the meeting were fraught with conflicting points of view reflecting
the disintegrated overall Arab standing towards what is going on now
in heavily-battered Lebanon.
Most divided of all were the Foreign Ministers of
both Saudi Arabia and Syria who locked horns during the closed session
of yesterday's meeting over Hizbullah.
"Some states have taken hasty decisions that
weakened the Arab position," Syrian Foreign Minister Walid
Al-Mualem moaned in an apparent reference to Saudi Arabia which
criticized the timing of Hizbullah operation, which took two Israeli
soldiers prisoner and killed eight others, and held it responsible for
the escalation.
"This is a blatant interference into the
internal affairs of my country, something I totally reject," his
Saudi counterpart Saud Al-Faisal groaned.
"Your dreams are devilish," Saud sniped.
"No, his dreams are rosy as the current Arab
situation has no room for any uncalculated adventures," Mohamed
Al-Sabah, Kuwait's Foreign Minister, jumped into the fray.
"Arab unity is the best thing we can
reach," Mualem kicked back, "I feel deeply sorry for what
has been expressed now."
Arab diplomatic sources said that the Arab Foreign
Ministers were divided into two groups: one, containing Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, Iraq and the Palestinian Authority.
This first group voted for calming down tensions
between the Lebanese and the Palestinians, on the one side, and
Israel, on the other. They liked to label Hizbullah's position as
"irresponsible".
The other group contained Syria, Algeria, Lebanon,
Sudan, Yemen and Qatar.
This group was for standing by the side of the
Lebanese and Palestinian resistance, who are struggling for the
attainment of the legal rights of their peoples.
No Answer
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"Your dreams are devilish," Saud told Mualem.
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The press conference that followed the meeting of
the foreign ministers was full of questions but no answers.
This made it look like a trial of the Arab regimes
which are not able to go beyond mere condemnation of the Israeli
aggressions against Lebanon and Palestine.
Most journalists lashed strongly out at Arab
summits which in most cases produced no results on the ground.
A journalist asked about what the Arabs will do,
away from diplomatic channels, to stand up to the Israeli aggressions.
"Till when will more pieces of the Arab world
continue to be sliced away from it?" a question went.
Moussa had no answer. "I can't answer till
when," he said.
The discussions of the Arab Foreign Ministers in
Cairo boiled down to a mere
"condemnation of the Israeli aggressions."
"Arab gatherings have always ended that
way," commented many observers.
They even perceived a contradiction between
Moussa's demand that the whole matter be referred to the Security
Council and his "the international community has offered nothing
to the Arabs".
