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The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon and
Palestine as well as the ongoing U.S. process of abruptly and
forcibly delivering to life a lifeless new U.S.-modeled Iraqi
regime are crushing the Arab League "system" in a life-or-death
test and again pushing it into a collision course with the people.
Almost all the constitutions and basic laws of the Arab League's
twenty-two states, including the stateless Palestinian Authority,
stipulate that their peoples and countries are an integral part
of the "Arab nation" and some explicitly pronounce
Pan-Arab unity as a national goal. Yet almost all of them in
practice pursue policies that flagrantly violate their constitutional
stipulations, enveloping their contradiction in Pan-Arab rhetoric
Jargon.
The desperate outcries for Pan-Arab help by helpless Palestinian,
Iraqi and Lebanese Arabs who are being crushed by the American
and Israeli merciless war machines are falling on deaf ears with
the Arab League's states, failing to realistically accept the
proven fact of life that no help will ever come from the moribund
and defunct regional grouping, still floating only thanks to
the mercy of the U.S. midwife of the "New Middle East."
And despite the proven and frustrating history of the Arab League
"system," Arab masses are time and again turning to
this futile regional grouping to look for help in times of crises.
"Where are the Arabs?" "Let the Arabs see!"
were yelled with coarse voices to television cameras, sometimes
in an Arab Palestinian accent, other times in an Arab Iraqi or
Lebanese accents, by the wailing and heart-breaking women, children
and men while collecting the live shreds of the bodies of their
beloved ones whether in Gaza, southern Lebanon or western Iraq,
but their outcries had no echoes in the republican or royal ruling
palaces of the member states.
The hope of an "Arab solution" should have faded a
long time ago, but the Pan-Arab feeling of affiliation seems
to run deep in the hearts and minds of the Arab masses in spite
of their religious or cultural diversity and the intensive indoctrination
for loyalty to the "nation state" ideology adopted
by each and every one of the Arab League member states.
The ruling elites of the "league" states are very well
aware of the Pan-Arab bond that fuses the Arab masses in cross-border
waves of solidarity in times of crises and have over the time
engineered political internal and external mechanisms to pre-empt
a tsunami wave that might threaten the nation-state independence.
They have trumpeted "solidarity" among the Arab League
states as an alternative to the massive yearning for unity or
union, but this solidarity has fallen apart and proved flawed
in times of crises.
They promoted the Islamic belief of the overwhelming majority
of the Arab masses as an alternative ideology, an orientation
that had also listening ears in the western and Israeli corridors
of power. However the awakening of the Islamic giant has proved
counterproductive and instead cemented further the Pan-Arab bond
as a decisive unifying factor.
They have over-trumpeted the "nation-state" ideology
and loyalty to the verge of the absurd, that could not convince
the cross-border tribal ties, the cross-border sectarian loyalties
or the Pan-Arab deep-rooted ideology.
Arab League states individually and as a group failed to mobilize
member nations under the Arab League defense pact, could not
prevent the Palestinian Nakba in 1947-48, the Israeli occupation
of Arab land of four member states in 1967, the Israeli occupation
of southern Lebanon up to the capital Beirut in 1982, the Iraq-Kuwait
crisis in 1990, the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in
2002, and their helplessness was and is still considered an integral
part of all Arab crises, and not part of solutions thereto.
De-Arabization of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
for example was a prerequisite and a precondition to recognize
the PLO by the United States and Israel as a partner to the Oslo
peace accords. A dozen articles of the PLO National Charter were
deleted and 16 amended, mostly dealing with the Pan-Arab affiliation
of Palestinians, in 1998.
Another example: Jordanian law for political parties prohibits
any cross-border organizational ties.
Other Arab nation-states that adopt Pan-Arabism have realistically
subjected their ideology to the dictates of the higher "national
security."
The Arab League was founded by seven Arab states under either
British or French mandates on March 22, 1945 to: Serve the
common good of all Arab countries, ensure better conditions for
all Arab countries, guarantee the future of all Arab countries
and fulfill the hopes and expectations of all Arab countries.
The British and French colonialists at the time practically sponsored
the creation of the league as a guarantee to preempt the realization
of the Arab aspiration for unity, but their American inheritors
have an expanded plan for the region to incorporate the new reality
of ground: i.e. Israel.
The U.S. and Israeli strategists are keen to incorporate Israel
as an integral part of the region and because it could not join
an "Arab" League they are keen to keep the Arab League
floating until their alternative of the "New Middle East"
has acquired enough prerequisites to be enforced on the region.
The failure of the Arab League system could logically herald
the failure of its member states and in the long run could lead
to the fall of both the league and the political "systems"
that desperately cling to keep it floating.
This failure has led realpolitic ruling elites to seek
"foreign solutions" to Pan-Arab crises.
The Arab League was de-Arabized a long time ago.
Replying to a question about closing the Palestinian information
office in 1987 and the creation of a Palestinian state, the former
U.S. Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, told an audience of diplomats
and journalists at the National Press Club in Washington, that
Arabs were never united neither for war nor for peace, that Algeria's
former president, Chadli bin Jadid, was the only visiting Arab
leader to urge the U.S. Administration to support the creation
of a Palestinian state. Had 21 Arab nations closed the offices
of the USIA in their capitals, Washington would have opened the
PLO information office within days, he said.
Did the Arab League change since 1987? Yes it did, but towards
more de-Arabization.
The failure of the Arab leaders to convene an emergency summit
meeting on the Israeli offensive on Lebanon has exacerbated the
people-state conflict.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah,
West Bank. He is the editor of the English language Web site
of the Palestine Media Centre (PMC).
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