Assessing Doha

As near as I can tell from the early reports, about the only thing the Arab Summit agreed on was that they don't approve of the International Criminal Court warrant against ‘Umar al-Bashir. The President of the largest Arab country pointedly stayed away, the scene-stealing Brother Leader Qadhafi did his trademark scene-stealing, and some lip service was paid to the Arab peace initiative but without any strong new reaffirmation of it. At a time when a hard-line government is about to take power in Israel, this might have been a real opportunity to promote the initiative, but instead the usual inter-Arab quarrels (and the Arab League's rule requiring unanimity for any resolution), tended to produce a fizzle. The unanimity rule, which makes only the most anodyne resolutions possible — except, ironically, the agreement to back Bashir, whom the rest of the world wants to put on trial — is not particularly popular since it makes the Arab League almost useless, but to change it would require (of course) unanimity. In retrospect it is almost more surprising that the Arab League peace initiative was crafted in the first place, but it would have been refreshing to see it enthusiastically endorsed by the Doha Summit. The failure of Doha to bring the so-called moderates together with the so-called hardliners (or even to persuade Mubarak to show up) probably bodes ill for the soon-to-revive Palestinian unity talks. A rightist Israeli government, feuding Palestinian factions and a divided Arab world do not make for optimism, at least in the short term. I will be delighted to be proven wrong.