Democratic Palestine : 34 (ص 15)
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- Democratic Palestine : 34 (ص 15)
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The Arab Summit
The agenda of the extaordinary Arab
summit held in Casablanca, Mcrocco
on May 23-26, 1989, centered on three
main issues: the Palestinian question,
the Lebanese crisis and the Iraq-Iran
dispute. The most prominent event in
the summit, however, was the official
return of Egypt to the Arab league
which took place even before the
summit assembled when Egyptian
Foreign Minister Ismat Abdul Majid
joined a foreign ministry meeting one
day prior to the opening night. The last
time Egypt was present in an Arab
foreign ministers’ meeting was in
February, 1979 in Kuwait which was
convened due to the break out of
fighting between the two Yemens.
All efforts to agree on who would
represent Lebanon in the summit fail-
ed. For the first time since the first
Arab summit in 1964, Lebanon’s seat
remained vacant despite the fact that
Lebanon’s file was being reopened for
the first time since 1982.
CASABLANCA: EGYPT’S
SUMMIT
In his opening speech, King Hasan II
of Morocco particularly welcomed the
return of Egypt to the Arab League and
neglected any mention of the Palesti-
nian uprising in the occupied ter-
ritories. After his short speech, King
Hasan II called on President Mubarak
to address the summit. Although there
was much discussion about whether
Egypt should even attend the opening
session, Mubarak insisted upon
delivering a speech. Mubarak com-
menced his long speech by saying,
«... In the past years, Egypt was the
present absentee, due to your con-
tinuous efforts and sincere nationalist
feelings which was clear through the
exchange of uninterrupted visits and
contacts!» Mubarak also called on the
Arab leaders to agree on a joint peace
plan based on the Fez plan approved in
1982. He emphasized that all Arab
states should be committed to the prin-
ciple of non-interference in the internal
affairs of each other. In the major part
Democratic Palestine, August 1989
of his speech, however, Mubarak con-
centrated on issues of peace, prosperi-
ty, development and _ scientific
technology, in addition to the threats of
natural catastrophies. Meanwhile, he
ignored addressing the confrontation
with the Zionist enemy and Israel’s
colonialist schemes in the area.
Concerning the Palestinian question,
Mubarak confined his speech with
reiterating support of the Palestinian
people’s right to resist the occupation
and to choose the suitable path to
achieve their goal, without any mention
of the Palestinian uprising.
As far as his position vis-a-vis the
Lebanese crisis, Mubarak said that he
allies with the Lebanese people of all
sects and confirmed the necessity of the
withdrawal of all «foreign troops»
from Lebanon, and to enable the con-
stitutional institutions to fully practice
their legal powers.
Egypt’s unconditional official com-
eback to the Arab League was not a
surprise and was not even subject to
discussion in the summit. Today, the
Arab states discovered that the decision
they had taken 11 years ago in Baghdad
to boycott Egypt was the wrong deci-
sion, In 1978, this decision was con-
sidered the minimum platform for
Arab consensus in confronting the most
dangerous turning point in the history
of the Arab-Zionist conflict since the
1967 defeat. Yesterday’s minimum
platform has become extremism today,
and Egypt-still entangled with the
Camp David Agreements officially
comes back to assume its place in the
Arab League. We say «officially»
because Mubarak made it clear in his
speech that the Baghdad summit
resolution was never implemented in
reality. Needless to say that the best
Arab summit resolutions were those
that were never implemented. One ex-
ample is the resolution of the first Arab
summit in 1964 concerning the forma-
tion of a united Arab front in order to
confront Israel’s plan to detour the
Jordan River. A better example is the
decision taken in the last Arab Summit
(Algeria, 1988) that mandates that the
Arab states provide all needed finan-
cial, political and media support to the
Palestinian uprising.
Egypt’s official comeback is not
astonishing since the 1987 Amman
Summit took a decision allowing
bilateral relations between any Arab
state and Egypt. Sure enough, most
Arab states rushed to resume their
relations with Egypt after the above-
mentioned summit. Of course this is
not to say that these relations did not
exist before the decision. Many Arab
capitals have had covert political and
economic relations with Cairo even
during Sadat’s regime and some
became overt after his assasination.
Egypt’s comeback was precedented
by an earlier one, also in Casablanca, in
January 1984 when the Islamic Sum-
mit, also headed by King Hasan II, re-
awarded Egypt its membership in the
Islamic Conference Organization. This
is to note the role of King Hasan II-
the sponsor of the Camp David regime
in the area-in orchestrating the scenario
we are witnessing today.
Clearly, Egypt’s official return to the
Arab League is an indication of many
things. Firstly, the level of deterioration
in the Arab officialdom in the past
decade, compared to the threat of the
Camp David Agreements not only to
Egypt but to the Palestinian cause, the
Arab world as a whole and the future of
the Arab-Zionist conflict. Secondly,
this return sets a precedent for allowing
future violations of invariable prin-
ciples such as violating Arab consensus,
particularly when detrimental issues are
involved. As well as, the transforma-
tion of a national struggle to a
political or a border struggle between
Israel and each Arab state and
therefore giving the right of each state
to seek its own suitable solution.
Thirdly, there is no doubt that Egypt’s
return was a diplomatic victory for the
US and Israel. Israel can now cross over
the Egyptian bridge to the entire Arab
world.
If one is in doubt about how some >
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