Towards a New Arab Moment

Abstract

Arabs are facing a very real complex and protracted crisis that some describe as an existential crisis, putting the future of the Arab region and the existing regional order at stake. It is not the first time that the Arab region has faced a complicated crisis. Since the foundation of the League of Arab States, we have faced several challenges: the creation of the Zionist entity and the failed attempt to prevent the declaration of the Zionist state project on the land of Palestine in 1948; the Arab military defeat at the hands of the Israeli assault in June 1967; and the crisis of the Egyptian–Arab divisions in the second half of the 1970s due to the dispute over Anwar Sadat’s approach towards political settlement with Israel. Still later we faced the unprecedented crisis of Kuwait’s invasion by its neighbor, Iraq, in 1990, which caused unparalleled disputes and divisions among Arabs. Over a decade later came the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. More recently we have faced the consequences of the popular uprisings that have ignited the Arab region since the beginning of the second decade of this century. And last but not least, Arabs are still embroiled in the unresolved Palestinian question and the US–Israeli Alliance and the American continuous biased support for the Israeli occupation, particularly during the presidential term of Donald Trump between 2017 and 2020. However, when one looks at the history and cycles of the multiple crises that we have faced, one may realize that a corrective process of recovery and rebound has always taken place in some way or another.Following the 1948 Arab defeat, the region was able to achieve a real development in its regional organizational structure, where Arab countries signed a common defense treaty and economic cooperation agreement between the member states of the Arab League in 1950, which caused a remarkable shift in the structure of the League. The charter of the Arab League has been criticized, however, for its lack of enforcement mechanisms for member states that do not vote on a certain decision. Hence, those who do not vote are not accountable to implement the decision as long as they will cause no harm to the charter, which then could jeopardize the role of the Arab League in resolving inter-Arab disputes, causing a risk to Arab security and all other common activities.The common treaty of defense was based on the principle of Arab collective defense, meaning that any aggression against any Arab state is an aggression against all Arab states and they would then share the implications collectively. For this purpose the treaty stated the creation of a common Arab council for defense made up of defense and foreign ministers from member states who would take obligatory decisions based on the voting of a two-thirds majority of its members. Unfortunately, the application of this treaty was never applied in facing the threats against Arab national security, yet this treaty of common defense has secured the required legal process to protect Arab security in a collective mechanism. On the other hand, with the revolution of July 1952, fewer than four years after the 1948 Nakba, a wave of national liberation movements took place across the Arab world from the mid-1950s to independence was achieved by all Arab countries, except Palestine, which remains occupied until today.After the war of 1967, the Khartoum Summit took place that same year and concluded with a comprehensive strategy to deal with the implications of the Six Day War with a consensus to refuse negotiation, signing a peace treaty with the Israelis or seeking unilateral solutions with Israel by any Arab State. The Khartoum Summit decided to strengthen the military capacity of states bordering Palestine and to support them financially so they could rebuild their military power. This strategy remained active until the October war in 1973, which represented the peak of Arab collective action to protect pan-Arab national security with a common Egyptian–Syrian war plan and the involvement of nine Arab countries in military action as well as the employment of an oil embargo as a threat by the oil-exporting Arab countries. After the Egyptian–Syrian split, following the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1973, the Amman summit in 1987 aimed to end this division, to facilitate a collective Arab action with respect to the Iran–Iraq War. The summit agreed on allowing Arab countries to reactivate their relations with Egypt on a sovereign basis, then continued to close the gaps between Egypt and other Arab countries by allowing Egypt to attend the Arab summit in Dar Al Baydaa in 1989 before returning the headquarters of the Arab League to its original base in Cairo. Then later, another phase of upheaval and division occurred with the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the Arab summits stopped taking place for six consecutive years, which was an indicator of the deep divisions between member states. Iraq was not invited to the Arab summit in 1996 in Cairo, which took place to take urgent action to address the rise of the Israeli right wing to power and its jettisoning of the Oslo Agreement signed three years earlier in 1993. Efforts took place at the Arab League summit in Cairo in 2000 and the Arab League summit in Amman in 2001 in order to reach conciliatory agreements between Iraq and Kuwait, but these failed to achieve results until the Beirut summit of 2002. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 ruined the whole conciliatory process and became a key event which marked the deterioration of the Arab situation.There is, however, an important point to make on the recovery process that enables the Arab order to rebound from crises. Two years passed after the defeat of 1948, which enabled the Arab order to succeed in sealing the common defense charter, six years passed for the Arabs to take action after the defeat of 1967, in the shape of the October War of 1973. Also a decade passed before the Arab–Egyptian division, caused by the peace between Egypt and Israel, was overcome. Again, it took the Arabs a little over a decade to reconcile Iraq and Kuwait. We still have not, however, recovered from the severe damage caused by the US invasion of Iraq, followed by the uprisings that erupted in 2011. The hope of the protestors was to shake up the current social, economic, and political status quo and improve conditions and the political systems in the region, yet they ended up leading to serious repercussions still felt until today. These repercussions represented a real threat to some Arab countries that were already in a fragile state and at risk from national divisions. The rise of terrorism then posed another major risk to many countries in the region. Another considerable consequence of the so called “Arab Spring” is the increase in foreign intervention in the Arab region and the overall regional system. Finally, the ambiguity around the principle of Arab national security resulted in the absence of a unified principle for this security and led to a lack of a unified approach towards the prioritization of threats with respect to a large number of Arab states. Part of the repercussions of all these dilemmas was that a group of Arab states normalized ties with Israel in a clear contradiction of the Beirut summit of 2002.It can be noted that these grave challenges coincide with similar challenges faced by the idea of Arab unity due to sectarian and ethnic tensions fueled by the external enemies of our nation, and diverse projects that they use to try to overthrow Arabism as a basis for the political existence of the peoples of the Arab nation and a framework for organizing their inter-Arab interactions and international relations. Nevertheless, it is only through Arabism, as appreciated by every Arab loyal to his nation, that is the basis on which correct and comprehensive solutions can be provided for all the internal and external challenges faced by the Arab nation in all fields. As everyone knows, the opponents and enemies of Arabism are engaged in frantic activities and are using various means to defend their alternative designs and distort the Arab renaissance project. Unfortunately, these activities and the media mechanisms they arm themselves with, which have increased their impact with the technological advances in communication, have been able to achieve some results, or at least have been able to disrupt the traditional Arab approach, which is supposed to guide us in our struggle to secure our present and bring our Arab nation to its legitimate future potential. Although no one can claim an objective assessment of the effects of anti-Arab activities, I argue that the current state of the Arab nation cannot be compared, for example, to that of the 1950s and 1960s, when the masses and elites of the nation—and sometimes even its governments—were united in a purely pan-Arab orientation in the face of the challenges of wresting independence from foreign occupation, repelling attempts to penetrate the Arab system with Western alliance projects, pursuing our national unity and achieving our independent development.Every sincere Arab feels that there is an urgent and obligatory task to defend Arabism by all possible means, to block suspicious projects that try to steer the nation on a path that achieves the goals of these dubious ventures. The Center for Arab Unity Studies is committed to its leading role in this battle, in which all Arab forces and institutions are participating, and is exerting maximum effort through its publications, seminars, and intellectual activities to succeed in that battle on which the future of our nation depends, a battle that needs the concerted efforts of all of us to answer the questions of the future in a way that enables us to face the dangers that lie ahead. In conclusion, one may also observe that the current global state of affairs might lead to a restructuring of the world order with an opportunity for Arabs to reconsider their options and see the value of joint Arab actions and unity to arm themselves in the face of current global transformations and challenges.