I write from Sert, the Libyan city which has hosted the latest Arab Summit. There is the same atmosphere that accompanies every Arab Summit, the difference remaining only in the extent to which this or that country's is willing to hold the Summit and to see it end without complaints. As for the content, i.e. the qualitative shift which any Arab Summit could produce with regard to the Arabs, there is nothing new there. Were those who expected more stances and decisions from the Arab Summit mistaken about its true capabilities? Or was the Summit itself mistaken when it ended with reiterated decisions that do not fulfill the ambitions of Arab peoples? It is the same question that usually goes around after every Arab Summit, ever since it turned ten years ago into a regular summit held “in turn” in Arab countries, such that it seemed that the regularity of the Summit had become a burden for Arab leaders. Indeed, when they took the decision to hold the Summit each year in an Arab country, the latter had imagined that setting a fixed date for it at the end of the last week of March of every year would solve the problems of the Arabs straight away, without having to wait to call for an emergency summit. Thus, the matter has reached the point where simply holding the regular summit at the scheduled time has become an Arab achievement according to Arab leaders, and where one can only pray to God that the Summit will pass without any problems, although its main function is to avoid solving problems before they occur and to solve them if they do. Thus the Summit itself has turned into a problem. The Arabs are skilled at reaching consensual formulations to satisfy all parties, and Arab disagreements usually remain the same before and after summits. Yet everyone exerts prompt efforts to reach formulations in which there seems to be no disagreements. This is why there has been much talk in the concluding statements of every Arab Summit, including that of Sert, of demands, assertions, affirmations, and warnings, in addition of course to expressions of condemnation, denunciation and censure, without clear-cut decisions to take clear-cut action. It is as if the purpose was to get through the Summit without anyone being able to accuse it of having made the mistake of not addressing this issue or that problem. It is noteworthy that every Arab Summit that has been held in the past five years has been dubbed before being held “the summit of reconciliation”, and that the state of affairs of the Arabs has nonetheless remained the same. Even if reconciliations take place between parties through handshakes or around dinner tables, they remain reconciliations of form in front of cameras and projectors without turning into actual realities, because reconciliations contradict each other, stances disagree with each other and the state of affairs of the Arabs is weak, feeble and powerless to confront storms. It would have been natural and expected for the scenario of the Sert Summit to differ in one way or another from the recommendations of previous summits, simply because the Summit was held in Libya, and not because the Arab state of affairs has changed in any way. Yet the difference was in the form, not the content, and the Arab peoples will remain the hostage of the feeble Arab state of affairs, which relies on words rather than deeds, words which are perhaps no longer heard or which reach non-Arab parties that have come to influence the Arab World much more than it is in the ability of Arab countries themselves to do so. It is not strange for the Sert Summit not to have been preceded by demonstrations in Arab capitals calling on leaders to take certain stances, as it seems that despair has befallen their peoples and taken hold of them, and that they no longer hope for any good, having become convinced that the Arab body was in need of treatment first to later be able to take any stance. Nor is it strange for no reactions to emerge at the popular level in any Arab capital towards the Summit's decisions and concluding statement. Indeed, frustration now precedes the Summit rather than follows it, and the quest for the perfect summit has become akin to the quest for the utopia of Plato's Republic. Indeed, the times now only allow the Summit to be held and to pass in peace without also fulfilling the hopes and ambitions …of leaders.
