The Tunisian revolution was strongly present at the Arab Economic Summit in Sharm El-Sheikh. Its echo resounded in this tourist location hosting Arab officials who repeatedly spoke of some of its reasons, such as poverty and unemployment among the youth. They also discussed the importance of complementarity between economies, being one of the “requirements of national security”, in the words of President Hosni Mubarak. The summit in Sharm El-Sheikh seemed like a reaction to a social movement that has turned into a popular revolution in Tunisia, although the summit had been scheduled before these events that shook the four corners of the Arab World, forcing countries like Algeria, Egypt and Jordan to take measures in order to lower the prices of some goods and to retract decisions to stop subsidizing others. Secretary-General of the Arab League Amr Moussa best expressed this state of affairs when he said in his speech to those attending the summit: “What is happening in Tunisia in terms of the revolution is not an issue far from the issues of this summit which is economic and social development. (…) The Arab soul is broken by poverty, unemployment and general recession.” Yet Moussa and those gathered at the summit, who had been following the events taking place in the streets of Tunisia, and missing its President, a prominent figure of the Arab system, were not in addressing the situation up to the standard such an event called for. The way they dealt with it was merely a reaction to it. Experts estimate the number of unemployed Arabs at more than 15 percent of the youth, in need of 150 billion dollars to provide them with job opportunities, while the former head of the summit, the Emir of Kuwait Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, announced the establishment of a development fund to support small and medium businesses, with a two billion dollar capital, saying that “its executive regulations will be approved soon”. If such a decision reflects anything, it is the great distance at which the summit stands from the reality of what is taking place in Tunisia or in other countries, and the abysmal rift between Sharm El-Sheikh and the streets of Cairo, Rabat or Damascus – streets rife with poor, miserable, illiterate and unemployed people, exposed to the whims of ideological and intellectual winds, especially if one adds to this dismal situation the dead-end that faces their dreams of peaceful democratic change. Two Arab Summits: the first in the streets of Tunisia, where it is turning into popular democracy, far from the violence of fanatics and heretics; and the second in Sharm El-Sheikh, which had only regret, and the decisions of which were thus not up to the standard required by economic and political challenges, and as far as can be from reality.
