bidly revealing it was that Arab leaders meeting in Khartoum on Tuesday could agree to little of consequence, even as they were hosted by a regime that has efficiently engineered the slaughter and wretchedness of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Darfur. Only in repression, it seems, are the Arab states truly resourceful; in diplomacy, however, it is their cowardice and sterility that consistently prevail. […]
The true danger for the Arab states is that as they become less relevant in shaping the Middle Eastern agenda, the non-Arab peripheral states – Iran, Turkey and Israel – are becoming more so. Already, the Israeli elections have shown that Israel is united around a unilateral drawing of its border with the Palestinians, and it is persuading the international community of the benefits of this. Meanwhile, the Arabs offered nothing original on the Palestinians in Khartoum, while Arab publicists, forgetting their onetime loyalty to secular nationalist Palestinian slogans, now loudly celebrate Hamas, oblivious to the fact that its calls for a long-term truce give Israel precisely the time it needs to pursue unilateral policies.
As for Iran and Turkey, the first is intimidating and finagling its way toward hegemony in the Gulf region, seeking nuclear weapons, and meddling in Lebanese affairs; the second is slowly integrating into the European Union, whether it becomes a full member or not. The time is fast approaching where the Arab states will be ciphers in their own backyard, pawns or barricades between far more powerful actors. Khartoum would have been a good forum to discuss avoiding this. Instead, like much in Arab politics, it was a costly waste of time.
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