People expressed their anger over the decision of President Trump to declare Jerusalem as capital of Israel. This decision was issued 1995 by the Congress, but was avoided for 22 years by three former US presidents: Clinton, Bush and Obama. In Egypt, newspapers headlines reflected such anger and wrath accusing Trump of giving another Balfour Declaration and Demonstrators erupted to burn US and Israeli flags and effigies of Trump.
We have to realize our reality if we in the Arab World are serious about becoming doers rather than mere responders to what others does. The masses can do nothing but expressing their anger, but the governments and ruling regimes must do more than denounce or reject the US decision, or export news of their people s angry protest against it. They should instead adopt political stances and decisions that would demonstrate to the US and its President the magnitude of their wrongdoing.
We must realize that the US is driven by its strategic interests and national security; this was what made three former US presidents persuade Congress to put off the 1995 decision going into force, in order to avoid anticipated escalation in the Middle East crisis. The three former presidents chose to stabilize the peace process before igniting the spark of a new crisis by moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
So what has changed today? We must admit that the last 22 years have seen the weight of Arab and Islamic States dwindle, also the clout of oil States. Arab States became increasingly fragmented, and they failed to attain any form of regional unity that would have transformed them into a politico-economic bloc to be reckoned with. The Palestinians, riddled with internal divisions, compromised their cause as they indulged in conflicts and questionable alliances that stocked them with funds and arms. They gave the Israelis the perfect pretext to walk out of peace negotiations; they claimed they could not know who to talk to: Ramallah s Palestinian authority or Gaza s Hamas. The Palestinians compromised their own case even before the US, which has long bragged that it fostered the peace process, did. Egypt, for its part, repeatedly attempted to achieve Palestinian conciliation but did not succeed because of non-ending Palestinian procrastination and stalling. The Palestinian people s dream to settle down in a State of their own was effectively dashed.
What now? Will we swallow Trump s decision to the last bitter drop? Will we merely curse our incapacity and make do with burning effigies and flags? This will definitely be our fate if we do not wake up, review our positions, and rise above personal interests and conflicts. Arab countries ought first to sit to their own negotiation table and come up united in one hefty politico-economic bloc that would impose itself on the world according to well-recognized measures. The Arab League must rise from its sleep—not to say its death—and take decisions that would make the US and its President realize that their recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel comes at a very high cost of US interests and national security. We cannot make the world listen to us and take us seriously unless we attain this and achieve Palestinian conciliation.
I go back to an editorial I wrote seven months ago under the title “Amman Summit: embellishment, ranting, incapacity”; it accentuates my frustration and helplessness. In that editorial I presented and analyzed the resolutions of the summit and the Arab capacity at evading the issues and challenges that face Arab States. When it came to the Palestinian cause, there was nothing but the customary clauses of denouncements and rejection, decrying Israeli attempts to change the legal and historical situation of Jerusalem. Again, members of the Arab League appealed with world States not to move their embassies to Jerusalem. However, the summit did not decide how its member States would proceed if Israel persists in its violations, or if any State moved its embassy to Jerusalem. No one dared remind the Arabs of the Arab League s 1991 decision to sever ties with any State that moved its embassy to Jerusalem; the decision which was only applied to El Salvador. No one dared ask what if the US does it? If the Palestinian cause was compromised by the Arabs, why are we surprised that the US compromises it too? Will the Arab States recall their ambassadors from the US? Will they sever relations with the US? Or will they find it enough to burn effigies and the US and Israeli flags?
