Seventeen Arab countries met for the Arab League summit in Doha, Qatar, on Monday in an attempt to overcome past differences and unite to face various issues affecting the region.
Inter-Arab reconciliation was not a randomly selected theme. Arab states have been deeply divided over how to engage with Iran, the Palestinians, and Israel. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah II has been promoting Arab reconciliation; this conference was meant to be an official platform to show Arab publics that their leaders can work together toward peace and prosperity.
But there was another, unspoken, audience that Arab leaders were addressing. Next week, President Barack Obama will be traveling to the Middle East. He is expected to lay out a comprehensive regional plan that will include resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and engaging Syria and Iran. Some of the Arab states-particularly the Gulf countries, which enjoyed warm relationships with George W. Bush-worry that President Obama's engagement with Iran could harm their countries' relationship with the United States. They see their own self-interest in positively participating in the Obama administration's regional goals, and feel that they can achieve much more united than divided.
The Doha summit demonstrated, however, that achieving unity can be arduous.
The summit itself had its disconcerting moments. Most notable was the warm reception given to Sudanese President Omar Bashir and the unanimous rejection of the International Criminal Court's decision to charge him with war crimes.
But the big issue was how to deal with Iran, as well as with its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas. Attitudes on that are affected by each country's domestic concerns, by their fear that a nuclear Iran is a threat to their own security, and by the competition for regional leadership.
The Egypt-Qatar rivalry is a case in point. Both countries have made bids for Arab leadership, usually in opposition to the other. Egypt has worked to broker Israel's cease-fires and prisoner exchanges with Hamas. It has also been working on a deal to reconcile Hamas and Fatah, and unite them into a Palestinian unity government (talks that stalled before Doha, but restarted in Egypt yesterday). Qatar has offered to take over the brokering role, but it is positioned differently than Egypt-Qatar has a close relationship with Hamas' (it provides it with political and financial support) while the Egyptian government fears Hamas' influence on its own Islamist opposition.
Egyptian-Qatari tensions heightened during the Gaza war. Qatar convened its own emergency summit where, according to a report by the Abu Dhabi newspaper, The National, "Hamas leader Khaled Mashal and the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad let loose a barrage of inflammatory criticism of Hosni Mubarak."
This summit in Qatar was meant to repair some of that damage, but Mubarak's last minute decision to stay home made that impossible. According to Mark Lynch's post on Foreign Policy's blog: "Up until a couple of months ago, all the talk in Arab politics was about how Egypt had lost its regional role and its strategic bearings. It had seemed to recapture its stride with its mediation of the Palestinian talks, and Mubarak had been aggressively working the Arab capitals to try to wreck the Doha summit. But nobody important followed his lead. Don't be surprised if Egypt's reputation suddenly plummets again as a result of its self-imposed diplomatic isolation, and if Qatari calls to challenge the Egyptian monopoly on Palestinian reconciliation gain traction."
There is no consensus in the Arab world on how to deal with Hamas. Each country's position on Palestinian infighting is informed by its own domestic and regional concerns and, most significantly, by its relationship with Iran.
The Mubarak government views Hamas as nothing but trouble. First, it is allied with Iran. And, second, it is the Palestinian wing of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which Mubarak considers his worst enemy. If Mubarak's declaration that Hamas was responsible for the war in Gaza tells us anything, it is that Egypt fears Iran and the Brotherhood more than it does Israel. If nothing else, their shared border and their shared relationship with the United States gives Egypt and Israel common ground for cooperation.
Qatar, on the other hand, is much closer to Iran. Courting Hamas presents it with the opportunity to both enter the regional political game and further ally itself with the Iranian axis-a relationship that Qatar may see as more profitable now that Syria is signaling a willingness to turn, at least somewhat, away from Iran and toward the United States.
Hosni Mubarak's absence from the summit made Syrian President Bashar Assad the most sought-after guest in Doha. But he may have been that anyway given the Arab states' interest in the Obama administration's foreign policy goals, which include overtures to Syria.
Assad is well aware of his current place in the limelight, and has been using it to give interviews recently on Israel's new government and the prospects for peace, sometimes seeming to contradict himself from one day to the next.
In Doha, Assad led the call for Arab solidarity and cooperation: "It is natural that reconciliations are the most important subject at this stage as the foundations for the success or failure of any decision we take in any area. In the absence of solidarity, or when solidarity is weakened, any agreement or decision remains a mere illusion with no possibility of implementation."
This message could be exactly what the Obama administration would like to hear, depending, of course, on what direction that solidarity takes. For instance, it would welcome Arab solidarity behind the Arab Peace Initiative, first offered in 2002. That initiative-offering Israel full peace and normalization in exchange for an end to the occupation-received only a tepid response from the Bush administration. The Obama administration welcomes it.
But in Doha, the Arab states were much more equivocal about the initiative than they have been in the past. Assad peppered his speech with warnings to Israel that the Arab peace proposal could be taken off the table, and a proposed Doha declaration stated that: "The Peace Initiative being proposed today will not be an offer for a long time. Arab commitment to this initiative is dependent on Israeli acceptance."
This warning is clearly directed at Israel's new government, but it may also be an attempt to get President Obama's attention and say, "don't ignore our peace proposal, the situation is urgent." Obviously, the Gaza war diminished Arab enthusiasm about the initiative and, without action by President Obama soon, it could be on its last legs.
His upcoming speech to the Muslim world gives him an opportunity to embrace the initiative and begin work on its implementation. There may not be another chance.
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