Clash of Summits

It is now the 22 day in the war on Gaza; more than 1100 Palestinians got killed and more than 4000 injured and became homeless. The Arabs who suppose to stand behind their brothers are so divided that they became so envious and distasteful from each other to the level that they are competing on who is the best in gathering everyone and have an emergency top meeting, so the credit would go to that host country if, just if, something comes out of these meetings and can help in finding a solution for this human-tragedy. However, Arab leaders became like someone who is having a problem he is part of it and instead of starting with himself and correct wrongness, he would just blame others and put it on bad luck - some would say "oh yeah, this is the fate that God has put for us"!!!! on these summits, Arab leaders will only give speeches, have a luxury reception and exchange pointless ideas without reach a solution, as usual. A new thing is taking place in recent summits, to safe face for some especially the fiascos by Ghaddafi during such summits, the leaders would go into closed sessions, so they can shout at each other freely (and can use their own local cursing).

One might ask how did the Arabs arrive into such shameful decision? there are many reasons but it started when Saddam invaded Kuwait and skillfully managed to cause the biggest crack in Arab-Arab relations. The other reason is the gap that keeps on growing between the leader and his people in the Arab world, by having every country's resources being spent on the protection and the ultimate survival of that leader and those around him. Iam not coming with new concept or view on the situation in the Arab world here, there are not a lot of things to be said, because every single Arab knows that, knows that the most important and the highest priority for most Arab leaders is how to stick his butt into the chair and dig his teeth deep into power - see Iraq now, don't get disillusioned with the fake democracy over there, like the resignation of a filthy-mouthed chairman of the parliament - they even lack the determination to come out with a replacement to that chairman or find the ways to provide the easiest and most basic services for its own people.

Back to the clash of summits: As mentioned before, no common Arab citizen would expect that any effective result from today's summit, because nothing came out of yesterday's session took place in Saudi Arabia, so there is none to be expected from the to be held in Kuwait, mainly it is economic summit, not political. Thus, the picture is clear, nothing will come out, no single top summit would result in having Egypt or Jordan, for example, cutting diplomatic relations with Israel - follow suit the move taken by Bolivia and Venezuela.


The magnitude of bombardment by Israeli army using all kind of new weapons on civilians (remember, civilians) is only some sort of show off rather than indulging into cleaning up areas from "terrorists", as they claim. Using white phosphor bombs and Cluster bombs on civilians areas is just a proof of the will of a country like Israel in challenging the whole international community by saying "I want to do what I want, whenever I want" - yesterday shelling of a building with news agencies is another example. What is happening in Gaza now is like banging hard with a hammer on someone's head who is already crying from the pain of migraine.







There are two outcome from this aggression: The first is how the majority of Arab leaders showed the level of isolation they live in, and their fear from their own people, which made them keep silent on any slaughter taking place in any of their co-nationalists. The second is that Israel is trying to prove to itself first (and to the world second) that after two years of failure politically and militarily in Lebanon, they could at least blow up the hell out of Palestinians as a revenge and this would serve as another example of bullying the whole region with the unlimited support of Bush and his administration. Speaking of Bush: I guess this is his "farewell kiss" to the region before leaving office.





P.S. The picture with this post are some of Carlos Latuff's works, a great Brazilian cartoonist whom I followed his latest work for some time ago. He did some work on Iraq and US policy too, that brought a lot admiration and compliments by many.