BEIRUT — Although the empty seat belonging to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat will be the center of attention at an Arab League summit that opens here today, the absence of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will be even more keenly felt.
It had been widely expected that Israeli conditions would block Arafat's attendance, but Mubarak's eleventh-hour decision Tuesday to bow out was a stunning development--and dealt a serious blow to a Saudi-backed Middle East peace proposal.
Mubarak's abrupt withdrawal from the summit undermined what had been a growing sense of unity among leaders here, who had appeared on the threshold of setting aside individual agendas in order to inject a political dialogue back into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Instead, the summit will be marked by notable no-shows: Half the seats reserved for 21 heads of state plus Arafat will be occupied by underlings. In addition to Egypt and the Palestinians, Libya, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Sudan and Mauritania are all slated to be represented at a lower level, although in some cases--including Saudi Arabia--that is because of illness.
In an added blow, a senior Jordanian government official said today that King Abdullah II also will not attend. He will be represented by Jordan's prime minister, the official said.
The failure of the Arab leadership to gather in its entirety at the summit serves as a reminder of one uncomfortable reality that the Arab League has struggled to overcome since it was founded in 1945: There is no "Arab world" to speak of, not in political terms. Myriad economic, social, political and religious forces are constantly pulling at the seams of Arab unity.
"Outside of our cultural identity, you have some strategic ties, but it is not a love affair," said Abdel Moneim Said, director of the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a government-sponsored think tank in Cairo.
But the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has galvanized the Arab world, and the Saudi peace plan had sparked a degree of optimism in a region weary of bloodshed.
As the leader of the Arab world's most populous nation, one of only two Arab countries--along with Jordan--to have signed a peace treaty with Israel, Mubarak's presence at the summit was considered essential if the Saudi plan was to have credibility.
