Orient Magazine

Friday March 30 2001.

concluded in the Jordanian capital Amman is like the fabled

curate's egg, good in parts.

And the good parts, to the surprise of media commentators, to

the credit of the Arab kings and presidents, and no doubt to

the dismay of the Bush administration, relate to Iraq.

Immediately after the summit closed I spoke by telephone with

Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. He was clear that on

the issue of the ten-year siege of his country, which has

killed more than a million of his compatriots, most of them

children, the Amman Declaration of the Arab

leaders marked the crossing of an important Rubicon.

The Iraq section of the declaration, adopted unanimously, was

unequivocal. The Arabs call unconditionally for the lifting of

UN sanctions on Iraq. Both Saudi Arabia - represented in the

powerful figure of Prince Sultan, the

defence minister - and Kuwait explicitly declared their

support for the lifting of the siege. And Iraq too - showing

flexibility in that other Iraqi demands, like the ending of

facilities for the illegal Anglo-American flights

in the fictitious 'no-fly-zones' - supported the text.

Thus 'the neighbours', the Gulf countries who, it is often

piously prattled, are being defended by the embargo have now

for the first time firmly expressed their demand for its end.

This outcome is a triumph for Iraqi diplomacy, which has put

away its megaphone and walked on eggshells to achieve this

result. It is a triumph for the huge masses of people who took

to the streets of both Cairo and Amman prior to the summit

demanding their leaders rise to the occasion. In so doing they

spoke for Arab public opinion, from Marrakech to Bahrain, for

whom support for Iraq has become both an article of faith and

a domestic political priority. It is a victory for the Arab

leaders who have, some of them belatedly, been determined to

grasp this nettle.

Some of those, like the UAE's Sheikh Zayed, have ploughed this

furrow almost alone for almost a decade. Others, like the new,

young and hugely impressive President Bashar Al-Assad have

become electrifying new forces in Arab politics. It is the

fruit too of the more than a decade of campaigning by Iraq's

friends around the world.

In 1999, when my friends and I drove a 1963 red London bus

from London to Baghdad, whipping up a storm of support for the

suffering people of Iraq, our audience grew exponentially all

the way from the Maghreb. We had three

demands which, given the local difficulties, we were in a

better position to clearly articulate than some of the

populations there. First an Arab summit - which then seemed an

impossibility given the divisions between Arab

countries on the issue and the vice-like grip of the US on its

clients in the region. Second, the resumption of flights from

Arab capitals to Baghdad - entirely legal even under the

punitive, Versailles-like conditions of the

ceasefire in 1991 - as a means of qualitatively lifting the

struggle to break the embargo. And thirdly, for a unified Arab

call for and end to the siege, as a means of whipping the

'Arabian carpet' from under the Anglo-American feet.

Fifteen months later all three of these demands - which

garnered the support of tens of millions of Arabs from the

Atlantic to the Gulf - have been realised.

In no small measure has this been achieved due to the

sacrifice of the children of Palestine, who have shed their

blood at the hands of the occupier, on the steps of the

Al-Aqsa mosque and the church of the Holy Sepulchre in the

Holy Land. The second Intifadeh, which rages still, changed

utterly the political conditions in the region. Suddenly - and

the uprising began only a little over six months ago - the

Arab regimes found themselves between the hammer and the anvil

of the Palestinian and Iraqi questions. If they did not move,

in the hammering they would have received, it would have

wrought dramatic changes in the shape and character of the

region. Powerless, as we shall see, within the grip of the

failed policy of 'separate peace' with

Israel to materially affect the course of events in occupied

Palestine, something had to give. And that something had to be

on Iraq.

But those who have paid the highest price for the victory in

Amman are the Iraqi people themselves. Not only the million or

more massacred quietly by the Anglo-American axis but the

millions more whose shrunken, blighted lives

have had to be eked out in conditions of utter deprivation and

bleak hopelessness. Their fortitude, courage, strength and

indefatigability represent the greatest victory over

imperialist domination since the triumph of the Vietnamese

people a quarter of a century ago.

Of course a declaration by Arab kings and presidents does not

represent the end of the affair. But it is the beginning of

the end. Shorn of the fig leaf of Arab compliance, the naked

aggression of Anglo-American policy towards Iraq now lies

brazenly exposed. Together with the breakdown of the consensus

in the Security Council - with France, Russian and China

increasingly bitterly opposed to the strategy of killing

Iraqis by bombs, bullets and

boycott - the Arab breach represents a death sentence for the

failed policies of the past.

There are increasing signs that this yawning truth is

recognised even in Britain where rhetoric is being scaled down

and a realisation that tail-ending the hawkish new power in

Washington may lead to very dangerous places

indeed.

Bush, Powell and Co and their stupid set of 'smart sanctions'

would require Arab participation, now rendered impossible by

the decision of the Arab summit. Likewise the 'Bay of

Pigs'type fantasy of implanting bases for the

discredited Iraqi opposition in Arab neighbouring countries

from which to launch "Contra" style terrorist operations in

Iraq.

In a cameo unnoticed in the western media, in the corridors of

the summit televised live on all Arabic television stations, a

remarkable encounter occurred. Izzat Ibrahim Douri, the

Vice-Chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council, leader

of the Iraqi delegation to the summit and right-hand man of

the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, ran into Saudi Defence

Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz, widely regarded as

America's man in the kingdom. The two men in the Arabic style

warmly embraced each other. It may

turn out for Washington and London to be the caress of death

to a decade of enmity between the two countries.

But the summit failed the people of Palestine. And it was

always certain that it would. Egypt and Jordan's 'peace'

treaty with Israel is a tectonic fault line in the Arab front

for the Intefadeh. It guarantees the butcher

Sharon that rhetoric marks the limits of a united Arab

response to Israeli crimes against the captive children of

Palestine.

Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad revealed to the meeting that

there were those who urged him to "give Sharon a chance" to

achieve peace with honour. Though he did not say so, he was

referring to at least one leader who was sitting around the

table. As long as some Arab countries are under treaty

obligations to the enemy, have enemy embassies on their soil,

enemy diplomats - and intelligence personnel - roaming their

capitals, and are being economically subverted via the Trojan

horse of the so-called 'peace process', real Arab solidarity

with the Intifadeh is a mirage.

The one dynamic of significance to emerge from the general

thrashing around in the summit's deliberations on Palestine

was the resurfacing of the idea of an international boycott of

Israel and of companies investing and trading with the country

which elected a war criminal as its leader, in defiance of the

real interests of Jews, both within and without Israel.

Immediately after the summit the London based Emergency

Committee on Iraq and Palestine announced the creation of a

Boycott Israel Campaign.

The committee can be reached at 13A Borough High St, London,

SE1 9SE, Tel: 0207 403 5200 fax: 0207 403 3823 and at

stuart@mariamappeal.com

From the misnamed Jaffa orange - Jaffa, once jewel of

Palestinian intellectual life, is now a downtrodden slum

quarter of Tel Aviv - to the sun-kissed beach holidays of

Eilat, an economic war to complement the struggle of

the heroic children of the Intifadeh against Sharon will now

ensue. Let battle commence.