This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

With Arab world in chaos, Arab League summit displays lack of leadership and influence


Arab League summit meeting in Jordan on Wednesday (Arab News)

The Arab League used to be considered one of the most influential organizations in the world, representing the oil-rich nations of the Mideast, controlling many of the world’s most important trade routes. But that is not true anymore, since the “Arab Spring” of 2011, which was triggered by the death of a Tunisian food vendor, resulting in violent protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and then in Libya, and eventually spreading to almost every Arab country. Today, the entire Arab World seems to be collapsing in chaos, and the Arab League can do nothing but sit back, watch, and pray to Allah for deliverance.

Ironically, one of the last influential acts by the Arab League that the world paid attention to was unanimous approval in March 2011 of a request for Western nations to intervene in Libya and set up at no-fly zone. The violent protests in Libya had become a bloodbath that had spread from Benghazi and Tobruk in the east to Tripoli in the west. Muammar Gaddafi declared war on the protesters. He threatened to shoot to kill protesters and said he would crush any enemy. By April, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Libya were pouring into neighboring countries, and thousands were crossing the Mediterranean to reach Italy. The Arab League asked the West to intervene, as Gaddafi was threatening a bloody massacre in several cities, especially Benghazi.

The West finally did intervene, but what that incident proved most of all was that the Arab League could not solve its own problems, and that has become apparent today, where the fallout from the Arab Spring has not only paralyzed the Arab League, it’s gone further and split the League into factions.

The worst split has come out of the war in Syria. The civil war in Syria was caused by president Bashar al-Assad when he unleashed his army and air force against peaceful protesters in 2011. Things really turned around in August 2011, when al-Assad launched a massive military assault on a large, peaceful Palestinian refugee camp in Latakia, filled with tens of thousands of women and children Palestinians. Thousands of young Sunni jihadists from 80 countries around the world traveled to Syria to fight al-Assad, and they formed the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).

Saudi Arabia supported the so-called “moderate rebels” in Syria fighting al-Assad, while Iran stepped in, along with its Shia puppet militia Hezbollah from Lebanon, to fight on the side of al-Assad. Iran also increased its support to the Houthi Shias in Yemen, leading to a successful Houthi anti-government coup in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital city, in 2014.

This led Iran to brag that it was now in control of four Arab capitals – Beirut, Lebanon; Sanaa, Yemen; Baghdad, Iraq; and Damascus, Syria.

At the same time that this occurred, President Barack Obama appears to have withdrawn the United States leadership from the Mideast, particularly in Syria and Iraq, apparently leaving Iran and Russia as the strongest powers. In addition, President Obama pushed the Iran nuclear deal, which removed sanctions and greatly improved Iran’s prestige in the Mideast.

Today, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries are placing their hopes in President Donald Trump, who they hope will turn against Iran and more strongly support Saudi Arabia. However, even that hope further makes the point that the Arab League is unable to accomplish anything on its own, without the help of the West, especially the United States.

As long-time readers are aware, Generational Dynamics predicts that Iran and the West will be allies in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, and that China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries will be pitted against the US, India, Russia and Iran. In the Mideast, Generational Dynamics predicts a full-scale Mideast war, pitting Jews against Arabs, Sunnis against Shias, and various ethnic groups against each other. These predictions would suggest that improved friendly relations between the US and Saudi Arabia will be temporary. CS Monitor and Washington Times

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Arab League plays it safe by only condemning Israel and terrorism

The split in the Arab world is being further confounded by the fact that one of the Arab League members, Oman, seems to be increasingly siding with Iran on issues dividing that country and Saudi Arabia. Some reports have even suggested that Oman is serving as an intermediary between Iran and the Houthis in Yemen, even to the extent of turning a blind to the smuggling of Iranian weapons to the Houthis in Yemen.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who was a guest at the Arab League summit, said, “Divisions in the Arab world have opened the door to foreign intervention and manipulation, breeding instability, sectarian strife, and terrorism.”

Because the Arab League has no solutions to any of the serious problems facing the Arab world, Wednesday’s summit meeting focused on the only safe subjects that everyone could agree on: Israel and terrorism.

Jordan’s King Abdullah, who was hosting the meeting, summarized these issues:

It is therefore our duty to protect [young Arabs] from distortions to their religion and ideological beliefs, since terrorism poses a greater threat to Arabs and Muslims, who make up the majority of its victims…

Israel’s continued settlement expansion and its work to undermine chances for peace. There can be no peace, no stability in the region without a just and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian cause, the core issue of the Middle East, based on the two-state solution.

If you’re an Arab, it is always safe to wish for an end to terrorism. Furthermore, it is also safe to criticize Israel, and to call for the adoption of the “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, which would be a Palestinian state living in peace side-by-side with the state of Israel, which could only work in a fairy tale.

The prediction that I first posted in May 2003, just after President George Bush announced his Mideast Roadmap to Peace, is just as true today as it was then: Jews and Arabs are headed for a new generational crisis war, re-fighting the 1948-49 genocidal war between Jews and Arabs that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.

Today, no one seriously believes that the two-state solution is ever going to work, or that terrorism is going to do anything but continue to increase. Still, the Arab League has to call for something, and calling for fantasies is the safest thing to do. Middle East Eye and Arab News and Petra (Jordan) and Washington Post

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KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Arab League, Arab Spring, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Houthis, Libya, Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Iran, Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia, Beirut Lebanon, Sanaa Yemen, Baghdad Iraq, Damascus Syria, Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, Oman, Antonio Guterres, King Abdullah, Israel, Palestine
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