The success of the Arab summit will depend on whether or not the Arab masses believe that Saudi Arabia is becoming less friendly with America.

The Arabs Are Coming

Let’s say you’re Saudi Arabia and you’re stuck with a strategic regional rival, Iran, whose President keeps blaring anti-western rhetoric that the Arabs just love to hear. How do you confront such a rampant threat?

How about restoring Arabism from the freezer to frame this conflict as one between Arabs and non Arabs (read Persians), mixing in some make-believe anti-Americanism to bring back the hardliners from Iran’s lap into the fold, while discretely reshaping the Arab project into a more moderate and progressive project to placate western countries?

Don’t bother worrying about what seems like an American/Saudi rift. In fact, the louder the noise, the merrier.

Emile Lahoud insists that Lebanese PM Seniora will attend the Arab summit as a ‘guest’. The Saudis don’t agree

Don’t let those pesky Arabs bully you

The Baabda palace issued a statement that the Arab League summit was for “kings, heads of state and princes” and that anyone else is only considered as a “guest.”

Perhaps Mr. Lahhoud, who will be traveling abroad the MEA, should pick up a copy of the free “Al-Hayat” newspapers available on board. The newspaper, which is a Saudi Government media outlet, published today the agenda of the coming Arab summit. Here’s the wording on Lebanon:

Translation:
The summit will discuss providing political and economic support to the Lebanese Government to keep national unity and the security and stability of Lebanon and its sovereignty over all its territory.

It’s obvious who the host thinks the unwelcome guest is.

Something deep in my gut is not comfortable with the latest Iranian British row.

I was having a mental exercise the other day. I was trying to figure out how the U.S would ever pull off a war on Iran with all the troubles it’s having at home with Iraq.

One of the ‘creative’ scenarios I thought of was this: The British would provoke the Iranians, the Iranians would over-react, Britain would then declare war and the US would have to “return the favor to our allies”. A great excuse: “We can’t leave our friends in this alone. They stood by us when we needed them most”

It’s not as far-fetched as you might imagine. Just think of this: Britain has been the most hardline country when it comes to Iran in the last few weeks. From reports in its press about impending American air-Strikes on Iran to hardline comments made by the British ambassador to the Security Council about the futility of giving Iran second chances.

By seizing 15 UK royal marines for “suspicious acts“, Iranians are effectively trying to get back at the Brits. Remember, we’re talking about a country that went to war over a tiny Island at the other end of the world. The Brits are not happy. They are “Demanding” the release of the marines, you could actually smell the “or-else” in between the lines.

More worrying are the large scale Israeli-American missile defence exercises for what analysts said would be in the event of a war with Iran. America won’t launch a war with Iran before warning the Israelis, and it seems they did.

The British media already seems very mobilized. Could this incident be the beginning of World War III? Let’s hope not..

Thomas Friedman suggested that the King of Saudi Arabia should declare the next Arab peace initiative from the Israeli parliament.

A wild speculations from an out-of-touch western journalist? Perhaps. It would have been more so if the writer weren’t Thomas Friedman, the journalist to whom King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, rather weirdly, first announced his Peace Plan back in 2002.

Tom Friedman’s articles are regularly translated into Arabic in Al-Sharq Al Awsat and Al-Arabiya, (with few exceptions like this anti-Saudi article) both Saudi establishment media outlets. So Friedman, more than any other western journalist, is supposed to have the Saudi “ear”.

Still, it is unclear whether today’s article was a leak to prepare the public or simply unsolicited advice (more likely). What did he say?

Friedman starts by saying that Saudi Arabia has become “the new Egypt”, the new leader in the Arab world, and praises the kingdom for its assertive diplomacy and its king’s “integrity”. Then he goes straight to the beef:

What the moribund Israeli-Palestinian talks need most today is an emotional breakthrough. Another Arab declaration, just reaffirming the Abdullah initiative, won’t cut it. If King Abdullah wants to lead — and he has the integrity and credibility to do so — he needs to fly from the Riyadh summit to Jerusalem and deliver the offer personally to the Israeli people

Then Friedman goes to the nuts and bolts of his “humble suggestion”:

the Saudi king [should] make four stops. His first stop should be to Al Aksa Mosque in East Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam. There, he, the custodian of Mecca and Medina, could reaffirm the Muslim claim to Arab East Jerusalem by praying at Al Aksa.
[..]
From there, he could travel to Ramallah and address the Palestinian parliament, making clear that the Abdullah initiative aims to give Palestinians the leverage to offer Israel peace with the whole Arab world in return for full withdrawal
[..]
From there, King Abdullah could helicopter to Yad Vashem, the memorial to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. A visit there would seal the deal with Israelis and affirm that the Muslim world rejects the Holocaust denialism of Iran. Then he could go to the Israeli parliament and formally deliver his peace initiative.”

Alright, I guess he is just an out-of-touch Western journalist.

That they may have bombs and have it more abundantly

Almost a crime scene

It is hard to extract symbolism from today’s “warning” acts. In one day, two education institutions, a venerable American university, and a school in a Beirut suburb were shaken by security warnings.

The American University of Beirut (AUB) woke up to the news of a bomb that was found in their ‘secure’ premises, while the students in the Gebran school in Bir Hassan came to school and found scores of soldiers and policemen searching their premises only to realize later that they were the subject of a phone hoax.

Every time Serges Brammertz, the head of commission investigating Hariri’s murder, presents a progress report to the UN security council (which yesterday stopped short of naming Syria), you can expect security “warnings” in Beirut. But the fact that this time the target was two education institutes is a bit puzzling.

What are the perpetrators trying to say? If you go through with the tribunal, we will kill your youth and destroy your future?

If you have other suggestions please enlighten us.

How the same picture can mean different things.

Not Just a Picture

So what does the picture above mean to you? The answer is: It depends on where you stand.

The picture of Saad Hariri, leader of the Lebanese parliamentary majority receiving a medal of honor from the French President Jacques Chirac was featured in just about every mainstream newspaper published in Beirut this morning.

But while it was a source of pride to pro-government newspapers like Al-Mustaqbal (Hariri owned) and Annahar, the same picture was used for more malicious ends by opposition media like Al-Akhbar and Assafir. Here’s how:

Both newspapers featured the picture in large format, but didn’t forget to couple it with reports by Israeli newspapers that Jacques Chirac (yes, the man in the picture) had urged the Israelis to invade Syria and topple its regime while the Lebanon Israel war was still waging back in summer. According to Al-Akhbar, a staunchly pro-Syrian newspaper, Chirac’s only reason was: He was angry with Assad.

This is meant to embarrass March14 and label them as pro-western stooges willing to collaborate with foreigners who want to kill innocent Arabs. Expect the row to grow as the majority is not comfortable with such a guilt-by-association position.

A few months after the Iranians claimed that they found a cure for AIDS, a Lebanese doctor declared that he discovered a cure for Cancer.

You hear this stuff in the news all the time, but somehow it ends up fizzling.. Could these cases be any different? Could it be that all that is left is some testing time before an Iranian doctor and a Lebanese doctor share a podium for the Nobel prize for medicine?

I can Imagine Ahmadinajad telling the security council in New York next week:

“Look, our medical breaktrhough will save millions of people while our nuclear weapon can only kill tens of thousands. On the balance of it, we can have our nuclear cake, eat it, and still get both the Nobel prizes for medicine and for peace..”

Now that’s a deal you can’t refuse.

Michael Young responds to Joshua Landis (Remember him? the guy who won my award for the least insightful post on Lebanon?). Here’s a highlight:

“Having been denied a timely chance to respond on his site, I do so here. Why should a row matter? It matters to me because in the polarized Lebanese atmosphere, fabricated accusations can be irresponsible, even dangerous. The theme of Landis’ post is that Lebanon’s Shiites, since they are under-represented in Parliament, are comparable to black slaves in America. For some reason Landis makes me the embodiment of those Lebanese denying Shiites their rights. This is troubling for being visibly personal in intent, given how inconsequential I am in the matter of Shiite power; but also because I’ve repeatedly argued that the Taif agreement needs overhauling so Shiites receive a greater stake in the system. I wrote last summer that “Taif was designed to build a post-war state. It should be re-tooled to bring the Shiite community back into the Lebanese fold.”

Philosophical words from Akbar Hashimi Rafsanjani:

Now that Aoun has joined the Islamic resistance, the Islamic resistance is no longer… Euh, Islamic.
[Read more+]

Warning: Hazardous material if you’re hungry, Lebanese and living outside of Lebanon.

Other great pictures here