About That Arab Delegation

It just doesn’t feel right…

(Photo credit: AP)

The Arab delegation has landed in Beirut, but expectations remain bottom low for many reasons.

From the reception committee made by not-quite-resigned Minister of Exterior Fawzi Salloukh, standing proudly next to Brig. Gen. Wafik Shoucair — the man whose sacking supposedly sparked the entire hoopla in Lebanon — , to the composition of Arab dignitaries who obviously went through a rigorous Hezbollah selection process, to the proposal of a roundtable in Qatar — of all places! — for yet another Lebanese 7iwar, things are just not feeling right.

Remember, Qatar’s prince was sitting next to Syria’s president Bashar Al Assad as they both dissed Hezbollah’s coup as a “Lebanese Internal Matter”. Qatar and Syria both declined to take part of the emergency meeting called by Saudi Arabia to look into the Lebanese situation, claiming that the meeting won’t produce any results, effectively ignoring the blood baths that were taking place in Lebanon. How can the host of Aljazeera suddenly become a neutral ground where the Lebanese can kiss and make up?

How can one expect this delegation to be a fair arbiter if they had to go through the Hezbollah gate-keepers? How can one expect anything from them if they can’t enforce their own “initiative”, which everyone, including the French and the Americans, seem to be in denial that it was born dead?

If you have anything else to do, do it. Pouring over the news sites to see what comes out of the Arab delegation is a pure waste of time and bandwidth.