Saudi-hosted Arab summit balances reality and irrelevance

When did you last pay attention to an Arab summit? It was either a long time ago or, more likely, never. But this year’s summit, being hosted by Saudi Arabia on Sunday, April 15, probably will be worth keeping an eye on. A lot is happening in the Middle East and the event could well be consequential. Here is a rough guide to discerning the substance from the official razzmatazz, starting with main indicator of how to judge its importance — who shows up.

There are 22 members of the Arab League but Syria’s membership has been suspended since 2011 because of the civil war, so there is no chance of President Bashar al-Assad arriving to spoil the party. The meeting’s host, 82-year-old King Salman of Saudi Arabia, does not travel much these days because of declining health. It was Salman who originally was invited to Washington to meet President Trump last month, but his 32-year-old son, the wunderkind Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman accepted the invitation.

{mosads}MbS, as the prince is known, has just returned from trips to France and Spain. Whether he will be at his father’s side for the summit is something to watch for; if so, he will likely be in dutiful, helpful son mode rather than the “I am the new face of Saudi Arabia” image that he has displayed in the three-plus weeks he has been away.

The big question is whether Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani of Qatar will accept an invitation.  Qatar currently is being blockaded by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt for a litany of supposed failings including supporting terrorism, inflammatory broadcasting and hosting opposition groups. President Trump initially echoed this criticism, but since has shifted his stance, recognizing in essence that the problem is a squabble between countries that are all important allies of the United States.

In an Oval Office meeting with Tamim on Tuesday, Trump said: “We are making sure that terrorist finance is stopped in the countries we are really related to. … That includes the UAE, it includes Saudi Arabia, it includes Qatar, and others.” Given the success of Tamim’s visit to the United States, which mirrored the favorable press that MbS achieved, the Qatari leader would be squandering a great opportunity to show he is not isolated if he stayed at home. But if Tamim shows, his UAE nemesis Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi (aka MbZ) probably will not. But conveniently, in protocol terms, the UAE slot can be taken by its prime minister, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum of Dubai.

The summit is being held in Dammam on the kingdom’s Gulf coast — what many people consider the Persian Gulf, though Arabs prefer the description “Arab Gulf.” A hundred-plus miles away is Iran, which the Saudi royal family regards as the greatest threat to the Arab world.  Why did the Saudis choose to host the summit there? Nobody is saying but the obvious political point is a rude hand gesture across the water. Equally, Riyadh is now being hit by (Iranian-improved) missiles fired from Houthi rebels in Yemen, so may no longer be safe for such a grand gathering.

On the summit agenda, Iran no doubt will get a mention for its troublemaking role in Yemen, Syria and Lebanon, but according to Saudi Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir, the main focus will be on Jerusalem and the Palestinians. (The Qatar issue, he says, will not be solved there.)

The Arab world has been upset by President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — although, contrary to some predictions, the announcement failed to set the region ablaze. There also is great concern about events in Gaza, where protesters trying to storm the border fence with Israel have been shot by snipers.

The Saudi position on this will be interesting to watch because of MbS’s comment while in the United States that Israelis should be able to live “in their own land,” a remark that broke with Arab convention and the kingdom’s official diplomatic position. But a reiteration of the previous hard line will not necessarily be seen as undermining MbS’s otherwise increasingly visible flirtation with Israel. Instead, it may suggest that the Arab League and much of the Arab world is just more and more out of touch.

Other agenda items will include reviewing the litany of grievances of the past several decades — yet another sign that the Arab League seldom achieves anything. A recent uptick in tension between Morocco and Algeria over the former Spanish colonial territory of the Western Sahara, now part of Morocco, may be a deliberate attempt to win a condemnation in the final communique. Or it may be a consequence of a power play in Algiers, where the geriatric President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is confined to a wheelchair. This in itself is a metaphor for Arab leadership: the titular leaders of Algeria, Tunisia, Palestine, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Oman are either old or in poor health, or both.

The question for the future is when the dynamic — and confrontational — young leadership represented by MbS, Tamim and MbZ will finally take the reins.

Simon Henderson is the Baker Fellow and director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.