Editorial: Time for cool thinking 31 December 2008
It was inevitable that the two-day Gulf Cooperation Council summit that ended yesterday in Oman would be overshadowed by Israel’s deadly bombardment of Gaza. Officially, the summit was supposed to focus on the international recession and the drop in the oil price as well as moving ahead on plans for a single GCC currency. Although they could hardly have avoided condemning the Israeli onslaught, the leaders of the six member states did their best to stick to the pre-planned agenda. On the sidelines, however, all the talk was of events in Gaza.
There is now a question whether there should be an emergency Arab summit on the issue. That will be decided at today’s emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo. Frankly, what is the point of a summit if all it is going to do is issue a condemnation of the Israelis? Arab leaders can do that perfectly well — and have already done so — without wasting money and time on a grand meeting in some Arab capital. Arabs are fed up of hearing about conferences, seminars and summits when nothing happens but yet more talk. Another summit that is long on words but short on action is not what is wanted. All it will do is increase Arab resentment and frustration. If hot air is all that is going to be generated, if there is not some solid course of action that can be discussed and enacted, then it is better to have no meeting at all.
That does not mean that nothing can be done, that we all sit back choking with rage as Israel continues to rain down death and destruction upon Gaza. What is needed is a cease-fire. Immediately. How many more Palestinians are going to be dead in even just three or four days’ time. A hundred? Two hundred? That is where Egypt comes back in. It organized the last cease-fire. Logically, it is the country to organize a new one. It has the contacts and the experience. The role of other Arab governments must be to support it in the task. If it needs help, it can ask. Maybe the Kingdom, which tried a year ago to mediate between Hamas and Fatah, can help with its contacts and skills.
But other Arab countries or organizations clamoring to get in on the act will only complicate and delay it. Time is simply not available. The people of Gaza need a cease-fire now, today, not in two or three weeks’ time.
Meanwhile, across the Arab world, the Muslim world, even in the West, people are angry and stunned at what is happening in Gaza. That is the emotional response. But for the politicians, this is not a time for emotion. There is a fire that has to be put out. That is the immediate task and it demands cool heads, not hysteria or emotion.
Anger will not solve anything. To a large degree it is emotion that has got Gaza into this disaster. In ending the cease-fire, Hamas made an emotional response to Israel’s continuing blockade of Gaza. But in doing so, it played straight into Israeli hands. No one should believe that the Israeli bombardment was suddenly planned after Hamas terminated the cease-fire. It was worked out weeks in advance. The Israeli government wanted Hamas to end it and, in its naivety, Hamas walked straight into the trap. That is an added reason why there has to be a fresh and immediate cease-fire. A cease-fire forces Israel back to the negotiating table and to accept that a settlement will include dealing with people and organizations it does not like.
