There is nothing like the extraordinary Arab Summit and the Arab-African Summit in Libya to reveal the depth of the loss in the present state of affairs of Arab countries. What is meant here is not the talk reiterated in Arab Summits about the Palestinian Cause and how to manage the conflict with Israel. This matter has been repeatedly spoken about by the Arabs, by the moderate as by the defiant among them, with temporary variations, in such a way as to reach the limits of surrealism. Such repetition has not been prevented by Arab consensus over the centrality of the issue, its importance and its use in every quarrel and in every alliance. Arab loss has also become apparent in two other issues, the first regarding the relationship with neighboring countries and the second regarding the African continent. It is the same division and the same zeal. Yet this time, the troubled state of the countries and governments of the region, before themselves and before others, has also been revealed, many long decades after independence, when those who had obtained it were supposed to have come of age, defined the features of the path they have taken and clarified the strategies they have adopted. In both cases, some of the Arabs have appeared to suffer from both complexes of inferiority and superiority: inferiority before the neighborhood which seeks to find a foothold in the modern world, and superiority towards the neighborhood which is still trying to find its way and define its needs. Meanwhile, such an image lacks the presence of objective interests and their mutual exchange, which reveals that such interests are absent from Arab strategy or that the latter is unrelated to realistic needs. The state of affairs of the Arabs' relationship with Turkey and Iran, their immediate neighbors, reveals its distorted nature and the distorted view the Arabs hold of themselves. Indeed, it represents a point of profound disagreement between Arab countries, ranging from becoming their followers to boycotting them. In the former case, that of becoming their followers, what dominates is the need for political assistance and the need to evade defining what could bring the interests of the Arabs together. In the latter case, that of boycott, what dominates are predetermined stances and judgments. In their relationship with the African continent, a client mentality prevails, in view of the needs of the countries of the Dark Continent. Furthermore, the fact that the Arabs refrain from any actual effort to solve Arab-African problems seems blatant, especially in Sudan and Somalia, where they have left this role to the Africans, who sense the dangers entailed by the events taking place in those two countries, both of which are members of the Arab League. The Arabs have, in their current meetings in Sirt, whether with each other or with African leaders, been unable to define their view of what their relationship with their neighborhood could be. And it is not certain that they may have, together, thought about this issue before. It is feared that bringing up this issue has come driven by the host, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, who seeks to play a certain role, on the background of his theory of the “United States of Africa”, and that the Arabs accepted to discuss it only in order to indulge him. And this, if true, reveals yet again the state of nonchalance in dealing with issues of such importance. This applies to the issue of Turkey and Iran, and of the relationship with them, which was in effect put forth in compliance with demands that take their strength from the two diplomatic assaults coming out of Ankara and Tehran, and accepting to discuss the issue was the result of a compromise between antagonists and followers. In other words, the issue of the relationship with the neighborhood was not put forward as a result of defining the Arabs' own interests and of objectively examining how to exchange them in a stable manner within the regional framework, as is the case all over the world. Rather, it was put forward as a result of momentary political insistence, the elements of which are likely to vanish with the first change in the situation. And this reveals the fragility of the image the Arabs display to themselves and to their regional neighbors.
