Will Lebanon War Awaken the Arab League from its Deep Sleep?

One of these organizations that is expected to take action in this historic juncture is the Arab League that has to prove it has the influential power to check regional crises.

In this regard, the foreign ministers of the member states of the Arab League at the annual consultative meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanon voiced solidarity with Beirut and warned against the consequences of aggression on Lebanon and development of confrontation into a regional war.

The Arab foreign ministers strongly condemned the escalation of the Israeli aggression against Lebanon and voiced their full support to Lebanon in confronting this aggression and held Tel Aviv responsible for this dangerous escalation. 

The ministers also stressed the importance of coordination with the member countries of the United Nations Islamic Group in the coming days in order to send a clear message to the international community about the need to immediately stop the Israeli aggression. 

The meeting came after Israeli occupation army started massive bombardment campaign in southern and eastern Lebanon on Monday, killing over 500 and injuring over 1,650 and unleashing a large influx of refugees in the cities and villages. 

Arab League's inaction 

Although holding meetings of the Arab League to condemn Israeli crimes is a positive step by itself, utterly issuing statements alone is inadequate and it is necessary for the Arab leaders to put practical measures on their agenda. 

The Arab League, which was established after the WWII to deal with Arab world challenges and is considered one of the oldest international institutions, was expected to play an effective and positive role in resolving the disputes between the member countries and to help the stability of the Arab world, but this bloc could not resolve many Arab crises.

In recent years, the Arab world has run into many crises that required serious intervention to end them, but this Arab institution has always limited itself to issuing statements by holding various meetings on important regional issues and avoided taking practical actions to punish aggressors to the Islamic countries. This inability to do effective measure has shown itself meticulously in the repeated Israeli wars on Palestine and Lebanon. 

The position of the Arab League towards the Qatar diplomatic crisis in 2017 and its passive role during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, as well as the position of the bloc towards the Arab uprisings of 2011 showed that the league is just an institution whose leaders occasionally gather to take a gesture of cooperation and unity. 

This is while hundreds of millions of Muslims in Arab countries are asking for practical measures from this bloc.

With tens of Arab countries being present in this bloc, if they take practical actions against the Israeli regime and their Western partners, they will undoubtedly make major gains. 

If the Arab countries, some of whom have business ties with the Israeli regime, ban the products of this regime and its Western allies, they can force Tel Aviv to retreat, but so far they have acted neutrally, and this silence and tolerance of the Arabs has encouraged Israel to kill the Palestinian nation. 

The Arab compromisers should take the Israeli actions in Lebanon and Palestine as a wake-up call since Tel Aviv regime considers all the Muslim countries as existential threat and would not be afraid of aggression against them in pursuit of its goals. 

Nile to the Euphrates project is still the most fundamental strategy of the leaders of Tel Aviv, which, after 76 years of the establishment of this regime, is still the priority of their foreign policies. If today is the turn of Palestine and Lebanon to be under aggression, tomorrow other Arab countries may suffer the same fate, with Egypt and Jordan being the top among them.

Arab countries are silent about the Palestinian conflict and refuse to help millions of Palestinians under the pretext that Palestine is not politically an independent country and that Gaza and the West Bank are surrounded by the Israeli regime, but this excuse does not apply to Lebanon since it is both an independent country and a member of the UN and is also a member of the Arab League.

If the Arab countries do not stop the Israeli regime, the criminal gang ruling Tel Aviv will break all the red lines of Islamic and regional stability and will attack parts of the Arab world whenever it wants. With radicals holding the cabinet in Tel Aviv, their priority is certainly full occupation of Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and changing its Islamic nature and identity in the near future. 

Unfortunately, the members of the Arab League played into the enemy game by weakening Syria and Lebanon which could form a bulwark against Israeli occupation against Israeli aggression against the Islamic countries. 

Supporting terrorist groups and destroying infrastructure in Syria and imposing economic sanctions on Lebanon to undermine Hezbollah by Saudi Arabia was the same scenario that the Israelis were looking for and they achieved their goals without costs thanks to the help of Arab compromisers.

It is noteworthy that the big driver for continuation of Israeli genocide in Gaza and launching the same campaign in Lebanon is the silence of the Arabs who instead of backing Gaza, quietly supported Tel Aviv by opening a corridor that crosses the UAE to Saudi Arabia to Jordan before reaching Israel to deliver imported products amid Yemen's Red Sea ban on Israel. 

The experience of the League of Nations that preceded the UN showed that if international institutions show weakness in the face of regional and global crises and their inefficiency is proven, they will lose their credibility.

Now, if the Arab League wants to restore even a smallest part of its credibility and regional position, it should show some efficiency, or its collapse and depletion is not unlikely.

For example, the positions of the Arab League in dealing with the Syrian crisis frustrated the leaders of Damascus, and if the Syrian government returned to the Arab community after 12 years, it was because of the insistence of the Arab leaders, otherwise, it was not an option for Damascus. 

Therefore, Lebanon and other Arab countries may give their membership in the Arab League in the future a second thought, because relying on an ineffective 80-year-old institution will not settle any of their problems.

The Arab League's weakness, which stems from lack of common Arab resolve, like a mirror reflects the nature of the Arab relations and Arab resolve. The future of the Arab League will be closely linked with the Arab reality, and therefore it will continue to suffer from problems and crises, and even if the discontented Arab countries do not suspend their membership in it, it will be rocked by members' distrust.