BEIRUT -- Arab summits may deal with any matter of common concern to the 22 member states of the "Arab Nation." The matter may be "ordinary" or "emergency," but in practice the more or less permanent emergency of Palestine has furnished 90 percent of their resolutions. Only occasionally have other issues taken precedence, for example, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.
When the kings and presidents convene here this week, two issues, Palestine and Iraq, will confront them. Each is a grave one in its own right; together, they achieve an altogether higher level of malignancy. The combination was already menacing at their last gathering, in Amman last year. With the intifada close to spilling over into the region as a whole and with the United States setting up Hussein as the next major target of its "war on terror," they are more explosive and more interdependent than ever.
Serious doubts arose over whether this 14th summit would ever convene. Conceived as exercises of strength-through-unity, such conferences have in practice been more like periodic yardsticks of weakness, decline and disarray. King Farouk of Egypt hosted the first, in 1946, which resolved to thwart the rise of Israel, militarily if necessary. But the newborn Jewish state came out of the first Arab-Israeli war much larger than the United Nations had envisaged, and turned most Palestinians into refugees.