Crescent International
Syrian President Bashar al Asad was warmly welcomed at the Arab League summit in Jeddah today (May 19).
It will not be an exaggeration to say that the summit was convened to welcome Asad into the Arab fold.
True, there were a few rulers—of Qatar, Kuwait and Morocco—who were unhappy with his return but in the face of such heavy weights as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), they merely expressed their reservations but could not block Syria’s return.
As he entered the hall, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was the first to greet him along with a number of others who rushed to welcome Asad.
The host, Saudi crown prince and de facto ruler Muhammad bin Salman (MbS), hugged Asad before taking an official photograph with him.
It was quite a spectacle.
Perhaps the summit mood was captured by Algerian Prime Minister Ayman Benabderrahmane who said in the opening speech of the summit, “I would like to loudly welcome Syria back to its seat among its brothers.”
Algeria, it must be pointed out, did not severe relations with Syria despite the foreign-instigated mayhem in the country for 12 years.
Arab League summits are ordinarily dull affairs.
Apart from expending a lot of hot air, they achieve very little, simply because they stand for nothing.
This one, however, was different because it reversed a decision taken more than 11 years ago to expel Syria from the league.
Asad’s presence at the summit signalled the Arab rulers’ collective admission that 12 years of blood-letting in Syria had achieved nothing.
Asad is still in power despite the foreign-imposed war resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
Millions of Syrians have become refugees and the country’s infrastructure has been destroyed.
So, what forced the Arab potentates to reverse course?
Asad’s rehabilitation had started much earlier dating back to 2018 when the UAE reopened its embassy in Damascus.
Others followed suit.
The real reasons for Syria’s reinstatement lie in the fact that major regional geopolitical shifts are underway that have challenged America’s hegemony.
New actors, such as China hitherto dismissed as being only interested in economic matters, have entered the fray.
While Syria’s rehabilitation was underway for more than year, two events hastened the process.
Both were earthquakes: one physical on February 6, and the other diplomatic on March 10.
The physical earthquake of February 6 that devastated Turkiye and Syria provided a cover for Arab rulers to rush “humanitarian” aid to their brothers in Syria.
The second, more important “earthquake” was diplomatic: the China-brokered rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
This was a tectonic shift in global politics.
It left the warlords in Washington and Tel Aviv shell-shocked.
Despite their spooks sniffing all over the place, they were left completely blindsided.
The reason was that both Iran and Saudi Arabia relied on direct, face-to-face communications and if they had to resort to electronic means, they used China’s G5 technology.
Neither the US nor Israel, despite their much-touted spying abilities, got a whiff of what was underway between Iran and Saudi Arabia through China’s mediation.
In fact, China’s non-political posture of the past also left them somewhat complacent.
In any case, once Iran-Saudi relations were normalized, it was only a small step toward Syria’s rehabilitation into the Arab fold.
There was, however, a strange spectacle of the comedian-turned-politician, Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine also making an appearance at the Arab League summit.
His appearance made little sense.
There is no known link between Zelensky and the Arabs unless Arab travellers had sprinkled their seed in distant lands.
It cannot be ruled out.
Barring that, some enthusiastic Arabs might even come up with the suggestion that Zelensky is in fact an Arab.
His real name is Walid Mir bin Zalan that has been corrupted in Slavic to Vladimir Zelensky!
This clown from Ukraine insulted Arab rulers.
He said that they were ignoring the “horrors” Russia was committing in Ukraine.
“Unfortunately, there are some in the world and here, among you, who turn a blind eye to those cages and illegal annexations,” he told summit attendees, urging them to “take an honest look” at the war.
It is an insult to the collective intelligence of Arab rulers to allow such zionist criminals in their midst.
The Arab League platform would be better utilized if they were to make a collective effort to confront the zionist war criminals in Occupied Palestine.
Only a week earlier, the zionist war criminals unleashed their murderous attack on Gaza Strip killing more than 33 people, the vast majority being children.
Let it be stated for the record, that Zelensky supports zionist atrocities against the Palestinians.
Last year, Zelensky bought a house for his parents in Occupied Palestine for $8 million.
This is money he stole from Ukraine (see also here) which is notorious for being the most corrupt country in Europe.
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