Assad in the footsteps of Sadat .. Arabs boycotted a decade and then they gave him

Ahmed Daddoush

When the Syrian regime confronted the peaceful protests in 2011 with bullets and torture, the Arab countries did not find their boycott, especially with the Western condemnation of the brutality of the regime. Even conservative governments such as Iraq, Algeria and Lebanon were forced to "dispense" as a minimum. The country has pushed the boycotters - as it seems recently - to recalculate their accounts.

These positions remind us of the Arab boycott of Egypt in 1978, when President Anwar Sadat decided to take his own course and abrupt normalization with Israel. Egypt's membership in the League of Arab States was suspended and the university's headquarters moved from Cairo to Tunisia.

Over the next ten years, the attempts of Arab unity to recapture Gamal Abdel Nasser's legacy were unsuccessful, while Sadat, and Hosni Mubarak, did not change their position until the Arabs finally renounced the boycott. They even embraced Sadat himself in the path of normalization with Israel.

Syrian regime
On November 16, 2011, the Arab League suspended membership of Syria after rejecting the repeated regime of all political dialogue initiatives, the withdrawal of the army from the cities and the release of detainees. The immediate reaction of the regime was to storm the embassies and consulates of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and France.

In late 2012, the Arab League withdrew its observers because of "the continuation of the attacks on the security forces, Urban killings ".

Just as Sadat is turning his face to Washington, Bashar al-Assad has completely turned to Tehran and Moscow, turning his back on the slogans of Arab nationalism on which his country's ideology was based.

Most Arab embassies in Damascus closed, and the regime increased the pace of military repression and the destruction of villages and cities. When Egyptian President-elect Mohamed Morsi shouted at a rally at the Cairo Stadium in June 2013: "Beke Syria," he did not realize that his army would turn on him. Just a few days.

The series of counter-revolutions began, and the dreams of the Arab Spring were shattered by freedom and dignity. Although the Syrian rebels continued their battle and took most of the country out of the system, Russia did not give up even if it was directly involved in the war.

In December 2016, the regime announced the restoration of the entire city of Aleppo, and under Russian supervision, it launched a series of deportations of dissidents and civilians from dozens of regions throughout the country, raising its flag on mountains of rubble in celebrations that are not absent from the signs of healing and revenge.

Although Arab government officials have repeatedly stated that it is impossible to reconnect with a regime that has destroyed its own country and killed its own people, time seems to be backing away from many principles and statements, as happened in the Sadat era.

Normalization and frequency
Some Arab regimes tend to refuse to normalize relations with Assad, while others suddenly and unexpectedly ignite. In March 2018, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem met with Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem to discuss "the existing cooperation between the two countries." At the end of the same year, Sudanese Omar al-Bashir by the big jump to Damascus on an undeclared visit, unleashed a barrage of puzzling speculation about the motives and implications of this step.

Although there are those who deny that al-Bashir's move is intended to facilitate the task of normalization on other regimes, some positions are likely to raise doubts. The UAE soon opened its embassy in Damascus, justifying the move by trying to address the "Iranian and Turkish regional agitation" .

It was only days before there were reports of the possibility of inviting the regime to the 30th Arab League summit to be held in Tunisia next March.

Yesterday, the Palestinian Authority opened an office of the Palestinian Radio and Television Authority in Damascus, and the regime's media quoted Fatah officials as saying that President Mahmoud Abbas would follow Bashir's footsteps soon.

It seems that the joy of the regime with the signs of normalization prompted the media to celebrate and preach early. There were reports of an unexpected visit to the heads of Somalia and Mauritania to Damascus, a message from Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi and even a Saudi spinner of the system of victory, while the Qatari Foreign Ministry stated that it was impossible On the move to cut the road to rumors.

In 1978, the West rewarded Sadat with the Nobel Peace Prize. Two years later he was assassinated in circumstances still controversial, and his regime lifted the Arab boycott a few years later. Although Assad will not dream of the Nobel Prize, he should rest assured that he will not be tried for killing, torturing and displacing millions, and that he will be proud of the Arabs' retreat from the boycott in his life, even before he is overthrown.