Egypt has decided to re-nominate its former foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the current Secretary-General of the Arab League, for a second term of 5 years, at a time when the Arab region is witnessing turbulent conditions that include the dilution of the Palestinian issue, which has always been the main issue for the Arabs, and an unprecedented stream of normalization agreements with Israel, in contrast to the many fraught political and military conflicts.

The Egyptian presidency said, on Saturday, that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi sent messages to his brothers the Arab leaders about his intention to re-nominate Aboul Gheit as Secretary-General of the League for a second term, and look forward to the leaders' support for this candidacy.

https://www.facebook.com/Egy.Pres.Spokesman/posts/1083066158879430

While the nomination of Aboul Gheit for the first time was met with great criticism in view of his personality and previous positions, analysts and diplomats emphasized that it was not a successful choice at the head of a regional organization that was engineered so that it is difficult and impossible for it to have any achievements.

The past five years have been characterized by the absence of joint Arab development projects or unified policies and positions, in light of regional and international threats that have placed the Arab world at the center of the international event, in contrast to its geographical and national disruption in more than one country.

Egypt is awaiting the convening of the regular session of the Council of Arab Foreign Ministers next March to approve the election of Aboul Gheit, whose term ends at the end of next June, at a time when no other country has announced payment of a competitor.

Since the founding of the Arab League in 1945 in Cairo, the position of Secretary-General has traditionally been occupied by an Egyptian diplomatic figure, with the exception of freezing Cairo's membership for 11 years following its signing of a peace agreement with Israel in 1979, of which Aboul Gheit is one of its engineers as he worked as a political and legal advisor to the country's delegation during Camp David negotiations in the United States.

As usual, the position of Secretary-General, who was punished by 8 personalities (7 Egyptians and one Tunisian), is usually absent from the electoral competition, and observers associate it with being a protocol position that lacks the tools of actual power. It was also remarkable that all of them resigned or asked not to continue the position despite there being none. Officially, what sets a maximum number of terms to hold this position.

Prejudices against the people

Given the background of the 1980s, Abul Gheit (born in 1942) is the last foreign minister during the era of former President Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled by the January 2011 revolution after 30 years in power, and he was known for his anti-revolution stance, as well as his negative stances towards the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas) and the countries that supported the Arab revolutions.

Aboul Gheit has repeatedly come under public criticism for his relations with Israeli officials, noting that Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni declared war on the Gaza Strip in 2008 during a conference she gathered in Abu al-Gheit in Cairo.

During the first term of Aboul Gheit, it was remarkable that the League’s role was almost completely absent in various files and issues, such as the Gulf crisis, revolutions and civil wars in Syria, Yemen, Libya, Iraq and Lebanon. It was content with ministerial meetings and summits that did not make a breakthrough or provide solutions to the crisis Arab reality, according to Monitors.

The Palestinian issue, which is the mother of the issues on the basis of which the League of Arab States was founded, witnessed an unprecedented crisis during Aboul Gheit’s mandate, when Washington, in the summer of 2017, recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and later transferred its embassy to it, without any practical action from the Arab League, amid only denunciations and condemnations. .

In addition to this, an interesting case of lack of clarity in the vision or position of the Arab League regarding a dangerous development, which is known as the Deal of the Century.

While the League has for decades described its inability to stop the Israeli violations of Palestine, the performance of Abul-Gheit - according to observers - was characterized by the complete absence of the Arab will to put an end to the occupation's incursion into building settlements in the occupied lands, or to play a mediating role to resolve the Palestinian division.

At the same time, while he was waiting for the Secretary-General of the League to confront the Arab normalization train with Israel, which extended to 4 new stations after Egypt and Jordan, which included the Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, Aboul Gheit received popular and Palestinian accusations of colluding with the historical right of Palestine, especially after the failure of the League in September / Last September, in the discussion of a Palestinian draft resolution condemning normalization.

Activists and Arab citizens did not hide their complaint about the university’s “complicit” role with normalization, as thousands participated in a cynical virtual campaign to transform the university’s headquarters in Cairo into a “wedding hall” to achieve “full benefit from a useless entity.”

The university has also been absent from any humanitarian contributions to the outbreak of the Corona epidemic, contenting itself with placing the pandemic on the agenda of the regular session of the Council of Arab Health Ministers in February 2020, and suspending its work during March and April of the same year as a precaution.

It is time to take advantage of the headquarters of the Arab University The idea is excellent 👌🏼

The One Million Signatures Campaign to Transfer the Headquarters of the League of Arab States to the Wedding Hall 💃🏻 https://t.co/scusjeeXCc

- Hadeel Seddiq (@Hadeelhajmohd) September 11, 2020

Stage man

For his part, Abdullah Al-Ashaal, professor of international law and former assistant foreign minister, considered Aboul Gheit the "ideal secretary general for this stage" for several reasons, most notably the fact that Aboul Gheit "has ties to Israel, and that the mood of Arab regimes is heading towards Israel, in addition to the fact that the League itself It condemned the resistance and considered it terrorism, and thus Aboul Gheit is a good example of it. "

Al-Ashaal added, to Al-Jazeera Net, that Aboul Gheit was Egypt's foreign minister during the January 2011 revolution, and he was tasking diplomatic missions with saying that the revolutionaries were rebels who would be eliminated, stressing that Aboul Gheit represented the counter-revolutions in the Arab region.

He went on to say that the Arab League is "a club for Arab rulers, and these rulers are against their people, and therefore this club is hostile to Arab peoples and promotes military coups."

Al-Ashaal described the current Arab situation as a bad environment that produces a "Arab-Hebrew" university from which many like Aboul Gheit graduate, affirming that it is a temporary stage and Arabism will have its men.

Historical context

In turn, the Egyptian journalist, Yahya Ghanem, attributed Cairo’s nomination of Aboul Gheit for a second term to the historical context that Egypt and the Arab countries agreed upon, in that the candidate for the post of Secretary-General is an Egyptian national, ruling out at the same time that the decision has any relationship to competence.

However, he added that it is unfair to judge Aboul Gheit, and to try to explore his achievements in a regional organization that has been engineered so that it is difficult and impossible for it to have any achievements.

Ghanem added that the university did not make any achievement throughout its history, except for the first years of the Nakba of Palestine and the two decades following the founding and establishment of Israel, adding that even this achievement or position could not be considered effective, but at least it preserved the university’s shape.

As for the criticisms directed at the nomination of Aboul Gheit for the first time, Ghanem attributed them to the fact that they revolved around the manner in which he dealt, while carrying out the foreign affairs mission in Egypt, with Israeli officials.

And he considered "objections that were not serious, like many things in the Arab world," explaining that there are many criteria that the man could have been evaluated based on, away from these formalities.

He added that the current and old Arab reality, which resulted in the normalization of countries that did not flawlessly fight wars with Israel, denies and drops all the criticisms that were directed at Abu Al-Gheit in his first candidacy.

Ghanem stressed that the Arab League does not expect anything from it for the coming period, as its history foretells its future as an entity in this form and monument does not hope for good for the benefit and future of Arab peoples.

He also expected some objections and reservations on the part of Arab countries to the nomination of Aboul Gheit, saying that they are competitions that are limited to formal matters, but we will not see any competition for this practically disabled entity to implement structural reforms in order to become more effective.

Let us activate the memory of those who forgot, forget or do not remember # Ahmed_Abu al-Gheit, the last foreign minister in the era of ousted President


Hosni Mubarak - and #Egypt's candidate for a second term Secretary-General #University of


Arab States The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Israeli occupation Livni announced in her meeting with him in # Cairo that they launched their aggression against # Azza Besieged 2008🧐 pic.twitter.com/NrLqjnpSOx

- Abdullah Al-Shayji (@docshayji) January 30, 2021

Cairo nominates Ahmed Aboul Gheit for a second term at the head of the Arab League ... but I would love to know what the accomplishments of this man are !!!

pic.twitter.com/fRwX7uMUIk

- Ania El Afandi (@ Ania27El) January 31, 2021

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