Subjective characterizations, such as "tit-for-tat violence," have a way of making the rounds and becoming standard for supposedly neutral newswire stories. Is "impotent Arab governments" the latest one?
Rebuffed by the United Nations and the United States, impotent against militant Islamist groups fighting Israel, and often unpopular at home, Arab governments have made a joint appeal for urgent assistance.
Are any of these governments sympathetic with the Islamists? The author, Jonathan Wright, doesn't consider that possibility although it is certainly true of a faction in Saudi Arabia. Was Syria represented at this meeting?
At a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo on Saturday, they declared Middle East peacemaking finally dead, only to implore the U.N. Security Council to revive it immediately.
As war raged between Israel and the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim group Hizbollah, an Arab minister said fighting was out of the question and diplomacy was the only option.
"I don't believe that anyone could expect that the Arab states will now enter a war or are ready to go into a war," Mohammed Hussein al-Shaali, minister of state from the United Arab Emirates, told a news conference.
"The alternative is political and diplomatic action and that is what we are doing," he added.
But, cowed by popular sympathy for Hizbollah in Lebanon and the Islamist group Hamas in the Palestinian territories, the ministers hardly dared criticize their Islamist rivals for provoking the military might of Israel.
Hamas and Hizbollah, despite their electoral successes, have not yet found a place in delegations to Arab League meetings.
"Not yet"?
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