Things Aren't What They Used To Be: The Khartoum Arab Summit Conference

For more than four decades, Arab summit conferences have served as benchmarks for measuring the state of the Arab world. Some of them have also set important baselines shaping regional diplomacy for years to come (e.g., the 1967 Khartoum “3 No’s” Summit; the 1974 Rabat Summit’s recognition of the PLO; the rejection of Sadat’s initiative at the 1978 Baghdad Summit; the formulation of Arab conditions for peace with Israel at Fez in 1982, updated in Beirut in 2002; and the establishment of a Western-Arab coalition against Iraq in 1990 at the Cairo Summit). So no matter how many resolutions went unimplemented and however cynical Arab publics had grown towards these diplomatic spectacles, Arab summits still seemed to matter.