Saudi King Salman Invited Syria to Arab League Summit on May 19th at Jeddah: More than a decade passed since the last summit of the Arab League Syria participated in, a decade changed the whole scene of the region putting it between fires and shaking hands. Even though there’s no clear solution for the Syrian crisis, the awaited summit in Jeddah opens a new page in Arab relations.
Syria was suspended from the Arab League after its crackdown on anti-government protests in 2011, which quickly turned into a war between armed species and the regime that started to be controlled by the last since 2017. This devastating war ended up more than 500000 people’s lives and displaced millions to the nearby countries and Europe.
This return to the Arab League paves the way for a solution to the Syrian refugee conflict for the hosting Arab countries such as Lebanon and Jordan which lies under high costs to supply those refugees in their countries. Also, Syria is in need to start rebuilding the damaged cities that are in a devastating situation either from war or from the latest catastrophic earthquake that happened on February 6th and massively displaced thousands of northern Syrians from their homes.
This earthquake sped up the discussion between Arab states to reach this point, although many of them like Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan still oppose al-Assad’s presence in the Arab League Summit saying an invitation before Damascus agrees to negotiate a peace plan would be premature according to Al-Jazeera.
The Qatari Minister of Foreign Affairs said on Sunday at Cairo’s emergency Summit to vote for returning Syria to the League that Qatar always seeks to support whatever achieves Arab consensus and will not be an obstacle to that. However, its official stance on normalization with the Syrian regime is a decision primarily linked to progress in reaching a political resolution that realizes the aspirations of the brotherly Syrian people, according to Al-Arabia. Also, he added that this step will be a motive to address the roots of the crisis that lead to the last suspension.
On the hand, Saudi Arabia seems open to the next Summit in Jeddah and sent an official invitation by King Salman with the Saudi ambassador to Jordan Nayef bin Bandar al-Sudairi on Wednesday the 10th. The Chinese- brokered reestablishment of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran succeeded in resolving the ties of Saudi-Syrian relations, and the Saudi embassy reopened in Damascus “ to strengthen security and stability in the region” according to the Foreign Ministry.
The U.S. and the Syrian opposition stand out from the Syrian opposing this step, saying it will change its policy toward al-Assad Regime, which prepares the region for a change in powers balance.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/5/us-says-it-will-not-normalise-relations-with-syrias-assad
Edited by Joan Andrew Ramadan
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