The Riyadh Arab Summit.

As prominent Egyptian analyst Wahid Abdul-Maguid put it on March 29, the Arab League's Riyadh meeting was "another summit of lost opportunities". He warned that its failure to tackle Arab problems was bound to make them more dangerous and said an "explosion in Lebanon would spread to the whole [Arab] region". In a talk show on Lebanon's LBC TV, Abdul-Maguid said the Arab peace plan called for by the summit was unlikely to bear fruit as long as the US continued to back Israel and Olmert's government was is no position to accept its basic elements.

King Abdullah ibn Abdul-Aziz, the Saudi monarch and host, on March 28 told his peers at the opening session the Arab League had accomplished practically nothing over more than six decades, beyond inviting foreign intervention in the region. "The real blame is on us, leaders of the Arab nation", he said. For the absolute monarchs and republican despots who misgovern the Arab world, more given to hand-wringing, blaming outsiders or uncovering conspiracies everywhere than to rigorous self-criticism, that was rare and daring talk. It underscored how remarkably assertive the normally politically diffident rulers of Saudi Arabia had become in recent months, a development which itself underlined the depth of the crisis in the Arab world.

The Saudis, who traditionally work through largesse and political proxies, have intervened directly to end an incipient civil war between Palestinian nationalists and Islamists; head off a relapse into civil war in Lebanon; and damp down an ethno-sectarian war between Sunnis and Shi'ites unleashed by the US invasion of Iraq - as well as prevent it from spreading to the rest of the region. While Saudi diplomacy has had a stabilising effect, however, everyone is aware of its limits. It is a response to the paralysis and discredit into which the US has fallen as a result of the Iraq debacle. Yet it cannot advance beyond a certain point without Washington's support.

After the Palestinian unity agreement Riyadh brokered on Feb. 8 at Mecca, senior Saudi officials called on the Bush administration to support them, all but accusing it of "losing" Iraq and Lebanon to Iran and its Shi'ite allies. As part of the same effort, King Abdullah demanded that Arabs close ranks behind the Mecca deal and relaunch the Arab League's 2002 land-for-peace offer to Israel, described as a "last chance" for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.