And so to another Arab summit. There was a time when the Arab street would shrug and say “so what?” The most we hoped for was that our leaders would not embarrass us, especially those who used the occasion to showboat and who would leave any feelings of national duty—assuming they had any in the first place—at home. 2002 changed all that. Saudi Arabia, already beginning to feel they had a new, more robust role to play in the region, put forward a peace plan that gave a patina of credibility to an occasion whose high point used to be the arrival of President Khadafy’s female bodyguards. The plan was rejected by the Israelis but five years on, we detect a political change in the wind and the initiative, while not embraced, has not been rejected out of hand. There are reasons for this. There is Iraq; Saudi Arabia has
