MIDDLE EAST: Swine flu to limit hajj pilgrimage for elderly and young

To curtail the spread of swine flu, Arab health ministers from across the Middle East have agreed that elderly, young and chronically ill Muslims should be forbidden from traveling to Saudi Arabia for the upcoming hajj and umrah pilgrimages.

The decision came after a meeting of health ministers from Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Jordan in Cairo late Wednesday, which was part of a special session of the Regional Committee for World Health Organization on the H1N1 flu virus. Those banned from making the pilgrimage include anyone over 65 and under 12, as well as pregnant women and the chronically ill. 

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EGYPT: Erdogan hailed as hero

By recently walking off the stage after a clash with the Israeli president over the Gaza Strip at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was viewed as a hero among Arabs who accuse their own leaders of not standing up to the Jewish state.

Erdogan was provoked when the moderator interrupted him while he was responding to comments made by Israeli President Shimon Peres, who defended Israel's military incursion into Gaza. Outraged at being cut off, Erdogan gathered his papers and walked out, saying: “And so Davos is over for me from now on.”

He had earlier told Peres: “When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill.”

EGYPT: The Arab battle over Gaza

The bickering and divided — some would say dysfunctional — Arab world will attempt to put aside its differences during an international summit in March to raise money for Gaza Strip reconstruction.

Cairo has called the meeting to rebuild the Palestinian enclave that was battered by an estimated $2 billion in damages from the 22-day Israeli incursion against the militant group Hamas.

The fate of Gaza has widened the split in the Arab world between U.S. allies, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and countries and political organizations, including Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon, that are linked to the anti-Western influence of Iran.

Cairo and Riyadh boycotted an emergency summit in Qatar last month, arguing that it threatened Arab unity by further polarizing Middle East politics.

The crux is Hamas.

KUWAIT: Arab rift over Gaza hard to heal

Arab divisions, which have hardened since the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, resurfaced at the Kuwait summit.

Arab governments failed today to develop a common position over the situation in Gaza, but hopes for reconciliation arose after King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia criticized Arab divisions and called for unity. “We have transcended the phase of differences and opened the door for Arab fraternity and unity to every Arab.” 

Shortly after, Egyptian, Saudi, Qatari and Syrian leaders sat for lunch together, which some media celebrated as a sign of a possible rapprochement  between the U.S. allies who refuse to throw their full support behind Hamas, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia on one hand, and Iranian allies in the region,  namely Syria, on the other.

EGYPT: Biting criticism of Doha summit

The Egyptian state-owned media have pursued their ruthless campaign against Qatar, which hosted an Arab summit Friday despite the boycott of many Arab countries.

On Saturday, the semi-official press dismissed the Qatar-sponsored summit as "opportunistic" and "a failure." The attendance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad elicited further criticism. The front page of Akhbar El-Youm newspaper shrugged off the summit as "Persian" rather than "Arab."

Since Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza Strip, Qatar has been calling for an extraordinary Arab summit to hammer out a united Arab position on the conflict. In the meantime, Qatar-financed news channel Al Jazeera spearheaded a campaign criticizing Egypt for declining to throw its full support behind Hamas and open its borders fully to Gazans. 

Eventually, Egypt and its partner Saudi Arabia decided not to attend.

The conflict exposed the rift between U.S. allies in the region, led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and U.S. opponents, led by Syria, Iran and Islamist groups that seek to consolidate an alliance to counter the Israeli power.

EGYPT: Be careful of what you broadcast

Egypt is using a new media law to prosecute the owner of a satellite TV company for his role in broadcasting violent anti-government street protests. The law, passed by the Arab League in February, is the latest attempt by regimes in the region to silence independent satellite channels.

Charges have been filed against Nader Gohar, owner of the Cairo News Co., which provides links and equipment to Al Jazeera, BBC and other international networks. Police raided Cairo News in April after Al Jazeera broadcast images of riot police battling with protesters in Mahalla, a Nile Delta town where 27,000 textile workers have been protesting inflation and low salaries.

Gohar is expected to be tried later this month for broadcasting without permission. His company has been shut down and he faces fines and up to one year in prison. Human Rights Watch has called the charges part of a campaign by the government of President Hosni Mubarak to “stifle freedom of the press.”

The Arab League law, sponsored Saudi Arabia and Egypt, pressures channels from broadcasting transmissions that “negatively affect social peace, national unity, public order and public morals” or “defame leaders, or national and religious symbols [of other Arab states].”

—Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

Photo: Cairo's rooftops are a sea of TV satellite dishes. (BBC)

LEBANON: Qatar emerges as diplomatic powerhouse

Pity Amr Moussa.

For months the dour Arab League secretary-general shuttled between his Cairo home and the Lebanese capital in a futile attempt to get Lebanese factions to talk, only to walk away in abject failure.

Then along came a smiling Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, foreign minister and prime minister of Qatar.

In a space of hours, he appears to have done what neither Moussa nor French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner (who also spent many fruitless weeks trying to solve the Lebanese mess) have  been able to do: get these guys locked in a room together to hammer out some kind of agreement.

During the news conference announcing a new deal between fighting Lebanese factions, Sheik Hamad spoke gently but firmly to the whole country, as if they were adults who must take charge of their own country:

The Lebanese people will have to help us. As Lebanese, you have to accept that this is your wound. You will have to heal it. … All the Arabs are with you, but you have to exert your own efforts. You as Lebanese have to decide to end this crisis.

Sheik Hamad also said: “Everyone knows that there is no winner in this.”

Except for maybe the sheik himself, who emerged as a diplomatic rock star.

IRAN: Conflict with Arabs over islands heats up

Arab leaders at last weekend's summit in Damascus voiced claims over three disputed Persian Gulf Islands that both Iran and the United Arab Emirates consider part of their property. Iran was predictably outraged by the claim.

Though it was a minor footnote to an Arab League Summit marred by nearly a dozen no-shows and a murky outcome, it remains a sore spot for Iranians, who took the matter up with the United Nations.

The decades-old islands dispute also became fodder for the main Friday prayer sermon in Tehran today.

"The final declaration of the Arab Summit showed they have been entrapped by the U.S.," prayer leader Ahmad Khatami told worshippers. "Three islands in the Persian Gulf forever belong to Iran and the Persian Gulf remains Persian for good, and nobody can deny it."

Khatami is a conservative not to be confused with the reformist former president Mohammad Khatami.

SYRIA: Arab League Summit's bitter aftertaste

The Arab League Summit ended over the weekend in the Syrian capital of Damascus with no breakthroughs, as expected, on the various political crises of the region.

The main news that came out of this annual meeting of Arab leaders was the absence of several heads of state. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, among other countries, sent low-ranking officials to the conference because, in their eyes, Damascus was blocking the selection of a president in Lebanon, which sent no one to the conference.