"'We are now just a show for you to watch,' shouted the Palestinian women crying for help on the Al Jazeera channel," wrote Kawkab al Wad'ii, a regular columnist for Saudi Arabia's pro-government newspaper Al Watan. "The Arab officials heard this plea with ears filled with mud and dough. Yet the Arabs continue to sit and watch, waiting for something that will achieve their desires and help their brothers in Gaza."
Those viewers hope to see their leaders take a decisive attitude and change the well-rehearsed ending for their endless summit meetings, which conclude that "this is what the international community wants" and then condemn it, he wrote. "The Israeli war will only strengthen the will and the fortitude of the people and violence will only beget more violence and every action has an equal and opposite reaction," Al Wad'ii wrote. "Arab anger and rage will continue to rise and our children are already leaving their cartoons and games to watch the scenes of death and destruction with passion. So what future can we expect for peace, in light of such crimes?"
The Palestinian-owned Al Quds al Arabi daily carried the following opinion piece by the Chief Editor Abdel-Beri Atwan saying that while the Arabs competed over summits concerning Gaza, non-Arab countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia, which expelled their Israeli ambassadors, had acted.
"Whoever wants to act does not need Arab summits, whether ordinary or urgent ones, and could adopt practical steps and acquit himself before God and his people from the accusations of collaboration with these massacres," he wrote in the UK-based paper. "The men of Gaza do not want your crumbs" The steadfast people of Gaza neither want coffins sent to them by their Arab brothers, nor bread, nor a handful of medicines, Atwan wrote. "They want arms and practical and courageous positions. What would they do with bread as they are facing death at any moment and as their children search through the rubble of their destroyed homes in search of their mothers?"
Lebanon's independent newspaper Al Anwar carried the following editorial by Editor-in-Chief Rafiq Khoury saying the Gaza summit can hardly be called an "emergency summit" after three weeks of Israeli aggression.
"But the summit does not deserve to be, and should not be a goal in itself, but rather a means," he wrote. "Is the debate over the summits and the meetings aimed at ending the Israeli offensive on Gaza or at embarrassing some Arab states and revealing their impotence? Although no one knows if the Egyptian initiative will successfully end the aggression on Gaza, it is 'the only game in town'," Khoury wrote.
"What is expected of the proposed summit now? Will it be a march in solidarity with Gaza? Or will it impede the Egyptian role demanded by the two sides in the war? Regardless of the answer, we are ahead of a division over a meaningless summit, if it is a mere protest," he concluded. "This summit will be politically futile if it is destined to impede the Egyptian initiative."
Hassan Haidar wrote in the Saudi-owned newspaper Al Hayat that Hamas is waging three intertwined wars at the same time. "The first war is the bloody one against Israel, which is a legitimate war of resistance against an occupation force," he wrote, going on to ask, nonetheless, whether the movement considered Israel's response or consulted the Gazans. The second war started with the "bloody coup" in Gaza and aims to make Hamas the sole representative of the Palestinians, he wrote in the UK-based paper.
"Hamas's third war is the war of regional coalitions. Indeed, the Hamas movement, which represents part of the Palestinian people, has chosen to join the Syrian-Iranian coalition in the face of the forces of Arab moderation." However, the movement's supposed allies have given it, in the present confrontation, nothing but verbal support, Haidar wrote. "Hamas insists on pursuing its three wars indefinitely and at any cost. However, as it is evident that these wars are much greater than Hamas itself."
* Digest compiled by www.mideastwire.com