{"id":12359,"date":"2011-11-16T17:25:22","date_gmt":"2011-11-16T13:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=12359"},"modified":"2011-11-16T17:25:22","modified_gmt":"2011-11-16T13:25:22","slug":"news-analysis-arab-league-gives-syria-heave-ho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-politics-analysis\/news-analysis-arab-league-gives-syria-heave-ho\/","title":{"rendered":"News Analysis: Arab League Gives Syria Heave-Ho"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>What’s the Story?<\/strong>\u00a0 Syria has decided not to attend the Arab League meeting which is taking place in Rabat, Morocco.<\/p>\n

This is hardly a jaw-dropper, is it, since the Arab League is threatening to throw them out soon.<\/strong>\u00a0 Ah today was the given the day for Syria’s exit following their failure to implement a peace plan proposed by the League.<\/p>\n

The pressure is certainly being ramped up on President Assad<\/strong>.\u00a0 It’s getting more difficult by the day for him – yesterday, for instance, King Abdullah of Jordan became the first Arab leader to call publicly for his resignation.<\/p>\n

And today?<\/strong>\u00a0 Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief and former ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, said the departure of the Syrian leader was \u201cinevitable\u201d<\/p>\n

But wasn’t the Arab League the very definition of a ‘toothless talking shop’?<\/strong> A metaphor that elicits a curious image but, yes, the body has certainly become ‘dentally virile’ as far as Syria is concerned.<\/p>\n

And why might that be?<\/strong>\u00a0 Many commentators see Qatar – which led the moves to suspend Syria – taking a much more robust role in its relations with its Arab brothers.\u00a0 This is attributed to a variety of factors – its incredible wealth, its leading role in supporting the overthrow of Qaddafi and of course it’s the home to arguably the Arab world’s most important media organisation, Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

And the Saudis?<\/strong> They too have played a key role which explains why both Qatari and Saudi embassies were attacked in Damascus by pro-Assad supporters.<\/p>\n

So have the Syrian authorities offered any olive branches to the League?<\/strong>\u00a0 They claimed on Tuesday that they had released more than 1,100 prisoners detained since the beginning of the protests.\u00a0 This was widely seen as a move to appease Arab League demands.<\/p>\n

Will it work?<\/strong> Very unlikely – much too little, much too late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s crunch time for Syria at the Arab League and they’ve decided not to turn up to the Moroccan get-together. Hardly a major surprise. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,483,60,482,317,893],"tags":[2224,691,628,703,18305,18334,1808,18307,2429,18275,18330,2675,18302],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12359"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}