ARAB LEAGUE

Also known as the League of Arab States (Jami?at al-Duwal al-?Arabiyya), the Arab League was founded in 1945 as a grouping of Arab states. The Arab League's objectives are to solidify cooperation among its members in the areas of defense, politics, communications, society, and culture. It has its roots in pan-Arab nationalism and anticolonialism, but it recognizes in principle the independence and sovereignty of the diverse nation-states that constitute its membership. Its founding members are Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. Permanently based in Cairo, the Arab League now has twenty-two members, the most recent to join being Djibouti (1977) and the Comoros Islands(1993). The Palestine Liberation Organization (now the Palestinian Authority) was launched and given observer status by the League in 1964; it won full member status in 1976. The League houses a number of specialized agencies, including those dealing with communication, labor, Palestine, civil aviation, and cities. It also convenes the Arab Summit, a periodic gathering of Arab heads of state.

The Arab League has established ties of cooperation and mutual consultation with other international and regional organizations, including the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity. Islamic religion does not constitute either its core ideology, nor its primary purpose; Islam is notably absent from the League charter. Moreover, the overt secular influence that Jamal ?Abd al-Nasser's Egypt exercised over the League was a major factor in the creation of the Muslim World League in 1962. Nonetheless, the Arab League does maintain formal relations with the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Islam has also shaped its organizational style, as reflected in its flag, which has a crescent moon (hilal) on a green field.

The League's effectiveness has often been called into question. Its efforts to forge a common front against Israel have been unsuccessful, as evidenced by the expulsion of Egypt for signing the Camp David peace accords with Israel in 1979 (Egypt was reinstated in 1987). In March 2002, however, it unanimously supported a Saudi-sponsored peace initiative that offered recognition of Israel in return for that state's withdrawal from the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The League has also had mixed success in resolving conflicts among its own member states, as demonstrated by its failure to prevent Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and its inability to force Iraq's withdrawal in the face of international intervention.

See also?Abd al-Nasser, Jamal ; Organization of the Islamic Conference .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hasou, Tawfiq Y. The Struggle for the Arab World: Egypt'sNasser and the Arab League. London, Boston: KPI, 1985.

Juan Eduardo Campo