It makes me sick when in meeting, Locals, middle & high management, some VP's star speaking in Arabic ignoring the presence of the expatriate. I've seen this bad behavior with contractors also. In a few words, even if you are in principle part of the company, they will not trust you.
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Actually this is part of respect to speek in English ONLY when expats are there. I am arabic and really feels bad when someone talks in Arabic when other expats are in the meeting. Even its an Arabic and moslim country it doesn't mean to ignore others. Its actually the other way around, Islam forbids this behavior it is similar of what is mentioned by prophet Mohamad:
(If you were three, then two of you should not hold a secret counsel in the presence of the third person, except with his permission, because that would cause him to be worried.)
What difference anyway does it make what they chatter about in Arabic? Nothing productive or value added has been done in Arabic for over a thousand years. Whatever Arabic you are hearing probably involves racism, hate speech, rudeness, impatience, verbal abuse, or backwards ideas (example any Arabic version of yeah duh we'll actually get to collect 400 SAR a month from expats family members duh lets put it in our fantastic vision duh) and who has the spare time for that?
When work needs to be done or progress needs to be made they'll switch to English or some other language to word it in a cheap knockoff copy of the way English gets it done.
Or......learn it. Just dont post your disappointment when learning it gained nothing of value. You can after all be rude, ignorant, and impatient in any language.
The language of business is English
You are working in Arab country. Learn Arabic ! can you make the same statement if you were in italy, spain, germany, france, UK, USA ....?
Learn Arabic, fine. What the post refers to is business meetings. Business should be done in English. I have been in meetings and training where it goes beyond idle chat.
If you don't like this "bad behavior" then learn Arabic. It's not some kind of secret code, and people in general are not obligated to speak among themselves in a specific language just to accommodate third parties.
And while you're at it learn English too. Yours is barely comprehensible (and not even all you wrote).