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Arab
Leaders: Peace Making Could Not Be
Unilateral, Divisible |
Posted By Nicola Nasser
Flanked by international and regional
non-Arab dignitaries representing the
UN, EU, OIC, NAM and the leaders of
Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan as well
as the foreign minister of Iran, the
leaders of the 22-member League of
Arab States on Wednesday re-launched
in Riyadh their five-year old Arab
Peace Initiative, determined to
reactivate it with mechanisms and a
follow-up diplomatic campaign that
will again take it to the United
Nations Security Council despite a
U.S. veto, which aborted a similar
move in the bud last year.
Confidently, seriously, unwaveringly
and collectively Arab leaders are
again binding themselves and their
countries to their “strategic
option” of peace with Israel,
offering their Initiative as a
realistic, pragmatic, affordable and
workable platform that could make a
comprehensive regional peace within
the reach of the living generations,
but unfortunately they are
reciprocated by a non-committal Israel
and United States who instead are
dealing tactically and evasively with
an historic opportunity that if missed
would plunge the Middle East into an
open-ended conflict, to the detriment
of all parties involved.
According to the Israeli daily Haaretz
on March 18, The Israeli Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and the U.S. State
Department consider the Arab
initiatiTe a forthcoming but
non-binding (to them of course) Arab
position that accordingly could only
be encouraged and not dismissed out of
hand to negotiate further Arab
concessions.
The 24-member board of trustees of the
Brussels-based International Crisis
Group (ICG), co-chaired by former
European Commissioner for External
Relations, Lord Chris Patten, and
former U.S. Ambassador to the UN,
Thomas Pickering, warned in a
statement ahead of the Riyadh summit
that the opportunity is not
“open-ended” and the status quo
cannot be maintained indefinitely.
“If the current chance for a
breakthrough is not grasped over the
next few months -- with the government
of Israel and the U.S. having the most
critical role in this respect -- there
is a real possibility that support for
a two-state solution among
Palestinians and in the wider Arab
world would disappear, with all the
renewed tensions this is bound to
generate,” their statement warned.
Nine facts should be brought to the
attention of the peace-loving world
community to understand the
counterproductive tactical passive
Israeli and U.S. engagement and the
credibility of the old-new Arab
endeavour:
First, shockingly both allies are
rejecting or demanding amendments to
the Arab plan, but have no concrete
alternative plans of their own to
offer except Bush’s “vision” and
Israel’s unilateral long-term and
transitional plans for the Palestinian
– Israeli track of the sixty-year
old conflict, but nothing for settling
the collective Arab – Israeli
conflict.
“We expect an offer by Israel,”
Secretary General of the Arab League,
Amr Moussa, said. Ironically when
Israel occupied Palestinian and Arab
lands in June 1967, late Israeli
minister of defence, Moshe Dayan,
announced the Israelis were waiting
for a phone call from any Arab leader.
Forty years later, in defiance of U.N.
resolutions, the Israeli army is still
occupying and colonizing the lands and
oppressing the people, but nonetheless
the call is coming collectively by
twenty-two Arab leaders.
Second, Israel rejected publicly then
undermined the Arab initiative of 2002
in the same year by reoccupying the
Palestinian self-ruled areas and
Washington the next year steered the
Quartet of the U.S., UN, EU and Russia
to come up with their own initiative,
the “Road Map,” which was
nonetheless accepted by the Arab
states and the PLO, but Israel
attached 14 undeclared conditions to
her acceptance thereof, which were
backed by Bush’s letter of
guarantees to Ariel Sharon on April
14, 2004, a backing that bought the
plan to its demise and the peace
process to its current dead end and
made it possible for the Arab leaders
to consider reactivating the
initiative their summit meeting in
Beirut approved in 2002. However the
U.S. as recently as last year vetoed a
similar Arab move to have the UN
Security Council adopt their
initiative.
Third, revitalizing the Arab
initiative comes only after the
failure of the Quartet, Israel and the
U.S. to deliver on their four year old
“Road Map” and the 15-year old
Madrid Conference process of 1991,
which has proved futile and declared
“dead” by the Arab League chief,
six years after declaring its death by
the comatose former Israeli premier
Ariel Sharon.
Fourth, the comprehensive and
collective Arab approach to solving
the conflict with Israel is building
on the dead end the bilateral and
step-by-step approaches reached. It is
worth noting that the most
enthusiastic advocates of the
comprehensive approach are Jordan and
Egypt, who only with Mauritania were
the three members of the Arab League
to sign bilateral peace treaties with
Israel, because they are the most
threatened by the absence of a
comprehensive peace and by persistence
of the status quo.
Fifth, reactivating the Arab
initiative is in itself an indirect
declaration of disillusionment with
the U.S. sponsorship of the
unproductive peace processes that have
ruled out involvement by the world
community, prevented the
implementation of international
legitimacy resolutions and for sixty
years proved a failed alternative to
UN engagement.
Sixth, the Arab Peace Initiative is
also building on the international
legitimacy of more than 70 resolutions
adopted by the UN General Assembly and
the Security Council during the past
59 years, which were rendered
inapplicable by the opposition thereto
of Israel and the U.S. who managed to
veto thirty more.
Seventh, the new found confidence of
the Arab leaders stems from the
forgoing facts, the Arab and
Palestinian consensus on the
initiative, which is backed by the
Turkish-led Organization of Islamic
Conference and the Non-Aligned
Movement as well as by the world
community, all which also neutralized
the Iranian and other opposition to
the initiative. “We deal with world
powers with understanding but on equal
footing,” the Saudi Arabian monarch,
King Abdullah, said on Monday,
confirming the new confidence.
Eighth, the seriousness of Arab
leaders stems from the fact that they
are the most to loose from the
deadlocked no-war-no-peace status quo
and that is why a veteran moderate
Arab state like Saudi Arabia is
staking her leading Arab and regional
role and risking a political rift with
her historic U.S. ally.
Ninth, although the two sides are not
on a collision course, obviously the
Arab Peace Initiative is drifting
apart the U.S. and its most trusted
Arab friends; however hanging on to
her strategic alliance with Israel is
alienating more normally friendly
moderate and liberal Arabs at a time
Washington is decisively in need for
their support on other regional
involvements.
Under the pressures of the latest
Israeli war on Lebanon, the U.S-led
war on Iraq, the brewing U.S. crisis
with Iran and the 59-year old
U.S.-backed Israeli war on the
Palestinian people, the Arab League
governments found a diplomatic opening
to re-launch their initiative to try
on their own this time containing the
ensuing possible internal threats and
regional turbulence.
Possible Diplomatic Leverage
In view of the absence of an Arab
military option due to Israel’s
overwhelming superiority, a diplomatic
option due to the U.S. identification
with the Israeli policies, ruling out
the people’s war though it proved
effective wherever the Arab regular
forces where absent in the Gaza Strip,
Lebanon, Iraq and the Jordan Valley in
1969, Arab leaders found an opening to
balance the U.S.-Israeli alliance by
the diplomatic counterweight of a long
forthcoming world community as their
only remaining option, availing
themselves of the U.S. critical need
for their support in Lebanon, Iraq,
Afghanistan and vis-à-vis Iran.
Were the U.S. –Israeli allies to
continue passively and tactically
evading commitment to the Arab
initiative as the only concrete peace
offer in the town, the Arab leaders
still could prod the alliance to be
more forthcoming by highlighting the
fact that the cool bilateral peace
treaties with Jordan, Egypt and
Mauritania are increasingly besieged
by popular opposition, proved
un-conducive to regional security and
stability, let alone being a
collateral for the security and
peaceful development of their
signatory states, and threatened by
escalating violence and extremism
emanating from their inability to
develop into vehicles for a just and
lasting regional reconciliation and
co-existence as envisioned by their
signatories and sponsors. Increasingly
also those treaties are threatened by
the absence of a comprehensive deal,
now made possible by the Arab
initiative.
To counterbalance the U.S.-Israeli
evasive engagement, Arab leaders could
give muscle to their peace offensive,
which so far has proved effective
enough for the U.S. and Israel not to
dismiss it out of hand and not to play
down the world consensus on its
seriousness and credibility; they
could suggest trading those bilateral
treaties for their collective
initiative as a possible diplomatic
leverage to prod both allies to ponder
choosing between an all-comprising
peace and a comprehensive no peace.
All mainstream Israeli leaders have on
record judged those treaties as
“strategic assets;” U.S. military,
political and financial guarantees for
sustaining them is proof enough they
are “strategic assets” to the
United States too. To secure these
assets both allies should be made
aware the treaties have to be of
similar strategic value for the Arab
signatories as well, otherwise why
sustaining them!
The precarious regional situation, the
snowballing threat of violence and
extremism, Arabs standing to loose
most of the deadlocked status quo,
disillusionment with sixty years of
U.S.-sponsored conflict management,
absence of other alternatives, all are
reason enough for Arab peace advocates
to ponder such an option to bolster
their initiative and prod their peace
protagonists to be more forthcoming.
Peace making in the end could not be
but a two way effort.
Tactical U.S. - Israeli Approach
The Arab initiative was endorsed
unchanged by the Arab League summit
meeting in the Saudi capital Riyadh on
March 28-29 amid mainly Israeli
demands for amendments thereto and a
flurry of diplomatic activity
unprecedented in recent years aimed at
amending it, despite a denial by the
visiting US Secretary of State,
Condoleezza Rice.
A parade of dignitaries flooded the
region. The UN Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon was preceded by the EU's
special envoy Marc Otte, UN envoy,
Alvaro de Soto, Belgian Foreign
Minister, Karel De Gught, and
Norwegian state secretary, Raymond
Johansen. Rice followed. German
Chancellor and current EU President,
Andrea Merkel, and US House Speaker,
Nancy Pelosi, as is Swedish Foreign
Minister, Carl Bildt, were all
expected to join. “I believe this is
a moment of gathering dynamism,” Ki-moon
said in Israel days ahead of the Arab
summit.
However, Ki-moon’s optimism has yet
to be vindicated. Only partially the
diplomatic boycott of the Palestinian
government was breached, but the
economic siege and the financial
strangling of the Palestinian
Authority remained intact. “Norway
announced immediate lifting of embargo
and decided to deal with all members
of the government and to restore
ties,” Palestinian Information
Minister Mustafa al-Barghouti told the
Palestine radio, adding: “France,
Spain, Italy and Sweden are
following.”
With the exception of Norway’s
Johansen, all visiting dignitaries
were representatives of three quarters
of the international Quartet of Middle
East mediators, whose failure to
realise their 2003 Road Map has
created the current impasse and whose
Road Map plan was floated originally
to thwart the 2002 Arab plan. All of
them came with one message, which the
Quartet affirmed on Thursday night,
March 22: The Arab summit has to make
the Palestinian government meet its
three conditions and “the commitment
of the new government in this regard
will be measured not only on the basis
of its composition and platform, but
also its actions.”
The Quartet was referring to the
Palestinian unity government recently
formed on the basis of the Saudi
hosted, mediated and sponsored Mecca
Accord, which made it possible to form
a ruling coalition of the rival
movements of Fatah and Hamas as a
pre-requisite for both convening the
Arab summit and endorsing the Arab
Peace Initiative.
Rice came to the region ahead of the
Arab summit planning tactically to
bypass the Arab diplomatic offensive
by suggesting two parallel tracks that
were rejected by both Israel and the
Arabs: A Palestinian – Israeli
negotiations over the final status
issues, which was rejected out of hand
by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert,
and a meeting of the international
Quartet with the Arab quartet of Saudi
Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Jordan plus
Israel and the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO).
She floated the idea of “adding an
element of active diplomacy” and
suggested Arab governments take steps
toward conciliation with Israel before
an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement
is complete, and after a meeting with
Ki-moon test ballooned the idea of the
Quartet + Quartet plus two, as a
confidence building down payment to
Israel; she was helped by Olmert, who
said he “wouldn't hesitate” to
look at an invitation to such a summit
“in a very positive manner.”
Bringing Arab heavyweights like Riyadh
and Abu Dhabi to unilaterally
normalize relations with Israel
beforehand would be indeed a
breakthrough, but it would also be a
death blow to Arab consensus that
could undermine not only the Arab
initiative but all peace prospects for
the foreseeable future. Egyptian
Foreign Minister, Ahmad Abul Gheit, on
record refused such a prospect.
Points of Conflict Unresolved
The Palestinian unity government is
one of four major obstacles Israel is
citing for her rejection of the Arab
initiative because this government
include Hamas, which is condemned also
by the U.S. as a “terrorist”
organization. The other three are: The
reference in the initiative to the
Palestinian Right of Return on the
basis of UN resolution 194, full
withdrawal of the Israeli occupying
forces to June 4, 1967 lines,
including eastern Jerusalem, which is
the third obstacle. Israel accordingly
is demanding corresponding amendments,
which is a sure recipe to undermine
Arab and Palestinian consensus on the
initiative, which is its main asset,
as well as any other negotiable
initiative as had been the case since
1948.
Rice disappointedly ended her fourth
Middle East shuttle in four months
without announcing any dramatic
breakthrough neither on
Israeli-Palestinian track nor on the
Arab – Israeli track. Olmert quashed
her planned accelerated negotiations
with President Mahmoud Abbas on the
final status issues, which represent
exactly the foregoing Israeli points
of conflict with the Arab initiative;
on the rock of these same obstacles
the Oslo accords grinded into a halt
when both sides had to begin the final
status talks at the end of the interim
self rule in July 1999; the failure to
resolve them next year at the
trilateral U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian
summit in Camp David led to the second
Palestinian anti-occupation uprising,
which in turn led to the following
five years of tit-for-tat violence
that deadlocked the peace process and
brought the Road Map to its demise.
At a March 27 news conference in
Jerusalem Rice announced that Olmert
and Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas will meet every two weeks, but
will not tackle “core issues” like
final borders, Jerusalem and
Palestinian refugees. She had her
country’s carte blanche support for
Israel to blame for Olmert’s resolve
to disappoint her publicly. The United
States has given Israel $51.3 billion
in military grants since 1949, most of
it after 1974 – more than any other
country in the post-1945 era. Israel
has also received $11.2 billion in
loans for military equipment, plus $31
billion in economic grants, not to
mention loan guarantees or joint
military projects. This open-treasury
support has been all along the main
leverage for Israeli territorial
expansion, demographic cleansing,
diplomatic inflexibility and obsession
with the military-dictated peace
pre-requisites.
Prior to her ongoing reoccupation of
the Palestinian autonomy areas in
2002, Israel was in effective control
of 85 percent of historic Palestine
compared to the 55 percent it is
entitled to under the UN resolution
181 (the partition plan); the 1948 war
between more than 120.000 WWII-trained
Israeli troops and the less than
50.000 combined forces from seven Arab
states, then under British and French
mandates, ended with the displacement
of less than one million Palestinian
refugees, whose national and private
rights have been at the core of the
Arab and Palestinian – Israeli
conflict ever since, thus turning by
the sword the Arab majority of the
UN-sponsored state into a minority.
More than 22 percent of Arab citizens
of pre-1967 Israel, who mark the Land
Day on March 31, have been
systemically dispossessed of their
land to own now less than 3 percent of
the area of the Hebrew state. In the
Israeli occupied West Bank more than
62 colonial settlements, built on
Palestinian publicly and
privately-owned land since 1967, are
now host to more than 450.000 Jewish
settlers.
Dispossession and displacement of Arab
Palestinians have at least to stop,
let alone redressing the historic
injustice, to make room for peace
making. A Palestinian state on 22
percent of historic Palestine, within
the pre-1967 armistice lines of 1948,
is only part and not all of the
solution. 73 Palestinian groups urged
the two-day Arab summit in Riyadh to
uphold the Right of Return. Hence the
Arab summit’s rejection of
acquisition of land by force,
reiteration of land for peace as the
basis of the Arab initiative and
refusal to heed the Israeli proposed
amendments.
Changing the initiative is virtually
impossible in the near future because
the rules of the Arab League demand
that all decisions be accepted
unanimously, Amr Mousa said. “There
will be no amendment to the Arab peace
initiative,” Saudi Foreign Minister
Prince Saud Al Faisal also reaffirmed
on March 25, adding: “(It) is the
best framework for a comprehensive and
fair resolution of not only the
Palestinian-Israeli problem but the
entire Arab-Israeli conflict.”
However, the Arab leaders meeting in
Riyadh left the door open for Israeli
engagement; they decided not to
discard the Quartet’s Road Map and
approved it as one of the terms of
reference for peace making in addition
to their initiative. Another provision
stipulated “reaching a just solution
for the problem of Palestinian
refugees to be agreed upon in
accordance with the Arab peace
initiative in implementation of the
resolution of the General Assembly of
the United Nations No. 194.” Both
provisions keep the door open for
diplomacy.
For Israel, history for making peace
starts in 1967, for Arabs in 1948, and
here lies the conflict that has
deadlocked the peace process and the
efforts of the international community
to resolve the Middle East chronic and
yet intractable conflict, because the
core issues that sparked six major
Arab – Israeli wars and could ignite
more military confrontations predate
the 1967 war, where Israel is seeking
to make history stops. Here is the
chestnut of the Arab –Israeli
conflict, which failed all previous
peace efforts and could make or break
future similar endeavours. The ball is
in the Israeli court.
* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab
journalist in Kuwait, Jordan, UAE and
Palestine. He is based in Birzeit,
West Bank of the Israeli-occupied
Palestinian territories. |
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