By Emad Omar
Jimmy Carter, the previous American president who received the Nobel Peace Prize and initiated putting human rights on the US agenda during his term, was the first to break the state of hostility between Israel and the Arabs with the first peace treaty in the history of this conflict. In 1978, the famous peace treaty between the Egyptians and the Israelis was a great opportunity for Israel to obtain recognition and end the state of war. Yet in spite of this, the pro-Israel lobby in US raised hell against Carter after publishing his latest book “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.” In the book, he told of the successive Israeli governments that have routinely undermined the peace process through obstinate aggressive and illegal occupation of the territories seized in 1967. The lobby’s reaction confirmed what Carter mentioned in his book and in a number of his press interviews, that “the Jewish general public is more eager for peace than their political leaders.”
The former American Secretary of the State, James Baker, was the engineer of the second reduction in hostility between Israel and Arab states. Baker sponsored the direct negotiations between Israel and neighboring Arab countries in 1991, giving Israel an historic opportunity to be recognized and accepted in the region. Despite that, a considerable wing of the lobby, during that time, led a campaign against him. They accused him of vilifying the Jews in a private meeting when he claimed that they do not vote for the Republicans. Recently, Baker, with his colleague Lee Hamilton, in the Bi-partisan Iraq study group, found that “the United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict,” he was attacked by this wing that seems careless about American interests in the region and sees only the strategic bi-lateral relation between Israel and US as its only concern.
Carter and Baker are among the most respected American politicians when it comes to American foreign policy. Their careers in diplomacy are behind them now and they can afford to tell the truth and focus on the real and possible solutions.
George Soros, a rich American Jew, experienced suffering in eastern Europe during the fascist reign and the Holocaust, which gave him extreme sensitivity towards the oppressed. As such, he supported black students in South Africa against the Apartheid regime and the dissident movements in Eastern Europe against the communist tolatarian regimes. “I have a great deal of sympathy for my fellow Jews and deep concern for the survival of Israel,” Soros says. Lately, he criticized in an article published in the New York Review of Books, dated April 12, 2007, saying, “Recently, the pro-Israel lobby has gone on the offensive, accusing the so-called progressive critics of Israel’s policies of fomenting anti-Semitism and endangering the very existence of the Jewish state.” He warned that “There is the growing danger of a regional conflagration in which Israel and the US could well be on the losing side.” Supporters of the pro-Israel lobby attacked Soros by comparing his criticisms to the so-called blood libels directed against Jews in medieval Europe.
President of the esteemed Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas recently noted, “Diplomacy also needs to be revived in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is still the issue that most shapes (and radicalizes) public opinion in the region…The United States should articulate those principles it believes ought to constitute the elements of a final settlement, including the creation of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines.” Pro-Israel lobby has publicly disagreed with Haas's conclusions.
One year ago, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, two prominent academics from Chicago and Harvard universities respectively, prepared a joint research paper about the lobby supporting Israel in America. In a documented and scientific way, they criticized the negative role played by the Israeli lobby today in American democratic life and in America’s foreign policy. In a joint essay published in the London Review of Books, they wrote that, “The Lobby’s influence has been bad for Israel. Its ability to persuade Washington to support an expansionist agenda has discouraged Israel from seizing opportunities – including a peace treaty with Syria and a prompt and full implementation of the Oslo Accords – that would have saved Israeli lives and shrunk the ranks of Palestinian extremists.”
As a result of this, they were targeted by a fierce campaign that made it almost impossible for both to publish their research in US.
The pro-Israel lobby in America that has attacked any sort of criticism of Israeli policies is like the father who exaggerates in protecting his children and spoils them, turning them into a troublemakers in the neighborhood and bringing their parents a bad reputation. This lobby’s policy contributes to maintaining the dangerous stagnation and status quo, the very problem King Abdullah II of Jordan warned of in his historical speech to the American Congress last March, when he said, “The status quo is pulling the region and the world towards greater danger... The cycle of crisis is spinning faster.”
The Arabs today are promoting their historic peace initiative, which is an historical opportunity, and the Israeli lobby in the US should push for a positive Israeli response in order to transform it into a regional peace plan instead of indulging in blindly defending the status quo and thus taking Israel, the region, and American interests into an endless hell that it may not recover from for many decades to come.
* Emad Omar is a conflict resolution and media expert based in Amman, Jordan.
Showing posts with label Arab Peace Initiative (API). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arab Peace Initiative (API). Show all posts
Monday, April 30, 2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Major invasion of Gaza Strip expected
Now why would Israel do that? Oh yah, to avoid the Arab Initiative and “peace process.”
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(Gaza City) Palestine News Network
Wednesday, 25 April 2007
Sources indicated late Wednesday morning that Israeli forces are preparing to invade parts of the Gaza Strip within hours. The Palestine Observer to United Nations, Dr. Riyad Mansour, said, “The Israeli military build-up, incursions and attacks around the Gaza Strip constitute a clear threat of widespread aggression.”
However, the head of negotiations in the Palestine Liberation Organization, Dr. Sa'eb Erekat, said Wednesday afternoon that contacts had been between the Palestinian, Israeli and American administrations in order to prevent a further deterioration in the situation.
Government spokesperson Ghazi Hamad told the press yesterday that it is impossible to suggest that there is anything resembling a “cease-fire” in play. “The truce has collapsed in light of serious developments, including the intensification of Israeli military operations which have resulted in the killing of many with even more injured,” Hamad said.
Some in the Palestinian government are still calling for calm, but Israeli forces did spend the week invading and killing members of the armed resistance and teenagers. Under the current conditions it is a difficult sell to convince many of the people, including the armed resistance, to not fight back. Egyptian security called today upon the armed resistance to exercise restraint and stop launching projectiles in order to not give pretext for further invasion.
Hamad emphasized the need for “the aggressive practices of the occupation to stop.” He said, “Our people must be protected.” The Government Spokesperson indicated that as the threats of a major Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip continue, consultations among Palestinian forces and factions have been underway since Tuesday.
However as the Al Qassam Brigades Spokesperson in Gaza, Abu Obeiyda, pointed out, Israeli forces “destroyed the truce within hours of it beginning.”
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(Gaza City) Palestine News Network
Wednesday, 25 April 2007
Sources indicated late Wednesday morning that Israeli forces are preparing to invade parts of the Gaza Strip within hours. The Palestine Observer to United Nations, Dr. Riyad Mansour, said, “The Israeli military build-up, incursions and attacks around the Gaza Strip constitute a clear threat of widespread aggression.”
However, the head of negotiations in the Palestine Liberation Organization, Dr. Sa'eb Erekat, said Wednesday afternoon that contacts had been between the Palestinian, Israeli and American administrations in order to prevent a further deterioration in the situation.
Government spokesperson Ghazi Hamad told the press yesterday that it is impossible to suggest that there is anything resembling a “cease-fire” in play. “The truce has collapsed in light of serious developments, including the intensification of Israeli military operations which have resulted in the killing of many with even more injured,” Hamad said.
Some in the Palestinian government are still calling for calm, but Israeli forces did spend the week invading and killing members of the armed resistance and teenagers. Under the current conditions it is a difficult sell to convince many of the people, including the armed resistance, to not fight back. Egyptian security called today upon the armed resistance to exercise restraint and stop launching projectiles in order to not give pretext for further invasion.
Hamad emphasized the need for “the aggressive practices of the occupation to stop.” He said, “Our people must be protected.” The Government Spokesperson indicated that as the threats of a major Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip continue, consultations among Palestinian forces and factions have been underway since Tuesday.
However as the Al Qassam Brigades Spokesperson in Gaza, Abu Obeiyda, pointed out, Israeli forces “destroyed the truce within hours of it beginning.”
Thursday, April 12, 2007
The stale myth of battlefield bravado
Related
Israel doesn't want peace: Gideon Levy - Haaretz
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Last update - 11:22 12/04/2007
By Meron Benvenisti
Only the naive expected a positive government response to the Arab initiative offering normalized relations in return for a withdrawal and a resolution to the refugee problem. The knee-jerk skepticism to peace offers has characterized the response of nearly all Israeli governments since 1949, and not only during the years after 1967 and the occupation of the territories. When Ehud Olmert has reservations about the Arab peace initiative, he is following in the footsteps of Moshe Dayan who said half a century ago: "I am against concessions in any area, and if the Arabs will want war over this, I am not opposed."
The governments of Israel have always been quick to initiate military operations and slow to engage in restraint or seek compromise and settlement. After all, it is always possible to find justification for aggression, arguing that we were responding to their attack. The definition of provocation, compared to a response to it, is a matter of perspective. When there is an unending chain of violence and counter-violence, every cause in the eyes of one side is an effect for the other. Indeed, there are many instances in which one side initiated provocations that served as a pretext for a disproportionate response, which in turn fed the cycle.
Behind the slogans "war imposed on us" and "war of no choice" hides an old attitude that says the use of force serves strategic objectives, such as occupying territory and clutching territorial assets gained in previous wars.
There is also an ideological foundation to the aversion to peace initiatives. The governing ideology maintains that Arab hostility is a permanent situation, that the Arabs lack a basic willingness to relate to the Jewish state as a legitimate entity, and that the violent nature of the region does not allow for real peace but, in the best case scenario, a cease-fire that will be violated the very moment its enemies sense Israel's weakness.
This dismissive approach to any chance at peace stood out once again when the negative response to the Saudi peace initiative stirred nearly no protest, except among a small group of peace activists. There is even more evidence to the impact of this eternal war of the "no choice" approach: the public's anger at its leadership for failing in the supreme objective of military victory, which "will etch on the psyche of the enemy" Israel's superior deterrent power.
The urge to punish the leaders stems not only from the failures in the conduct of the war, but also from the fact that their conduct exposed the deep chasm between the fiery belligerence of arrogant generals and the lack of motivation and inability to carry out the mission, the erosion of the public's willingness to bear bereavement, and most of all, the unwillingness to give up the good life in favor of the demands of an eternal war of no choice.
The exposure of this gap is unforgiven. Because if this is the situation, how is it possible to persist with the pretense of "a war for the sake of our existence," which rejects any possibility of dialogue?
"The Lord Almighty blessed us with a miracle," the prime minister said in his apologetic speeches, "which created that which exposed the situation today and not, God forbid, in two to three years." Ehud Olmert was referring here to the growing strength of the enemy, but it would have been appropriate for him to relate to what was really exposed by the Second Lebanon War: The Israeli public has had enough of the stale myth of battlefield bravado and wishes to lead a normal life.
Something happened since the 1950s, and the public is not afraid of the privatization of defense and its transformation into an irreverent matter, empty of pathos. A daring leader will discover that it is not the conflict that is preventing normalization but the absence of normalization that is preventing an end to the conflict.
Israel doesn't want peace: Gideon Levy - Haaretz
---
Last update - 11:22 12/04/2007
By Meron Benvenisti
Only the naive expected a positive government response to the Arab initiative offering normalized relations in return for a withdrawal and a resolution to the refugee problem. The knee-jerk skepticism to peace offers has characterized the response of nearly all Israeli governments since 1949, and not only during the years after 1967 and the occupation of the territories. When Ehud Olmert has reservations about the Arab peace initiative, he is following in the footsteps of Moshe Dayan who said half a century ago: "I am against concessions in any area, and if the Arabs will want war over this, I am not opposed."
The governments of Israel have always been quick to initiate military operations and slow to engage in restraint or seek compromise and settlement. After all, it is always possible to find justification for aggression, arguing that we were responding to their attack. The definition of provocation, compared to a response to it, is a matter of perspective. When there is an unending chain of violence and counter-violence, every cause in the eyes of one side is an effect for the other. Indeed, there are many instances in which one side initiated provocations that served as a pretext for a disproportionate response, which in turn fed the cycle.
Behind the slogans "war imposed on us" and "war of no choice" hides an old attitude that says the use of force serves strategic objectives, such as occupying territory and clutching territorial assets gained in previous wars.
There is also an ideological foundation to the aversion to peace initiatives. The governing ideology maintains that Arab hostility is a permanent situation, that the Arabs lack a basic willingness to relate to the Jewish state as a legitimate entity, and that the violent nature of the region does not allow for real peace but, in the best case scenario, a cease-fire that will be violated the very moment its enemies sense Israel's weakness.
This dismissive approach to any chance at peace stood out once again when the negative response to the Saudi peace initiative stirred nearly no protest, except among a small group of peace activists. There is even more evidence to the impact of this eternal war of the "no choice" approach: the public's anger at its leadership for failing in the supreme objective of military victory, which "will etch on the psyche of the enemy" Israel's superior deterrent power.
The urge to punish the leaders stems not only from the failures in the conduct of the war, but also from the fact that their conduct exposed the deep chasm between the fiery belligerence of arrogant generals and the lack of motivation and inability to carry out the mission, the erosion of the public's willingness to bear bereavement, and most of all, the unwillingness to give up the good life in favor of the demands of an eternal war of no choice.
The exposure of this gap is unforgiven. Because if this is the situation, how is it possible to persist with the pretense of "a war for the sake of our existence," which rejects any possibility of dialogue?
"The Lord Almighty blessed us with a miracle," the prime minister said in his apologetic speeches, "which created that which exposed the situation today and not, God forbid, in two to three years." Ehud Olmert was referring here to the growing strength of the enemy, but it would have been appropriate for him to relate to what was really exposed by the Second Lebanon War: The Israeli public has had enough of the stale myth of battlefield bravado and wishes to lead a normal life.
Something happened since the 1950s, and the public is not afraid of the privatization of defense and its transformation into an irreverent matter, empty of pathos. A daring leader will discover that it is not the conflict that is preventing normalization but the absence of normalization that is preventing an end to the conflict.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
No more Arab capitulation
Israel had finally given its conditional assent to the Arab peace initiative launched in Beirut in 2002. Ahead of his meeting with Palestinian President Abbas on 11 March, Israel's Prime Minister Olmert said that he "approved of regional negotiations on the basis of the Arab peace initiative," noting that Israel was willing to respond to that initiative, especially the positive aspects it contained. The Israeli foreign minister then advised Arab countries not to wait for peace to normalise relations with Israel, but to act sooner. Meanwhile, reports indicated that Israel demanded limited amendments in the initiative, especially with regard to the matters of borders and refugees. During her tour of the region, Condoleezza Rice hinted in the same direction.
It is hard to fathom this rapid change of heart on Israel's side. But we known that Israel, along with the US, are in the habit of engaging in such manoeuvres whenever an Arab summit is about to convene. The aim is always the same: to distract Arab leaders from the real issues at hand. In this case, Israel's aim was to prevent the summit from taking a strong anti-Israeli line. And America did the same, arranging for the Baghdad summit to be held on 10 March, a fortnight or so before the summit. The US wanted the Baghdad conference to launch a new regional policy that may bring about a solution to the Iraqi crisis. The conference, therefore, was timed to prevent the Arab summit from taking a hard-line stance on Iraq.
The Israeli move is nothing more than a diversion tactic. Israel's prime minister speaks of the "positive aspects" of the Arab initiative but his real aim is to speak of the aspects he wouldn't agree to. This is quite predictable, for Israel is unwilling to withdraw from the occupied territories and resolve the refugee problem. As for Livni's call for normalisation before talks, this is a non-starter. What Israel wants is for the Arabs to strip their initiative of content, to turn it into the "Tel Aviv initiative". Israel wants the Arabs to normalise their relations with Israel as a gesture of goodwill. Then and only then, it would engage in talks that may or may not lead to results.
Israel wants an Arab capitulation. It saw how the Arabs changed their position in the past and hopes for much the same again. Before 1967, the Arabs saw Israel as an imperialist state. After 1967, they accepted a two-state solution. Then the Arabs offered full normalisation to sweeten the deal. Now Israel wants more.
The Arab peace initiative is not a starting point for negotiations. Its wording is too clear to allow for further talks. The Arabs didn't fashion their initiative in ambiguous language that allows for give and take. Instead, they said exactly what they meant. The problem is that the initiative offers Israel not the least that the Arabs can accept, but the most they can do. This is what makes this initiative a poor starting point for negotiations. What more can the Arabs offer?
The Arabs should not alter their peace initiative. More importantly, they should admit that Israel is not in the mood to accept the Beirut initiative or even negotiate on its basis. All Israel wants is to disrupt the Riyadh summit. All it wants is for the Arabs to make more concessions. The Arabs should ignore what Israel is saying about amending the initiative. The Arabs should tilt the balance of power in their favour. The Arabs need to establish parity, not just with Israel, but also with all those who want to control their fate.
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Saturday, March 31, 2007
The Riyadh Summit
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Al-Hayat leads its Riyadh-summit coverage with this:
Al-Quds al-Arabi, for its part, adds to its summit coverage this:
The Al-Quds al-Arabi lead editorial says the important practical effect of the Riyadh summit has been to initiate a new stage in the process aimed at Arab-country recognition of Israel, a crucial step, the editorialist says, in laying the groundwork for confrontation with Iran "whether political or military", in his words. Specifically, on the Israel-recognition question, the editorialist says this:
So there you have part of the assortment of Arab views on the Riyadh summit, from the regimes pulling up their socks to regain credibility (Al-Hayat), to another step in the adoption of Israel as an ally against Iran (Al-Quds al-Arabi).
The American coverage puts all of this in kids-story mode. While King Abdullah did call the US occupation "illegal", the NYT misleadingly implies this was some kind of a policy about-face, lifting it out of its context of overall self-criticism. The more-colorful Juan Cole writes: "King Abdullah is hopping mad to talk this way...It augurs ill for US-Saudi relations....[The king] is so angry he sounds a bit like Harith Al-Dhari, who is connected in some shadowy way with the Sunni guerillas fighting the US," focusing on this as if it was meant as a specific threat to the Green-Zone government.
High-level sources participating in the Arab solidarity summit that started yesterday in Riyadh told Al-Hayat that the summit "Launched a climate aimed at reclaiming Arab "qaraar" [word meaning in this case "firm decision-making power"], which in the past had been eroded in a way that led to a multiplication of foreign interventions and allowed the initiative to fall into non-Arab hands". And the sources added: "Exchanges in the sessions and between sessions all indicated a common desire to regain the initiative in all of the open files, from Palestine to Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan and Somalia, and this involves unifying our discourse in addressing the great powers, and also in addressing the neighboring states.The theme of the conference, in other words, according to Al-Hayat, was a common desire to see the Arab regimes take control of strategic decision-making in the region, with the implicit admission that their credibility in this had reached a very low ebb. On this reading, the reference to the illegal foreign occupation of Iraq was not really an about-face in Saudi policy vis-a-vis the Bush administration. Rather it was part of a attempt by the Saudi king to show leadership in permitting the Arab regimes to claw back some degree of credibility in the Arab world. The king "took up" the issue of the illegal American occupation of Iraq in the same way that he "took up" the problem of "hateful sectarianism" in that country, and the need to lift the Palestinian blockade: These are problems that have resulted from foreign interventions in our region (so goes this reading); we leaders have in the past been lax in allowing openings for these foreign interventions to occur; we recognize that; and from now on we will be making our own decisions, to roll this back and make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again. Given the fact that the "foreign interventions" can be understood as Iranian in addition to American, this isn't a theme from which policy moves automatically flow. It is a general statement of principle.
This atmosphere of taking back Arab decision-making powers appeared in the opening statement [of the Saudi king] ...when he said: "When credibility returns, a new wind of hope will begin to blow over the ummah, and we will not allow powers foreign to our region to design the future of our region. No flags will fly in Arab lands but Arab flags". And the king touched on the need to end the oppressive blockage against our brothers the Palestinian people, at the earliest possible time. And he took up too the "illegal foreign occupation" of Iraq, and the "hateful sectarianism which threatens the unity of its people".
Al-Quds al-Arabi, for its part, adds to its summit coverage this:
Israeli newspaper Yehdioth Ahrunoth reported on Wednesday that the Saudi Arabia, the US and Israel have held secret meetings at which they have drawn up a new proposal for solving the question of Palestinian refugees. The paper said this includes a proposal for financial compensation for refugees displaced in the 1948 war, in exchange for their staying in the countries where they currently reside. And the paper said the proposal would permit those who didn't agree [to the financial compensation offer] to return to Palestine. And it said the US and Saudi and other Gulf states would provice multi-billion-dollar financing to improve the quality of life of those who choose to stay in the countries where they now live.The reporter doesn't comment on the YA report, limiting himself to background on the number of refugees involved, and so on. I haven't seen the YA story referred to anywhere else.
The Al-Quds al-Arabi lead editorial says the important practical effect of the Riyadh summit has been to initiate a new stage in the process aimed at Arab-country recognition of Israel, a crucial step, the editorialist says, in laying the groundwork for confrontation with Iran "whether political or military", in his words. Specifically, on the Israel-recognition question, the editorialist says this:
If reports are true about a joint meeting of the foreign ministers of the "international quartet" with those of the "Arab quartet", along with the contending parties Israel and Palestine, then we can expect the start of an unprecedented new round of normalization [of Arab states with Israel]. This is because the Arab quartet includes two states that don't currently have relations with Israel, namely Saudi Arabia and the UAE..."Similarly, the editorialist says, the Rice meetings with Abbas and Olmert, quite apart from any substance, have had as their aim the further creation of a climate of opinion putting Israel on the side of the Arab states ahead of an eventual confrontation with Iran.
So there you have part of the assortment of Arab views on the Riyadh summit, from the regimes pulling up their socks to regain credibility (Al-Hayat), to another step in the adoption of Israel as an ally against Iran (Al-Quds al-Arabi).
The American coverage puts all of this in kids-story mode. While King Abdullah did call the US occupation "illegal", the NYT misleadingly implies this was some kind of a policy about-face, lifting it out of its context of overall self-criticism. The more-colorful Juan Cole writes: "King Abdullah is hopping mad to talk this way...It augurs ill for US-Saudi relations....[The king] is so angry he sounds a bit like Harith Al-Dhari, who is connected in some shadowy way with the Sunni guerillas fighting the US," focusing on this as if it was meant as a specific threat to the Green-Zone government.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
This Time, Israel Is Missing an Historic Opportunity
Mar 14, 2007
By Nicola Nasser
Fulfilling a 60-year old Israeli dream and an American unwavering strategy, the 22-member League of Arab states are now in consensus on a potentially groundbreaking Arab Peace Initiative (API), which pledges their collective and full recognition of the Jewish state and full-fledged permanent peace in return for withdrawing the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) to 1967 lines, the establishment of an independent Palestine with eastern Jerusalem as its capital, and “an agreed, just solution” to the Palestinian refugee issue in accordance with United Nations Resolution 194, but both Washington and Tel Aviv are not forthcoming.
The API was a dramatic reversal of decades-long policy as well as a peace offensive. It was approved in Beirut in 2002 by the Arab leaders who reiterated their commitment thereto at their following annual summits. A meeting of their foreign ministers in Cairo earlier this month recommended to their upcoming summit in Riyadh on March 28-29 a renewal of their peace offer as a “strategic option.”
The historic potentials of the API were acknowledged by the international Quartet of Middle East mediators, comprising the U.S. , the U.N., the E.U. and Russia . In 2003 the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1515 cited the API as one of the terms of reference for making peace between Arabs and Israelis.
Arab leaders seemed recently to follow up on their initiative for the first time with a diplomatic offensive that started ahead of their Riyadh summit and is expected to resume thereafter. Their diplomatic campaign was spearheaded by Jordan ’s King Abdullah II’s visit to Washington DC and highlighted by his impressive and eloquent message to the U.S. Congress on March 7.
The API was for five years archived into oblivion on the shelves of the Arab League, rejected by Israel and ignored by the US , who in 2006 swiftly vetoed an Arab League move to revive peace making on its basis by entrusting the mission to the U.N. Security Council. A change of heart following the negative fallout of the Israeli war on Lebanon last summer moved Washington to perceive in the strategic Arab option a tactical tool “to recast the (regional) political landscape from the traditional one of Arabs versus Israelis … into a Sunni vs. Shiia alignment,” (1) thus opening a window of opportunity for Arab leaders to follow up on it.
Seeking to break through Israel’s rejection of their daring offer, the U.S.-allied Arab leaders have turned to Washington appealing for intervention and warning their offer could be the last chance to make peace otherwise the ideologies of hate and terror would plunge the Middle East into a wider conflict.
“Today, I must speak; I cannot be silent,” the Jordanian monarch repeated to U.S. lawmakers: “Sixty years of Palestinian dispossession, forty years under occupation, a stop-and-go peace process, all this has left a bitter legacy of disappointment and despair … It is time to create a new and different legacy.”
Indicating that thirteen years on since late King Hussein, his father, and Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, were in Washington pursuing the cause of peace, the “work is still not completed,” the “ongoing crisis” has failed eleven American presidents and thirty American congresses, and incumbent President George W. Bush’s “vision’” of a two-state solution risks to remain merely a vision for ever, unless the U.S. rises up to the “challenge,” plays “an historic role,” and uses its “unrivalled” potentials and “unprecedented power” to seize on the “indeed historic, moment of opportunity,” made possible by the API.
“The wellspring of regional division, the source of resentment and frustration far beyond is the denial of justice and peace in Palestine ,” the king said. “We can wait no longer,” Abdullah II warned: “The status quo is also pulling the region and the world towards greater danger … the cycle of crises is spinning faster, and with greater potential for destruction … Any further erosion in the situation would be serious for the future of moderation and coexistence, in the region and beyond” and “we are all at risk of being victims of further violence resulting from ideologies of terror and hatred.” (2)
The Jordanian monarch’s message was also that of his Arab counterparts. He met with the Saudi Arabian and Egyptian leaders, King Abdullah and President Hosni Mubarak, ahead of his U.S. visit. What is more important in their warning message is that it is delivered by U.S.-allied friends, whose support is essential to bring other U.S. regional concerns to a successful conclusion. These leaders are now in the regional driving seat.
Their leading role as well as the U.S. paramount position in the region could be compromised by ignoring their warnings and the rare opportunity their initiative offers. Dealing adversely or passively with their peaceful alternative to violent resistance to the Israeli occupation is too risky. Especially the Saudi Arabian leader, King Abdullah, the original author of the API, has invested a lot of his personal weight and his Kingdom’s assets to win over Arab consensus on the initiative. He also succeeded in securing Hamas’ indirect subscription to it. Riyadh also won over Iran ’s support, according to the Saudi official news agency, or at least watered down the Iranian opposition.
Abdullah II’s appeal seems to have fallen on deaf ears on the Capitol Hill; so far it has created no official forthcoming reaction, thus providing the necessary inaction for Israel to act intransigently and demand practically the upcoming Riyadh summit adopt an Israeli version of the API.
Criticism of the six decade-old U.S. inaction strategy of crisis management was recently eloquently questioned: “Is a comprehensive Middle East peace in America ’s strategic interests? Put simply, what excuse would the US have for remaining in the region playing policeman if all in the garden were lovely?” (3)
This strategy has all along played into Israeli hands, backed up all Israeli expansionist wars justified by Tel Aviv as pre-emptive, preventive and defensive, but in the end boiled down to being simply aggressive military conquests with two major aims: to grab more Palestinian land for the ongoing colonial Jewish settlement and to maintain Arab land under Israeli occupation as a bargaining chip to blackmail and dictate further Arab concessions. This is the strategy that has been fuelling anti-Americanism among hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims because literary it has turned the United States into a partner to the Israeli 40-year old occupation.
The latest Israeli par excellence exploitation of this strategy was recently illustrated vis-à-vis the API.
Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, went this month to Brussels then to Washington to reconfirm Israel’s rejection of the Arab offer, citing two non-starters: First the stipulated “agreed upon, just” solution of the Palestinian refugees problem on the basis of the UN resolution 194, which is “contrary to the principle of two states,” and Second what she described as the Arab “dream” of withdrawing the IOF to their pre-1967 lines. Identifying these two points as “red line” she told AIPAC nonetheless the Saudi plan has “positive elements,” but the “original” Saudi plan, not the one adopted by the Arab League!
Livni was drawing on President Bush’s letter of guarantees to the comatose former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, on April 14, 2004, which was condemned by Arab Palestinians as a “second Balfour Declaration” because it pledged U.S. rejection of the Palestinian Right of Return and Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 borders as “unrealistic.” Both strategic allies are now blackmailing Arabs to surrender further territorial and political “concessions” accordingly.
The simple interpretation of Livni’s objections: Israel is gearing up, backed by the U.S. , towards dividing the occupied Palestinian West Bank between the Jewish settlers whose colonies would be annexed to Israel and the Palestinians who will be left with 42 percent of the West Bank area to test-create a borderless transitional state as a long-term arrangement. Palestinian and Arab consensus condemn this arrangement as a non-starter, which will inevitably pre-empt any viable Palestinian state as envisioned by Bush’s two-state “vision.”
Obviously Israel is seeking an Israeli version of the API, but “unilaterally giving Israel what it wants is not a solution. It would be wrong for the Arab summit unilaterally to change the 2002 peace plan to meet the Israeli objections,” wrote Rami Khouri, the editor of Lebanon ’s The Daily Star, summing up a widely held official Arab rejection.
Even U.S.-allied Jordan and Egypt who signed peace treaties with Israel on a bilateral basis are urging a comprehensive approach now and recalling international legitimacy as the proper framework: During his meetings in the U.S. , King Abdullah II “underlined the need to solve the Palestinian issue in accordance with the Arab peace initiative and international legitimacy resolutions.” (4)
Changing the API would break up Arab consensus on it, which is its most effective asset that makes the collective peace offer credible and an historic turnabout opportunity.
Arab League Secretary-General, Amr Moussa, warned on record: “Arab peace initiative expressed an Arab consensus and will not be redrafted as demanded by some foreign powers. Watering down” the plan would be “a strategic mistake” that could lead to new bloodshed. “The Arab initiative is not open for review.” Similarly GCC secretary-general, Abd Al-Rahman Al-'Atiya, said the Gulf countries were opposed to changes to the API. Syria warned she “absolutely rejected for some hostile fingers to toy, directly or through brokers, with the agenda of the (upcoming) summit so that its decisions would come in harmony with the Israeli and American interests.”
The Arab diplomatic campaign however has had weight enough to corner Israel into defensive tactics. The Israeli maneuvering between the “original” and the “adopted” API is one tactic; another was Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s statement on Sunday -- hours ahead of a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Jerusalem -- that Israel “was ready to take seriously” the Arab plan, hoping the upcoming Arab summit would bolster its “positive elements.” Abbas reportedly spent three quarters of their two-hour meeting trying to convince Olmert of the official API.
The wide political spectrum components of Israel’s incumbent cabinet of Olmert will go down into history as the government that has let its people down by manoeuvring to blackmail Arabs into an unattainable better deal than the best deal Israel has ever had and could ever have to realize its sixty-year old dream of being recognized and accepted as an integral part of the Arab and Muslim Middle East. Israeli peaceniks seem too marginal to have any say among the main stream decision-makers where the species of Avigdor Lieberman hold the upper hand on strategic issues.
Israeli leaders used to mock Arab leaders as the masters of missing opportunities. This time, Israel is the party who seems determined to miss a real historic opportunity.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
Notes
(1) Frida Ghitis, http://worldpoliticswatch.com , Oct 10, 2006.
(2) The Age Online, Oct. 10, 2006. (2) Jordan ’s King Abdullah II, Speech to U.S. Congress, March 7, 2007.
(3) Linda S. Heard, onlinejournal.com, March 7, 2007.
(4) ( Petra , March 10, 2007.
By Nicola Nasser
Fulfilling a 60-year old Israeli dream and an American unwavering strategy, the 22-member League of Arab states are now in consensus on a potentially groundbreaking Arab Peace Initiative (API), which pledges their collective and full recognition of the Jewish state and full-fledged permanent peace in return for withdrawing the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) to 1967 lines, the establishment of an independent Palestine with eastern Jerusalem as its capital, and “an agreed, just solution” to the Palestinian refugee issue in accordance with United Nations Resolution 194, but both Washington and Tel Aviv are not forthcoming.
The API was a dramatic reversal of decades-long policy as well as a peace offensive. It was approved in Beirut in 2002 by the Arab leaders who reiterated their commitment thereto at their following annual summits. A meeting of their foreign ministers in Cairo earlier this month recommended to their upcoming summit in Riyadh on March 28-29 a renewal of their peace offer as a “strategic option.”
The historic potentials of the API were acknowledged by the international Quartet of Middle East mediators, comprising the U.S. , the U.N., the E.U. and Russia . In 2003 the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1515 cited the API as one of the terms of reference for making peace between Arabs and Israelis.
Arab leaders seemed recently to follow up on their initiative for the first time with a diplomatic offensive that started ahead of their Riyadh summit and is expected to resume thereafter. Their diplomatic campaign was spearheaded by Jordan ’s King Abdullah II’s visit to Washington DC and highlighted by his impressive and eloquent message to the U.S. Congress on March 7.
The API was for five years archived into oblivion on the shelves of the Arab League, rejected by Israel and ignored by the US , who in 2006 swiftly vetoed an Arab League move to revive peace making on its basis by entrusting the mission to the U.N. Security Council. A change of heart following the negative fallout of the Israeli war on Lebanon last summer moved Washington to perceive in the strategic Arab option a tactical tool “to recast the (regional) political landscape from the traditional one of Arabs versus Israelis … into a Sunni vs. Shiia alignment,” (1) thus opening a window of opportunity for Arab leaders to follow up on it.
Seeking to break through Israel’s rejection of their daring offer, the U.S.-allied Arab leaders have turned to Washington appealing for intervention and warning their offer could be the last chance to make peace otherwise the ideologies of hate and terror would plunge the Middle East into a wider conflict.
“Today, I must speak; I cannot be silent,” the Jordanian monarch repeated to U.S. lawmakers: “Sixty years of Palestinian dispossession, forty years under occupation, a stop-and-go peace process, all this has left a bitter legacy of disappointment and despair … It is time to create a new and different legacy.”
Indicating that thirteen years on since late King Hussein, his father, and Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, were in Washington pursuing the cause of peace, the “work is still not completed,” the “ongoing crisis” has failed eleven American presidents and thirty American congresses, and incumbent President George W. Bush’s “vision’” of a two-state solution risks to remain merely a vision for ever, unless the U.S. rises up to the “challenge,” plays “an historic role,” and uses its “unrivalled” potentials and “unprecedented power” to seize on the “indeed historic, moment of opportunity,” made possible by the API.
“The wellspring of regional division, the source of resentment and frustration far beyond is the denial of justice and peace in Palestine ,” the king said. “We can wait no longer,” Abdullah II warned: “The status quo is also pulling the region and the world towards greater danger … the cycle of crises is spinning faster, and with greater potential for destruction … Any further erosion in the situation would be serious for the future of moderation and coexistence, in the region and beyond” and “we are all at risk of being victims of further violence resulting from ideologies of terror and hatred.” (2)
The Jordanian monarch’s message was also that of his Arab counterparts. He met with the Saudi Arabian and Egyptian leaders, King Abdullah and President Hosni Mubarak, ahead of his U.S. visit. What is more important in their warning message is that it is delivered by U.S.-allied friends, whose support is essential to bring other U.S. regional concerns to a successful conclusion. These leaders are now in the regional driving seat.
Their leading role as well as the U.S. paramount position in the region could be compromised by ignoring their warnings and the rare opportunity their initiative offers. Dealing adversely or passively with their peaceful alternative to violent resistance to the Israeli occupation is too risky. Especially the Saudi Arabian leader, King Abdullah, the original author of the API, has invested a lot of his personal weight and his Kingdom’s assets to win over Arab consensus on the initiative. He also succeeded in securing Hamas’ indirect subscription to it. Riyadh also won over Iran ’s support, according to the Saudi official news agency, or at least watered down the Iranian opposition.
Abdullah II’s appeal seems to have fallen on deaf ears on the Capitol Hill; so far it has created no official forthcoming reaction, thus providing the necessary inaction for Israel to act intransigently and demand practically the upcoming Riyadh summit adopt an Israeli version of the API.
Criticism of the six decade-old U.S. inaction strategy of crisis management was recently eloquently questioned: “Is a comprehensive Middle East peace in America ’s strategic interests? Put simply, what excuse would the US have for remaining in the region playing policeman if all in the garden were lovely?” (3)
This strategy has all along played into Israeli hands, backed up all Israeli expansionist wars justified by Tel Aviv as pre-emptive, preventive and defensive, but in the end boiled down to being simply aggressive military conquests with two major aims: to grab more Palestinian land for the ongoing colonial Jewish settlement and to maintain Arab land under Israeli occupation as a bargaining chip to blackmail and dictate further Arab concessions. This is the strategy that has been fuelling anti-Americanism among hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims because literary it has turned the United States into a partner to the Israeli 40-year old occupation.
The latest Israeli par excellence exploitation of this strategy was recently illustrated vis-à-vis the API.
Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, went this month to Brussels then to Washington to reconfirm Israel’s rejection of the Arab offer, citing two non-starters: First the stipulated “agreed upon, just” solution of the Palestinian refugees problem on the basis of the UN resolution 194, which is “contrary to the principle of two states,” and Second what she described as the Arab “dream” of withdrawing the IOF to their pre-1967 lines. Identifying these two points as “red line” she told AIPAC nonetheless the Saudi plan has “positive elements,” but the “original” Saudi plan, not the one adopted by the Arab League!
Livni was drawing on President Bush’s letter of guarantees to the comatose former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, on April 14, 2004, which was condemned by Arab Palestinians as a “second Balfour Declaration” because it pledged U.S. rejection of the Palestinian Right of Return and Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 borders as “unrealistic.” Both strategic allies are now blackmailing Arabs to surrender further territorial and political “concessions” accordingly.
The simple interpretation of Livni’s objections: Israel is gearing up, backed by the U.S. , towards dividing the occupied Palestinian West Bank between the Jewish settlers whose colonies would be annexed to Israel and the Palestinians who will be left with 42 percent of the West Bank area to test-create a borderless transitional state as a long-term arrangement. Palestinian and Arab consensus condemn this arrangement as a non-starter, which will inevitably pre-empt any viable Palestinian state as envisioned by Bush’s two-state “vision.”
Obviously Israel is seeking an Israeli version of the API, but “unilaterally giving Israel what it wants is not a solution. It would be wrong for the Arab summit unilaterally to change the 2002 peace plan to meet the Israeli objections,” wrote Rami Khouri, the editor of Lebanon ’s The Daily Star, summing up a widely held official Arab rejection.
Even U.S.-allied Jordan and Egypt who signed peace treaties with Israel on a bilateral basis are urging a comprehensive approach now and recalling international legitimacy as the proper framework: During his meetings in the U.S. , King Abdullah II “underlined the need to solve the Palestinian issue in accordance with the Arab peace initiative and international legitimacy resolutions.” (4)
Changing the API would break up Arab consensus on it, which is its most effective asset that makes the collective peace offer credible and an historic turnabout opportunity.
Arab League Secretary-General, Amr Moussa, warned on record: “Arab peace initiative expressed an Arab consensus and will not be redrafted as demanded by some foreign powers. Watering down” the plan would be “a strategic mistake” that could lead to new bloodshed. “The Arab initiative is not open for review.” Similarly GCC secretary-general, Abd Al-Rahman Al-'Atiya, said the Gulf countries were opposed to changes to the API. Syria warned she “absolutely rejected for some hostile fingers to toy, directly or through brokers, with the agenda of the (upcoming) summit so that its decisions would come in harmony with the Israeli and American interests.”
The Arab diplomatic campaign however has had weight enough to corner Israel into defensive tactics. The Israeli maneuvering between the “original” and the “adopted” API is one tactic; another was Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s statement on Sunday -- hours ahead of a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Jerusalem -- that Israel “was ready to take seriously” the Arab plan, hoping the upcoming Arab summit would bolster its “positive elements.” Abbas reportedly spent three quarters of their two-hour meeting trying to convince Olmert of the official API.
The wide political spectrum components of Israel’s incumbent cabinet of Olmert will go down into history as the government that has let its people down by manoeuvring to blackmail Arabs into an unattainable better deal than the best deal Israel has ever had and could ever have to realize its sixty-year old dream of being recognized and accepted as an integral part of the Arab and Muslim Middle East. Israeli peaceniks seem too marginal to have any say among the main stream decision-makers where the species of Avigdor Lieberman hold the upper hand on strategic issues.
Israeli leaders used to mock Arab leaders as the masters of missing opportunities. This time, Israel is the party who seems determined to miss a real historic opportunity.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
Notes
(1) Frida Ghitis, http://worldpoliticswatch.com , Oct 10, 2006.
(2) The Age Online, Oct. 10, 2006. (2) Jordan ’s King Abdullah II, Speech to U.S. Congress, March 7, 2007.
(3) Linda S. Heard, onlinejournal.com, March 7, 2007.
(4) ( Petra , March 10, 2007.
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