A Road Map Not a Collective Arab Peace Plan©
For the so called collective Arab Peace Plan to work, it should first turn into a road map.
By Adel Darwish-
The Noble peace prize-winner, the late President Anwar Sadat of Egypt once said that 99 per-cent of the cards to the Middle East game are held by America. Thirty years later, 99 per-cents of the cards are held by Arabs, wrote Egyptian-born American strategist Dr Mamoun Fandy in the prestigious Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat.
In the Beirut Arab summit initiatives by Saudi Arabia’s King Abduallah (then crown prince) were collectively adopted as ‘ the Arab peace initiatives.’ Six years passed and the Arab Peace Plan still hasn’t been tested but rather stuck in a typical Middle Eastern catch 22.
The Israelis, legitimately, ask ‘what is in it for us?’
Existing peace deals, although still holding, like withdrawal from Gaza, paid Israeli tax payers little dividends.
‘We will only recognise Israel,’ Arabs say, ‘when it returns all occupied Arab land.’ Such health warning attached to the Peace Plan could be for populist demagogic reasons, or, as many believe is born out of the traditional hostility to the Jewish state. The condition nevertheless deflects popular anger, and possible revolt, away from Arab autocratic regimes. Nearly all Arab officials still reject a public handshake with Israeli officials.
Peace packages, by their very nature, are usually subjected to the endless haggling by the Middle Eastern souk mentality. The Arabs should develop their Plan into a Middle Eastern Road Map, of building confidence blocks, like officials shaking hands with their Israeli counterparts when they run into them in European capitals for example. Implementing this roadmap will be slow, and nothing like the dramatic impact of Sadat’s 1977 bold visit to Jerusalem; but modest steps taken, will still be steps forward on the road to peace and certainly more positive than the current static situation that breeds hatred and wastes valuable resources on arms.
In January some Arab and American analysts were urging President George Bush and his Arab allies to devise some plan involving President Bashar Assad of Syria to help end Iran’s suffocating embrace of Damascus, which will also help stabilise Lebanon and reduce the influence of the jihadists anti peace camp.
Briefing us, British journalists covering HM the Queen’s state visit to Morocco 27 years ago, the late King Hassan told us that a true friend of the Palestinians was the one who would invite them to dinner with the Israelis then leaves the room after drinking the first toast, limiting his role to facilitating all their needs. That was 13 years before the Norwegians played the role leading to Oslo accords and the Israeli Palestinian first peace agreement.
Despite their radical Pan-Arab rhetoric, all what the Syrians want is the return of the Golan Heights occupied by Israel in 1967, to which the Israelis agreed in principle during bilateral talks in Washington a decade ago. The 1967 borders were the shore of the Sea of Galilee ( Lake Tiberias in Syrian lingo).
It was Israeli Syrian skirmishes, when the latter were used earth moving equipment in an attempt to divert the headwaters of tributaries feeding the Jordan river away from Israel that lead to the Six Day war, as former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told me when I was researching my book (Water Wars: Coming Conflicts in the Middle East, London 1993). When the late President Hafez Assad of Syria was told that historic international borders between Syria and British mandate Palestine were 11 yards north of the Sea of Galilee, he reportedly replied: ‘ but there was no Jews separating Syria from lake Tiberias’.
International lawyers can always find more than a formula saleable by leaders to their public, but first the host envisaged by late King Hassan must be found. It is puzzling why a nation like Egypt – or Jordan- which enjoys normal diplomatic relations with all parties can’t become such a host ?
Providing it remains neutral, Cairo can host a summit between President Assad of Syria and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (President Bush will surely be delighted to attend?) to hammer a lasting peace deal. A forerunner could start now with a permanent joint Israel Palestinian security and coordination committee based in Sharmelsheikh or Taba.
An Arab road-map, and a role for Egypt and Jordan, as neutral honest brokers will present the world with a peace settlement which is neither eastern nor western but authentically regional
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