The Arab Peace Initiative and the Changing Middle East

By Ramzy Baroud

The rapid, almost hasty, developments on the Arab Israeli front, almost
immediately following the Saudi sponsored Makkah Agreement on February 2,
should be examined in their proper context, as a part and parcel of the
regional shifts, exasperated by the US war in Iraq and the dramatic
adjustment in Iran’s position vis-à-vis the region and its sectarian,
religious composition.

Two prevailing analyses have been offered; one that is skeptical, and argues
that the Arab initiative, which will be articulated at a coming Arab league
conference in Saudi Arabia on March 28, was brought back to the scene on the
behest of the US administration: by engaging Hamas, Arabs will deny Iran the
opportunity to further galvanize its regional alliances — Syria and
Hezbollah — against the US and Israel, thus further cemented the Shia
crescent, at the expense of the Sunni majority.

The other analysis is overtly optimistic, ranging between the view of
Palestinian and Arab commentators talking of a ‘historic opportunity’ and
Western commentators wondering if the league has finally taking charge of
the Arab people’s own destiny. “Worried by what they see as the Bush
administration’s failings, and the new regional power of Iran, the Arabs are
struggling to take their destiny into their own hands,” is how BBC Middle
East analyst Roger Hardy worded the conclusion of his analysis, “Mid-East
Package Diplomacy.”

The Arab peace initiative, offering a full normalization with Israel, in
simultaneous exchange for an Israeli pull out to the pre-1967 border, was
made public in a March 2002 Arab League summit in Beirut. It came at the
height of the Palestinian uprising. The initiative was immediately rejected
by the Israeli government and accepted by Arafat. Its release was a cause of
a slight discomfort for Israel, however, principally because the Bush
administration viewed it in positive terms, at the beginning at least,
before it disowned it before Israel’s incessant rejection.

In the weeks preceding the official announcement of the Arab peace
initiative, Israel had assassinated Fatah leader in Tulkaram in the West
Bank, Raed al-Karmi, prompting Palestinian suicide bombings. “Karmi’s
assassination led to the scuttling of the truce that had lasted since
December 16, 2001,” wrote Akiva Aldar in Haaretz, quoting Mati Steinberg,
who was the adviser on Palestinian affairs to the head of the Shin Bet
security service. “It also led to Operation Defensive Shield, which pushed
the Arab initiative to the margins and eliminated the opportunity to put the
diplomatic track with the Palestinians on a route of direct connection with
the Arab peace initiative for the first time.”

But the Middle East of those days is in many ways different from today’s
regional realities. Although Israel’s colonial project is pursued with the
same level of determination (the Imprisonment wall, the settlements, the
collective punishment and so forth) Israel’s regional reputation as a
formidable military power has received a significant blow when its army
couldn’t advance more than a few miles before stiff Lebanese resistance, led
by Hezbollah in the 33-day war of July-August 2007. Neither Israel nor the
US were willing to concede to the fact that the Lebanese ferocious fight had
much to do with the people’s strong belief in a just case — God forbid — but
all fingers were pointed at Iran: the head of the snake as far as America’s
neoconservatives clique are now parroting. Iran understood that Hezbollah’s
victory will discourage, slow down or completely repeal an American military
adventure against its own domain. Naturally, Hezbollah’s defeat, relying
mostly on Iranian arms, would eliminate the first line of Iran’s defenses
and inspire Washington’s hawks, in constant coordination with Israel, to
prepare the public and government for a war against Iran. Not that a war
against Iran is no longer on the agenda; to the contrary, something will be
done to confront the Iranian ‘threat’. But one has to understand that Israel
cannot possibly allow for another regional bully, aside from itself to claim
an inch of what it believes as its rightful domain. It was this logic, as
articulated by Richard Pearle in a set of recommendations made to then Likud
leader Benjamin Netanyahu in the infamous “A Clean Break, memo that
envisaged the Iraq war as a strategic Israeli imperative. Iraq or Iran,
Sunni or Shia, are all irrelevant semantics, in Israel’s view. However, the
failure to ‘contain’ Iran, coupled with the American disastrous war strategy
in Iraq, which has given rise to powerful Shia groups, with direct links,
and in some cases allegiance to Teheran is sending Israel’s military and
policy planners to the table, once more, to study their future options.

Israel and its supporters in America are obsessed with Iran. In the
well-attended Israeli lobby AIPAC conference (6,000 participants including
half of the Senate and a large number of House members and numerous
ambassadors and officials,) Israel’s many friends seemed to delineate their
stances from every US official based on their position on the Iran subject
or the terrifying possibility of an early pull out of Iraq: neglecting the
first or proceeding with the second, they argue will bode disaster for
Israel’s security. Thus, when House Republican leader, Rep John Boehner of
Ohio addressed the conference, defending the current war strategy, he
received a standing ovation; but when Speaker Nancy Pelosi — unequalled fan
of the Israeli regime — dared to spell out a strategy for withdrawal from
Iraq, she was booed, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The power of the lobby and the persisting influence of the neocons have
reached new heights when Democratic leaders were obliged to strip from a
military spending bill a requirement that the president must gain the
approval from the Congress before moving against Iran. Pelosi and others
agreed to such a removal “after conservative Democrats as well as other
lawmakers worried about its possible impact on Israel,” reported ABC News.

With Iran being the unrivalled focus, coupled with serious worries amongst
some Arab countries regarding Iran’s rise and its possible destabilization
impact on the region, Israel has agreed to a conditional exchange that would
allow for an implicit arrangement: to ‘contain Iran — to Israel’s benefit —
stabilize Iraq — to the Bush Administration’s benefit — and to introduce a
new horizon of peace with the Palestinians — to the appeasement of the
Arabs. Only the prospect of solving the Lebanon dilemma, says Roger Hardy
don’t look promising at the March summit.

The new horizon of peace — a new term invoked by Condoleezza Rice in her
recent visit to the region — is a term that corresponds to the ‘peace
process’: significant enough insofar as it yield a sense of hope, but clever
enough for it guarantees nothing, since Israel, brimming with its
unprecedented clout in the corridors of power in Washington will neither
give up its grand plans of territorial conversion (annexing the
settlements), nor bring to a halt the construction of its encroaching wall
nor surrender an inch from the illegally annexed East Jerusalem, all,
predictably key Arab and Palestinian demands.

The Arab initiative seemed deliberately vague on the issue of Palestinians
made refugee by Israel in 1948 and 1967, and whose plight is as urgent as
ever (considering their systematic targeting in Iraq, 500 murdered to date,
and Libya’s decision to deport its Palestinians refugees to Gaza, as
thoughtless as this may sound.) Yet, to remove any ambiguity, Israeli
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is “demanding that the leaders of the 22 Arab
states excise the right of return from it,” reported Haaretz.

By crossing out the ‘controversial’ elements contained in the Arab
initiative and then opening it up for negotiations, Palestinians — now
browbeaten with a year of sanctions and near starvation in Gaza — will be
taken on another peace goose chase, during which Israeli army bulldozers
will hardly cease their determined colonial project. My fear is that Arabs
will play a long, willingly or not, and Palestinians would be forced to
partake in the charade, for their reliance on international handouts for
their mere survival will make it impossible to defy the US-Israeli regional
designs forever.

-Ramzy Baroud’s latest book: The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronology
of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London) is now available at Amazon.com.