Salvaging a moribund process

By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed

The EFI calls for the convocation of an international conference that would, at a first stage, bring together the states determined to save the peace process from Netanyahu's attempts to abort it. Participants would include the two original sponsors of the Middle East peace process, the United States and Russia, plus a number of European, Arab, Asian and Latin American states. At a second stage, following its assessment of where the process stands and of who is responsible for its breakdown, the conference will reconvene, this time attended by all the direct protagonists, to reconfirm the Madrid principles, the land-for-peace formula and the need for all the parties to honour their commitments.

The conference will set out not only to underscore the contrast between Netanyahu's attitude on the one hand and that of the rest of the world community on the other, but also to show how different it is from that of most of the forces which support Israel, uphold the cause of the Jews and defend their right to a safe haven in Palestine. The idea here is to demonstrate that not anyone who is elected Israel's prime minister is necessarily the only valid interlocutor who can speak for all the Jews or for all the forces, inside and outside Israel, who uphold the Israeli cause.

This was graphically illustrated by the dramatic developments that unfolded in the last two days before the Knesset went into recess on 29 July. On the first day opposition members raised three separate no-confidence motions against the government. All were approved by a majority of members attending, but failed to muster the absolute majority required for their acceptance. On the second day, 60 Knesset members -- representing the absolute majority minus one -- voted for an opposition motion to dissolve the Knesset and hold early elections, as proposed earlier by Israel's President Ezer Weizman.

Critics of the EFI argue that it does not enjoy the support of all the concerned parties and that it is an unnecessary diversion from the American initiative, which calls on Israel to pull out at this stage from 13 per cent of Palestinian occupied territory, a proposal that the Palestinian authority has accepted and Netanyahu still opposes. They believe that, by drawing attention away from an issue on which Washington and Tel Aviv do not see eye to eye, the EFI can only work to Netanyahu's advantage. On the other hand, Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa pointed out in an interview to the French daily, Le Monde, that "the Egyptian-French initiative does not oppose the American initiative but aims, on the contrary, at reinforcing it. Indeed, it has emanated from two countries that have supported the American initiative from the start." However, Washington assesses the situation differently.

For a long time, Washington refrained from commenting on the EFI. It is only when Amr Moussa visited Paris a week ago to develop the initiative from an idea expressed during Mubarak's last summit meeting with Chirac in May into a plan for action, that Madeleine Albright openly declared that she was "not enthusiastic" about it. Then came Dennis Ross's statement that efforts at this juncture should concentrate on giving the American initiative a chance to succeed. Actually, the EFI is an attempt to rally international support behind Clinton at a time domestic problems are severely curtailing his ability to play a vigorous role in moving the peace process forward. Replacing the US as sponsor of the peace process is not an option at this time, but, with the Monica Lewinsky affair now at a particularly critical stage, it is hard to see how the US president can, on his own, challenge the man who is today Israel's ultimate decision maker and who enjoys strong support from a variety of political forces inside the United States itself.

Then there are Syria's reservations. When asked for his views following his talks with President Mubarak in Alexandria, President Assad replied that the issue is "still under consideration". Obviously, the EFI was a central topic of the Alexandria talks. Assad probably resents the fact that it is more likely to end up serving Arafat's interests than ensuring Syria's restoration of the Golan. However, the issue is not whether the initiative will improve the negotiating position of this or that Arab party at the expense of another but, rather, whether it will improve the Arab negotiating position as a whole in the face of Netanyahu's procrastinations.

It is clear that Paris is no less interested in achieving progress on the Syrian and Lebanese fronts than it is on the Palestinian front. Chirac tried to take advantage of Assad's historic trip to France two weeks ago, the first by the Syrian leader to a Western country in over two decades, to bring about a breakthrough on the Israeli-Syrian track. To that end, he put forward a plan to the two parties on the eve of Assad's visit, proposing that during the visit they would make a series of "positive" announcements about one another. The plan called for Israel to declare that it recognises Syria's central role in achieving regional peace, that it hopes peace talks with Lebanon and Syria will resume, that if Syria is seriously interested in resuming the talks, it will find a similar will in Israel and that Israel understands that Syria's security demands, and not only Israel's, must be addressed.

This statement was to be reciprocated by a statement from the Syrians declaring that they seriously intend to resume peace talks with Israel in order to establish good natural mutual relations, provided Israel complies with the Madrid Accords, implements the principle of land for peace and all Security Council resolutions, including Resolution 425 concerning Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon (Israel asked France to delete the reference to 425) and that as Syria understands that security is Israel's top priority, Israel must understand that Syria's top priority is getting its land back and that talks will not be resumed from scratch.

But at the very last moment, Netanyahu backed down from implementing the French plan under the pretext that he had difficulties getting it approved by his coalition partners in the Likud government. To regain the trust of the extreme right, he reiterated his previous pledge that there would be no withdrawal from the Golan before the issue is put to a referendum. Assad described this volte-face as a declaration of war.

It was against this backdrop that Weizman called for early elections and the opposition raised no-confidence motions against the government. But Netanyahu was saved, at least temporarily, by the disarray in Labour ranks following the outcry provoked by racist remarks made by one of its Ashkenazi leaders, General Ori Orr, a close friend of party leader Ehud Barak. Orr declared that Sephardic Jews were inefficient and not qualified to be Israelis. When prominent members of Israel's main left-of-centre party issue such racist statements, it is little wonder that forces who would normally vote for the left should switch to the right, thus keeping a right-wing hawk like Netanyahu at the head of the state. In such a volatile situation, the Egyptian-French initiative stands out as the only element of stability.