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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 May 1999 Issue No. 430 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 May 1999 Issue No. 430
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Supplement Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters No such thing as easy
While the Arabs, and the world community as a whole, seem to have felt unanimously that nothing could be worse than Netanyahu, many Arabs have justified suspicions that negotiations will not be an easy task with newly-elected Premier Ehud Barak, who based his electoral campaign on such "achievements" as the number of Palestinians he killed during his long military career and the fact that he is "Israel's most decorated soldier".For three years, Netanyahu worked to destroy any hope that peace could take root. He refused to listen even to his closest allies and tried until the last minute to make more trouble by attempting to close down Orient House in Arab Jerusalem. Many internal factors led to Netanyahu's downfall, including divisions between nationalist and fundamentalist Zionists, or secular and religious trends. But one of the main factors that led to the former Likud leader's defeat was his consummate contempt for peace.
The Arab countries involved in the peace process have many legitimate demands, based not on dogma or fanaticism, but on international law. The former Israeli Labour government, led by the late Yitzhak Rabin and his successor Shimon Peres, signed several peace agreements with the Palestinian leadership and conducted long negotiations with Syria. The Arabs expect those agreements to be implemented. The first confidence-building measure expected from the new Labour government is the implementation of the Wye Memorandum. Negotiations with Syria and Lebanon should also be resumed from where they ended with the last Labour government.
Peace, as many Arab leaders often reiterate, is an Arab, regional, international and, above all, an Israeli need. But there should be no compromise on the key principles of the whole peace process: land for peace, the recognition of an independent Palestinian state with Arab Jerusalem as its capital, and the withdrawal of all Israeli troops from Arab lands occupied in 1967. In return, Israel and the Israeli people will enjoy peace and recognition of their borders after more than 50 years of instability and insecurity.
