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Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 March 2000 Issue No. 473 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 March 2000 Issue No. 473
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Too many conditionals
Are inter-Arab reconciliation and Arab-Israeli peace making efforts mutually exclusive? Egypt would argue not. Indeed, for Egypt, Arab reconciliation could well prove helpful in the achievement of Arab-Israeli peace.
This is something that Cairo will have to spell out in the US as of tomorrow when Foreign Minister Amr Moussa arrives to start preparations for a summit between Presidents Hosni Mubarak and Bill Clinton on 28 March in the White House.
The US was not enthusiastic about the Arab foreign ministers meeting -- a demonstration of support for Lebanon's resistance against Israeli occupation and aggression -- that took place in Beirut on Saturday. Washington tends to be apprehensive of the impact of any form of Arab solidarity on Arab-Israeli peace-making efforts even when the resolutions are as mild as the declaration of moral and unspecified financial support for Lebanon that emerged from the Beirut meeting.
To dispel American fears, Egypt acted to reinforce its commitment to the peace process by hosting a meeting between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in the Red Sea resort of Sharm Al-Sheikh last Thursday in an attempt to revive the almost stalled Palestinian track of peace negotiations.
Details of the redeployment that Arafat is getting from Barak under the terms of Sharm Al-Sheikh II have not been made public, and the meeting was received coolly by some Arab quarters who feared it might undermine the impact of the Beirut meeting. The Syrians and Lebanese were particularly apprehensive, fearing the conference would furnish Israel with the opportunity to continue playing the Arab tracks of negotiations one against the other.
"Arabs should not allow Israel to continue its old game of playing tracks off one against the other. And in Sharm, President Mubarak spoke about the Syrian and Lebanese tracks in his talks [with Barak]. We also briefed Syria and Lebanon," Moussa told apprehensive Lebanese and Syrian reporters in Beirut. "President Mubarak's talks in Washington will take into consideration all the tracks of the peace process," he added.
But it took only the 30-minute flight between Sharm Al-Sheikh and Gaza for the optimism exuded at Sharm Al-Sheikh to be dashed on the brutal political realities of the occupied Gaza Strip. "We are at the beginning of the road," said chief PLO negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo, after seven years of talks with Israel. "We cannot say there is success until we see actual steps on the ground and real implementation". On Tuesday, Barak bowed to right-wing pressure and cancelled plans to give up a West Bank village on Jerusalem's fringes to Palestinian control.
Implementation -- on which Egyptian and Palestinian officials have no choice but to admit that the Barak government has a bad track-record -- is viewed in Gaza as the sole arbiter of success in the peace process. Yet Arafat judged it preferable to move rather than to wait for any, possibly unattainable, improvement in the Israeli stance while Cairo deemed it appropriate to mix its efforts to effect Arab conciliation with an attempt to shake up the Palestinian track.
"Time is passing", commented Foreign Minister Moussa. "We need to put an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict as soon as possible; but this will never be done at just any price."
For Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, other Arab parties and may be even Israel, it is best if the peace process is completed, or at least almost completed, before Clinton leaves the White House next January.
"We know that President Clinton is keen on keeping closely involved in all the aspects of the peace process until the very last day of his term. He wants peace in the Middle East to be his legacy and we want peace in the Middle East for the sake of regional prosperity," Moussa said.
But Arab reconciliation, Moussa argues, is as essential for regional stability as Arab-Israeli peace-making. The Beirut meeting, some Arab diplomatic sources say, was a move in the direction of achieving this elusive reconciliation. But much else remains to be done, including an inter-Arab agreement on re-integrating Iraq.
A meeting of the foreign ministers of the Damascus Declaration states -- Egypt, Syria and the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council -- may take a position on this issue. A series of intensive Arab consultations and meetings are also on the agenda of several Arab top officials.
Next September, when the ordinary meeting of Arab foreign ministers convenes at the headquarters of the secretariat-general of the Arab League, is being posited as the target deadline for a tentative Arab consensus on a possible comprehensive Arab summit, at which Iraq would be represented, though not at the level of head-of-state. September, in which Arafat pledged to declare a Palestinian state, is also a significant month for Palestinian-Israeli peace-making. And by September, it could well be that the Syrians and Lebanese will have reached at least a tentative agreement with Israel.
Nevertheless, Arab and Western diplomats agree that there are no guarantees that September will be the month in which peace-making and Arab reconciliation are accomplished.
Dina Ezzatin Cairo,
Graham Usher in Jerusalem
