15 - 21 March 2001
Issue No.525
|
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 15 - 21 March 2001 Issue No.525 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Are we ready for the summit?
Mohamed Sid-Ahmed believes that Sharon's success in forming a government of national unity should be met with a similar demonstration of unity at the coming Arab summit
The first test Sharon had to face after his election as Israel's prime minister was whether he would be able to form a national unity government. He has passed the test, albeit after a few false starts. Now the Arabs are faced with a similar test: will they be able to present a united front at the coming Arab summit in less than two weeks?
This question is of crucial importance at a time the failure of the peace process has brought the region perilously close to the brink of war, not necessarily in function of a conscious decision but as the result of a situation spiralling out of control, or even by mistake.
We are back to a state of total polarisation between the Israeli camp on one side and the Arab camp on the other. That is not to say that the contradictions within each camp have disappeared; indeed, the opposite is probably closer to the truth. But these take second place to the main contradiction between Israelis and Palestinians, which is reaching critical proportions. Much will depend on which of the two camps will be more successful in the coming period at immunising itself against the other's attempts to displace the most acute contradictions into its ranks. In other words, which of the two sets of contradictions will be sharper: those inside Israel or those between the Arabs?
Aware of the high stakes involved, Israel has risen to the challenge by successfully putting together a government of national unity. The Arab camp is required to respond in kind by laying the groundwork for a united pan-Arab position at the forthcoming summit, but so far there are no signs of progress in that direction. In fact, the Arabs are facing challenges from more than one source. Contrary to the widely-held belief in many Arab capitals that a Republican administration would be more receptive to legitimate Arab demands than a Democratic one, the Bush administration has turned out to be closer to the Israeli side than it is to the Arab side. Colin Powell's recent visit to the region made it patently clear that as far as Washington is concerned, the main problem is not Sharon's ascension to power in Israel but Saddam Hussein's continued grip on power in Iraq.
The Bush administration is building up a strategy towards the Middle East in which the "enemies" are first and foremost Saddam Hussein, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah, and where Arafat (especially according to the far right in the Bush establishment) is closer to the Iraqi leader than to any of the Arab leaders friendly to the United States. Moreover, the Bush administration believes that the Clinton administration and the Barak government were mistaken to make any concessions to the Palestinian Authority, because Arafat is neither able nor willing to respond in kind. Replying to a question raised by a member of the House of Representatives' Foreign Relations Committee, Powell announced that the president is still determined to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The new American administration's focus on Iraq will have a divisive effect on Arab ranks, highlighting as it does a problem which has in the not too distant past made inter-Arab contradictions sharper than those between the Arabs and Israel. It was not by coincidence that the Madrid Conference convened in the wake of Saddam Hussein's failed bid to annex Kuwait, an adventure that so demonised him in the eyes of the Arab Gulf regimes as to make him seem a greater threat than Israel.
Over a decade later, and under very different circumstances, Bush is trying to revive this perception of Saddam as the most dangerous regional bully, in what many see as an attempt to divert attention from the worse, and certainly more immediate, threat represented by Sharon. The new American president is concentrating his efforts on deepening inter-Arab contradictions at a time Sharon has actually succeeded in putting together the widest ever national unity government in Israel's history: 26 ministers and 12 deputy ministers in a coalition representing eight parties and supported by 73 of the 120 members of the Knesset.
Given Sharon's nature and history, not to mention the hard-line position on the basis of which he won the election, the sustained viability of a national unity government under his leadership is problematic. Either it adopts extremist positions, in which case it cannot represent a majority of forces in society, or it represents such a majority and cannot be the holder of extreme views. It cannot be both together. And because there is no reason to believe that Sharon will relinquish the extremism that brought him to power, it is difficult to see how he will be able to prevent, sooner or later, the breakdown of his government.
Sharon's government comprises three major trends: two secular, Likud (on the right) and Labour (centre-left), and a religious trend mainly represented by Shas. Because Shas is not particularly interested in the peace process, we are mainly concerned with the relations between the two secular trends, represented respectively by Prime Minister Sharon and the second man in his government, Foreign Minister Peres. Although both men pay lip service to the national unity slogan, it is hard to see how they can make it work in practice. Peres wants a political settlement while Sharon gives full priority to what he calls Israel's security concerns, an issue that could very well be addressed by military, not political, means. Sharon refuses to resume negotiations until Arafat puts a stop to the Intifada; Peres has announced that he will meet with Arafat as soon as he assumes office and discuss with him how to put an end to violence.
It thus appears that as far as the peace process is concerned, the new Israeli government is bipolar. Peres, a Nobel prize winner with credentials at the international level, believes he can deal with Sharon on an equal footing. On the other hand, Sharon has the authority of his office behind him and, for the time being, a popularity rating inside Israel that Peres has never matched. If Peres decides to defy Sharon and pursue a line that runs counter to the prime minister's official policies, how can the government of national union survive in such conditions?
Peres declared that he would resume negotiations with Arafat from a totally new point of departure. His room for manoeuvre here is somewhat restricted. The Bush administration has distanced itself from the package of ideas Clinton presented as a basis for a framework agreement, while Sharon refuses to resume the process from where Barak left it or to recognise the Oslo and post-Oslo accords as valid frames of reference.
Actually, Peres can only really challenge Sharon by relying on opposition forces that refused to join the government of national unity, that is, members of Labour and of the left-wing party Meretz who criticised Peres for agreeing to serve under Sharon. But these forces will themselves remain ineffectual unless their stand is supported by the external world, particularly by the Arab world. Have the Arab governments thought out how to hasten the inevitable collapse of Israel's fragile national unity government and, without any form of direct interference, how to use the Arab summit to strengthen the credibility of the opposition forces in Israel?
Such an endeavour would be impossible if we allow Bush to make Iraq the central problem in the Middle East. A special effort must be made to defeat the argument with which he justifies his administration's focus on Iraq, an effort that given Arab states in particular are called upon to exert, but which will have to be backed by the coming Arab summit in its totality. This will not only need discussions with President Bush himself in his coming meetings with Arab leaders, but also with the Iraqi leadership.
Then there is also the challenge inherent in Sharon's claim that his ultimate target is peace. We all know that this is a fallacy. What Sharon means by peace is an unconditional Arab surrender to Israel's terms and this should be exposed without the least ambiguity or confusion. That is why the next Arab summit should translate the slogan that peace is the Arabs' strategic objective into a clear-cut programme that would address the Palestinian right of return as established by UN Resolution 194; the final status of Jerusalem as the capital of both the Palestinian state and Israel; the issue of Israeli settlements; the problem of water shortage; the need to make the Middle East a denuclearised zone free from weapons of mass destruction. We need an Arab definition of peace, decided upon at the highest level, which would be able to expose the fallacy of Sharon's so-called project of peace and which could become the basis for the resumption of negotiations.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page