14 - 20 March 2002
Issue No.577
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 14 - 20 March 2002 Issue No.577 |
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Countdown to the summit
Mohamed Sid-Ahmed discusses some of the difficult problems on the agenda of the forthcoming Beirut summit
The next annual Arab summit meeting is scheduled to be held in Beirut in less than two weeks' time. There are good reasons to believe that this particular meeting -- if it does actually convene -- can have a decisive effect on the future of the Arab community of countries, indeed, of the Middle East as a whole. Much will depend on which of two alternative approaches the summit will adopt. It can either go for a "technical" way out of the present impasse, or, transcending technicalities, go directly to a "political" trade-off that would fix the overall picture in future.
The technical way out is represented in the Mitchell recommendations and the Tenet arrangements, two mechanisms whose successful implementation does not depend on the Arab parties alone. Sharon also has a definite say, and he does not admit that occupation of another people's land is itself a form of violence. According to him, resisting occupation is actually practising violence, not a legitimate reaction to the illegitimate violence of occupation. In his logic, the full blame for the escalation of violence and the full responsibility for bringing it to an end lies with the Palestinians. As the party at the receiving end of the violence, Israel is entitled to set its conditions for the resumption of negotiations -- a "right" Sharon has exploited to the full by imposing impossible preconditions. Most prominent among these was his insistence on a full week of calm before negotiations could be resumed, a condition he has only recently dropped. Instead of quelling violence, the result has been the worst flare-up of violence since the Intifada began.
President Mubarak tried to break the vicious circle by proposing a summit meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh that would bring together Arafat and Sharon. But Sharon refused categorically under the pretext that Arafat is not a partner for peace, and proposed instead a bilateral meeting between Egypt's president and himself.
However, a "political" way out of the impasse, which would transcend the technicalities responsible for the stalemate, has now come to occupy centre stage with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's proposal that all 22 Arab states normalise relations with Israel, if Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 lines and abandons all Arab territories it occupied during the Six Day War.
What prompted this initiative is not yet clear. But what is certain is that since it was launched it has acquired the support of an ever growing number of Arab states, as well as of other powers outside the Arab world concerned with a final settlement of the Middle East conflict. But the initiative contains weak points that cannot be overlooked, notably the fact that it creates obligations that are binding not only on the Arab states with territories still occupied -- or which were once occupied -- by Israel, but on all 22 Arab League member states. Thus it is dependent for its success on its unanimous adoption by all Arab states. The refusal by a limited number of these states, even by only one, to endorse it, could wreck the whole enterprise. In this connection, two states in particular stand out.
There is, first of all, Syria, which did not react immediately to Prince Abdullah's ideas. A key player that could make or break any proposal seeking to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, Syria may have wanted first to be fully briefed on the specifics of the proposal. What seemed to be absent when the trade-off was first floated was the fate of the Palestinian refugees, many hundreds of thousands of whom are presently living in Syria and Lebanon. True, the Saudi initiative adopts the Syrian demand that Israel pull back to the 4 June 1967 lines, but is not that explicit when it comes to the right of return for Palestinian refugees pursuant to UN resolution 194. President Bashar Al-Assad agreed to the Saudi initiative after meeting with Prince Abdullah and receiving the latter's assurance that resolution 194 will be included in the deal and an "equitable solution" of the refugee problem achieved.
Then comes Iraq which, like Libya, is openly opposed to the Saudi initiative. Branded as a member of Bush's "axis of evil" and threatened with an imminent attack by America, it is understandable that Iraq would consider the Saudi proposal from the angle of its own particular interests.
One of the main concerns of the Beirut summit will be to ensure that the Iraqi question does not become a reason to split Arab ranks in the present critical situation in the Middle East, as it did in the aftermath of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The issue of Iraq should not further complicate the issue of Palestine. Could they become complementary rather than mutually exclusive? Could an Arab-Arab trade-off be reached which would ensure Arab backing of the Iraqi regime against foreign military intervention, in exchange for Iraqi support of, or at least, neutrality towards, the Saudi initiative?
Bush's recent bellicose statements on Iraq have been interpreted by some as not necessarily signifying that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is an objective to be achieved in the immediate term, but rather at a later stage in the course of Bush's current term, and thus as not necessarily concomitant with the present critical situation in Palestine. But no one should realistically expect the Iraqi leadership to take such demobilising scenarios at face value, especially with Vice-President Dick Cheney now touring the region to mobilise Arab regimes against Saddam Hussein, who has put a quarter of a million of his troops on full alert. Such developments do not make it easy to win over Iraq to an Arab consensus over the Saudi ideas.
It is hard to see how the swap envisaged by the Saudi initiative can work. We know that total normalisation of Arab relations with Israel is strongly opposed in the Arab world, and that full withdrawal of Israel to the 4 June 1967 lines is unacceptable for Israel. How to move from mutually unacceptable positions to mutually acceptable ones? Do we have to let the situation degenerate to the point where postponing the summit will appear as a lesser evil than convening it and risking exposing the Arab world to still greater disarray?
And what if Arafat is prevented from taking part? Can the summit be held without him? Would he run the risk of leaving Ramallah without being able to return? It is clear that Sharon, too, is in a race against time, his dwindling popularity driving him to greater excesses in a desperate bid to destroy the Palestinian Authority and undermine its infrastructure before it is too late.
What is certain is that direct contacts between the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Israel are unthinkable before Israel accepts the Saudi initiative and takes concrete steps to make its implementation irreversible, because direct contacts are a form of normalisation with no guarantee that total withdrawal will be reached in exchange.
We are not calling for a complete withdrawal before normalisation even begins, nor for the complete opposite. It is possible to meet half way on issues of implementation once the general principle -- total withdrawal for total peace -- is established. For example, creative solutions are needed to implement resolution 194. Arafat has already announced that he understands Israeli sensitivities towards the demographic problem; a higher rate of population growth among Palestinians than among Israelis. Once the issue of principle is accepted, the right of return could be dealt with in practice in a flexible manner to the satisfaction of all concerned.
In the context of a major initiative, the Arab League should be vested with greater prerogatives than the ones it now enjoys. Normalisation of relations between Arabs and Israelis will give the latter powerful negotiating cards that need to be balanced by greater Arab interaction and integration. And the secretary-general of the Arab League is the best placed person to enhance such interaction and overcome inter-Arab friction, not only before and during the Beirut summit, but especially in its aftermath.
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