4 -10 April 2002
Issue No.580
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 4 -10 April 2002 Issue No.580 |
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At crossroads
Mohamed Sid-Ahmed discusses the dilemmas raised by Israel as it faces the threat of peace
A quarter of a century ago, a book entitled Israel in Danger of Peace was published in Israel. This statement was never as true as it has been this last week. Sharon launched the widest Israeli offensive in the Palestinian areas since 1967 with the aim of dismantling the Palestinian Authority and striking a deadly blow at Arafat when the ink had not yet dried on the unanimous Arab summit resolution calling for the establishment of normal relations with Israel in exchange for specific demands which address the core issues of the dispute.
Adopting the logic of the Beirut Declaration would be a suicidal move for Sharon, indeed, for the Israeli far right as a whole, whether Sharon or Netanyahu. Sharon's landslide victory in the elections was an expression of the frustration felt in Israel at the failure of the peace process following the failure of the Camp David summit, exactly as the Intifada expressed Palestinian frustration for the same reason. Violence got the upper hand on both sides of the confrontation line.
There was nothing new in the recent suicide bombings, including the one in Natanya. The only new factors in the equation were the Arab peace offer and the consolidation of Arafat's status thanks to the wholehearted support he received at the summit, not only in his capacity as the elected leader of his people but as the symbol of Palestinian resistance. To see his nemesis, the man he had prevented from attending the summit, glorified in this way was unacceptable to Sharon. It was obvious that merely keeping Arafat under siege and dismissing him as irrelevant was not enough to clip his wings, and that more drastic measures were needed. And so Sharon decided to go for the end game by launching an all-out military assault on Arafat's compound in Ramallah. The Israeli prime minister's gamble that he could get away with this was based on what certain hostile Western quarters have called "Arab diplomatic duplicity", as represented in talking of peace while backing the Intifada and of normalising relations with Israel while suicide operations against civilians are on the increase.
In this connection, it is worth looking into the accusation that the Arab summit applied double standards and resorted to diplomatic double talk. It is true that even as it called for the establishment of normal relations between Arabs and Israelis, the summit insisted on reactivating the Arab Boycott Bureau, and that while condemning terrorism it did not object to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's contention that under an occupation no distinction can be made between military forces and civilians, especially in the case of Israel where all citizens are armed. But in calling for peace the summit was not calling for capitulation. On the contrary, it wanted to make peace a realistic, attainable goal. To that end, it set out to clear up the ambiguities that have for long hindered any meaningful progress in the peace process.
One important achievement of the Beirut Declaration was to eliminate ambiguities in certain official documents related to the Arab-Israeli dispute, specifically Security Council Resolution 242. According to the Beirut Declaration, there will be no grounds to talk about a "cold", "warm" or "hot" peace, but of a normal peace, as between any two nations. As to the territories from which Israeli forces are required to pull out, they are clearly defined as those it occupied on 4 June 1967. Unlike Resolution 242, the Declaration is not subject to different interpretations, its explicit wording depriving Israel of the argument it invokes to justify its expansionist policies, namely, that its borders are not secure.
There is no contradiction between developing normal relations in future with Israel and boycotting Israel in the present, because normalisation of relations has two sides: it is one of the ingredients in a swap between full normalisation and total withdrawal. It could also be regarded as a means of effecting the swap, which can only come about through direct talks, in themselves a form of normalisation. Thus boycott and normalisation are not necessarily mutually exclusive; indeed, they can, in a way, be considered complementary. The more efficiently Israel is boycotted because of its present policies, the quicker it will become possible to implement the Beirut summit tradeoff. Boycott in the present has acquired new features. It has become tactical rather than strategic, a means to an end rather than an end in itself. The decision to hold Arab summit meetings regularly once a year was a first step towards greater Arab cohesion. The unanimity achieved at the summit is a second step in that direction, raising hopes of greater Arab complementarity and unified action through the creation of a pan-Arab decision-making mechanism transcending that o the sovereign Arab states and greater readiness to distribute roles rather than act separately. For normalisation not to become surrender, a clear distinction must be made on both sides of the confrontation line between those who support the Beirut Declaration and those who oppose it. Nor is the trend towards greater Arab cohesion limited to the Arab leaderships. The mass demonstrations now sweeping Arab towns in protest to the latest Israeli outrage against the Palestinians and their leader attest to a thirst at the grass roots level for a common Arab stand and joint Arab action. This adds a new and powerful dynamic to the reconciliation achieved at the summit and carries the promise of an Arab thrust that cannot easily be contained.
The Arab summit did not witness only overall Arab reconciliation, but also extremely significant bilateral reconciliations, notably between Kuwait and Iraq, and also Saudi Arabia and Iraq, developments which exceeded the most optimistic expectations. The Arab Gulf states put aside their reservations in respect of the Iraqi regime to prevent Bush's plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein from eclipsing the Palestinian problem, and, in exchange for that support, Iraq signed the summit's resolutions with the other Arab states. This seems to have infuriated the Americans. It also dealt a death blow to US Vice- President Cheney's mission to the Middle East in an attempt to win over 11 states in the region to the planned US attack on Iraq. The refusal of the Arabs to play along can explain Washington's reluctance to lean on Sharon to lift his siege on Arafat. Perhaps it was also a way of indirectly punishing the Arab states -- through Sharon's humiliation of Arafat -- for not supporting the second phase of Bush's war on terrorism.
In such a context, it is unlikely that the Beirut Declaration will carry the day. As the region stands poised on the brink of a volcano, it is violence rather than a climate of peace negotiations that is expected to prevail in the foreseeable future.
The Security Council passed a unanimous resolution (with Syria abstaining) expressing deep concern over the deteriorating situation in the Middle East and calling for a halt to the suicide operations inside Israel and an end to Israel's military operations against Arafat's headquarters. The resolution also called for the pullback of Israeli forces from Palestinian towns, including Ramallah.
But Sharon is defying the Council and refusing to comply with the resolution. The longer Sharon continues the siege, the more the Arab world -- even international public opinion -- rallies around Arafat. It is ironical that Arafat, trapped in his bunker and surrounded by Israeli soldiers, has never been as popular as he is today, while Sharon, with all the power of his tanks and armoured forces, has never been as discredited and isolated as he is now.
Sharon might be unable to kill Arafat, as the Arab street boils and unrest spreads both inside and outside Palestine. What is certain is that Sharon wants to humiliate Arafat and bring him to his knees, while also isolating him from the world at large. But it is questionable whether he will attain any of his aims. His policy of brutal repression has only fanned Palestinian resolve. The Intifada shows no signs of abating, indeed, quite the contrary. Suicide operations have been stepped up and are likely to escalate still more. Palestinian activists are now denouncing other Arabs as defeatist and Hizbullah has activated the Lebanese front in the Shebaa Farms.
Adding fuel to the fire, President Bush broke a 36- hour silence following Israel's invasion of Arafat's headquarters to defend the Israeli action on the grounds that the main priority at this juncture is the fight against terrorism! For Amr Moussa, secretary- general of the Arab League, the issue is occupation, not terrorism. Will Bush understand this truth before the situation gets out of hand?
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