Issue No.588
Opinion
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30 May - 5 June 2002 Issue No.588 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Getting the UN to act
Peace and war are less viable than ever, and the status quo unbearable. So what next, asks Hassan Nafaa*
The Middle East is at a crossroads. The peace process is stalled; all conventional options seem to have run out of steam.
Peace is not an option, it seems, because Sharon does not have a clear vision of a final settlement. He may have persistent objectives, but these are so unrealistic they cannot begin to serve as a starting point for political action. Sharon, wanting to keep all options open, is pursuing, at best, a temporary settlement and wants a regional conference to endorse it. His aim is a long-term truce with the Palestinians, allowing the latter to create a mini-state scattered all over Zone A. The government of this mini-state would then cooperate with Israel to eradicate "terror" -- i.e. strike against all forms of Palestinian armed resistance. In Sharon's scheme all thorny issues (refugees, Jerusalem, final borders) will be indefinitely postponed.
If the Arabs were to accept such a transitional settlement they would be opening the gate for Sharon, or any future Israeli government, to liquidate the Palestinian question once and for all. The Israelis, in addition, will have made no commitment to disbanding the settlements or taking back refugees. This option, unacceptable to Arabs and Palestinians, is unlikely to materialise.
Arab countries have a clear vision of a final settlement. They want a package deal creating a Palestinian state on less than 22 per cent of historic Palestine (less than half the area allocated to the Palestinian state under the original partition). The Arabs are asking Israel to return to pre-1967 lines and to allow the Palestinian refugees to return in exchange for full peace and recognition of Israel. The offer is more than fair, by any standards, and yet Israel does not seem interested.
The US, along with other major powers, has not come up with any peace plan. The most Washington is willing to do -- assuming it acts in goodwill -- is facilitate the implementation of any agreement reached through direct negotiations between the concerned parties, regardless of whether this agreement accords with international law and norms or not. So far there is no sign that the US will pressure Israel into reaching an agreement that might be acceptable to the Arabs. It is, on the contrary, pressuring the Arabs, particularly the Palestinians, to submit to Israel's dictates.
But if peace is not an option, neither is war. The US does not want to see war in a region already fraught with anti-American feelings. A major war, particularly if it ends in an Israeli victory, could destabilise Arab regimes and encourage a wave of radicalism in the region.
Israel, for its part, has no strong motives for going to war, or provoking one. Israel's main goal is to force the Palestinians to accept a settlement on its own terms. This is a goal that Israel thinks it can achieve without a full-scale regional war: as long as the Arabs do not challenge Israel, so long as its schemes remain confined to the West Bank and Gaza, Israel has no motive to go to war.
The Arabs, for their part, have basically ruled out the possibility. Egypt was perhaps more blunt than the others but even those states with land occupied by Israel have displayed no intention of fighting. No existing Arab regime would ever attack Israel except in response to a full-scale Israeli attack.
This does not mean that the region will be free from armed hostilities. Localised instances of fighting may break out. Resistance groups may challenge weaker Arab governments. Israel may pressure Arab governments to turn against resistance groups. And the US, in pursuit of its anti-terror schemes, may spark off some localised conflicts.
If neither war nor peace is a viable option, can the status quo last indefinitely? Unlikely. For one thing, Arab countries whose land is under occupation cannot accept the status quo, for such acceptance would destabilise the existing regimes. Even Arab states -- particularly those that are historically close to the conflict -- which have no land under Israeli occupation cannot tolerate the political and economic cost of the existing tensions for long.
Washington, for its part, is not very happy with the status quo which has hampered its anti-terror campaign. Even Israel must by now realise how costly -- financially and politically -- the status quo is. If no action is taken the current situation will further radicalise the Arab and Palestinian masses, something that all sides would be glad to avoid.
Time is not in the Arabs favour, certainly not under any of the existing scenarios. Neither Israel nor the US is offering anything that might lead to a quick and lasting peace agreement. The Saudi initiative may have been useful in the sense that it provided the Arabs with a cohesive strategy but so far this initiative has fallen on deaf ears. The Saudi initiative was supposed to be a persuasive carrot. The Arabs, though, lack a stick with which to make the carrot look more appetising.
Israel claims that the occupied Palestinian territories are disputed, not occupied, land. This is a lie, but let's assume it is not (in which case, it should actually be applied to all land that Israel occupied beyond the 1947 partition lines). Israel wants to force the Palestinians to negotiate while their land is under occupation. This leaves the latter with no option but to accept Israel's conditions for withdrawal. To break the deadlock it would make perfect sense to place all land Israel occupied in 1967 under an international mandate until negotiations are conducted and a final settlement is drawn up.
To be more precise: international peacekeepers should replace the Israeli occupation forces on all Arab land occupied in 1967; immediate negotiations should begin under the auspices of a UN-sponsored conference to address all pending matters on all tracks and resolve them in one final deal; the UN Security Council should guarantee the peace agreement resulting from the conference and supervise its implementation in line with a clearly-defined timetable.
I believe that any attempt to start new negotiations under continued Israeli occupation will bring us back to square one. A single bomb exploding is enough to set in motion the same demonic cycle of violence. Suicide operations are likely to stop once international forces are deployed in Palestinian areas. Even if these do not stop completely, any such operations will lose the massive public support they now enjoy.
This is the course that the Arabs should insist upon. But how might they wield a stick, and not just dangle a carrot?
I suggest that Arab countries call an immediate session of the UN Security Council, at summit level, with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco attending on behalf of all Arab countries. (Syria already has a seat on the UN Security Council, which it will keep until the end of next year).
The UN Security Council, convened at summit level, should invoke Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, send an international peacekeeping force to replace Israeli forces in all areas occupied in 1967, and place these areas under UN mandate. The UN Security Council should also call for an international conference to be attended by all concerned parties and under UN auspices to formulate a full and final settlement on all peace tracks, a settlement that will have to be implemented under UN Security Council supervision and guarantees.
What if the world does not agree to this legitimate demand? Then Arab countries would have no choice but to consider forceful international action. For example, they could threaten (and carry out that threat, if necessary) to freeze their membership of the UN. Other steps might also be considered -- unconventional actions that will have to be tried before the situation gets completely out of hand.
* The writer is professor of political science at Cairo University.
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