The 15th Arab summit, a one-day meeting on the Iraq crisis held in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh last weekend, concluded its work by calling for a peaceful outcome to the crisis, setting up a special Arab committee to intervene directly with all sides. Al-Ahram Weekly staff were there
Palestine sidelined by Iraq
Though the Palestinian issue was item number three on the agenda at this year's Arab summit, it seems to have been item number 10 in the minds of Arab leaders. Soha Abdelaty reports
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Amr Moussa; top Iraqi officials Ibrahim and Ramadan; the UAE delegation which proposed an initiative asking Saddam to step down; Palestinian leader Arafat giving his speech from Ramallah
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Arab officials were quick to dismiss reporters' concerns that the Palestinian issue had been sidelined during the one-day Arab summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh on Saturday, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa telling listeners that "that is absolutely not true" and referring reporters back to the Summit Resolution on Palestine. Nevertheless, despite official reassurances, the largely rhetorical commitment to the Palestinian cause in the summit's final communiqué confirmed fears that the Palestinian issue will be dealt with only once the Iraqi crisis is over.
The final communiqué reaffirmed the Arab countries' commitment to the Palestinian leadership, embodied in President Yasser Arafat, and to the Palestinian people's right to resistance. It also condemned Israeli practices and called upon the international community, and especially the "Quartet" of the US, the EU, Russia and the UN, to provide protection for the Palestinian people and to pressure Israel to implement existing UN resolutions, which it has persistently flouted.
However, while the Arab summit re- affirmed Arab commitment to a just and lasting peace in Palestine through the Arab initiative adopted last year, renewing Arab financial support for the Palestinian people, the world is now pre-occupied by the Iraq crisis, and it seems unlikely that the ideas contained in the summit's final communiqué will be acted upon soon.
The Bush administration has stalled for six months on the implementation of its "roadmap" for Palestine -- a step-by-step plan to establishing an independent Palestinian state by 2005 -- saying that it was necessary to wait until after a new government was formed in Israel after February's elections before beginning the work of implementation.
However, following the formation of a new Israeli government last week the administration announced that though it remains committed to a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue, it will only deal with it once the Iraqi crisis is resolved.
Over recent weeks the US has signaled that it considers resolving the Iraqi crisis to be the first step in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. "Success in Iraq could also begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace, and set in motion progress towards a truly democratic Palestinian state," President George Bush said on 27 February, adding that "the passing of Saddam Hussein's regime will deprive terrorist networks of a wealthy patron that pays for terrorist training, and offers rewards to families of suicide bombers. And other regimes will be given a clear warning that support for terror will not be tolerated."
Arab leaders, however, have seen this as the US delaying dealing with the Palestinian issue and with the belligerent tactics of the Israeli government. In his opening statement to the Sharm El-Sheikh summit, Moussa told Arab leaders that "talking about waiting for the end of the second Gulf War, and then turning back to Palestine, is something we have heard before, and tasted the bitterness of throughout the 1990s."
During the first Gulf War in 1991 Washington made a similar pledge to deal with the Palestinian issue as soon as hostilities were over, in a promise that was later not acted upon.
Others officials were sceptical that Washington would actually pressure Israel into implementing the US roadmap even after the Iraqi crisis has been resolved, believing that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has already rejected the idea.
"When [the US administration] talks about a Palestinian state with no time- frame and with no specific procedures, then judging from our experiences with the administration, this is all just talk that can be forgotten by morning and places no obligations upon Israel," said Mohamed Sobeih, Palestinian representative to the Arab League.
While the Palestinian side found the unanimous statements of support for the Palestinian leadership and people adequate in the summit's final communiqué, Sobeih telling the Weekly that "the resolution is satisfactory and covers all aspects of the Palestinian issue," nevertheless the absence of new ideas for solving the Palestinian issue at the summit was quite conspicuous.
When asked what new ideas or initiatives could have been proposed to meet the new challenges on the ground in the occupied territories, Sobeih asked "What need for new ideas? If the Arab countries implemented these decisions completely, that would already be a step forward."
The Palestinian view is that there are already many proposals in the offing that could be moved back onto the political agenda, allowing a peaceful resolution to the issue to be reached. However, these proposals have been shelved for the duration of the Iraqi crisis.
Meeting in Beirut last March, another Arab summit meeting adopted a Saudi Arabian, and later Arab, initiative for peace, pledging to establish ties with Israel in return for Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories to the 1967 borders, as well as the right to return for Palestinian refugees and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
More recently, there has been the American roadmap itself, adopted by the Quartet as containing the basis for a just and lasting peace.
However, the newly-formed Israeli government has rejected these ideas, Sharon telling the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, last week before his government was sworn in that he had backed away from his commitment to the Palestinian state envisioned by Washington's roadmap for a settlement and reaffirmed his commitment to continuing the building of settlements in the occupied territories.
Sharon made these announcements to satisfy the far-right elements in his new government, and, with the world preoccupied by Iraq, such statements have thus far gone largely unnoticed by the international community and seem likely to continue to be ignored until after the Iraqi crisis is over.
"Sharon will not commit to any peace process. The formation of his government is evidence to that," Sobeih said.
However, waiting until after the Iraqi crisis is over before addressing the Palestinian issue could be a case of too little, too late, as Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher explained to the Weekly.
"I think they [the Bush administration] should have dealt with this issue yesterday, they should deal with it today, and they should deal with it tomorrow," Maher said. "Israel is continuing its aggression, and I do not think the Palestinian issue can wait. Linking it with another matter without due consideration to what is daily happening on the ground is a mistake."
By the time the international community turns its attention to Palestine, the facts on the ground could have completely changed. In Sharon's two-year premiership, Israel has significantly expanded its settlement-building programme on Palestinian land, building infrastructure around them on territory that was supposed to become part of a future Palestinian state.
These settlements and the roads built around them have further divided the already encircled Palestinian territory, making it hard to find a unified piece that could become the focus of an independent state. In addition, Israel is building a "security fence", a 10-metre high wall, around Qalqilya and eventually Tulkarm and inhibiting their growth. Route 6, a new Israeli highway running the length of the West Bank and linking many settlements has also encroached on land designated as belonging to the Palestinians.
Many observers have made a link between a possible war in Iraq and the Palestinian issue, claiming that how one is resolved will affect the outcomes of the other. However, Arab officials at last week's summit were quick to warn that dealing with the Iraq crisis before resolving the Palestinian issue will lead only to further instability and unrest in the region.
Now that the Bush administration is moving ahead with its plans to attack Iraq, leaving the Palestinian issue behind, the focus for Arab leaders has become to try to stop a war in Iraq, the effects of which will spill over into Palestine.
For such leaders, while there is a "link" between the Iraqi and Palestinian issues, it is a quite different one to that imagined by the US.
"The Iraqi issue cannot be separated from the Palestinian issue. Our failure in resolving the Iraqi issue means our failure in resolving the Palestinian issue," Syrian President Bashar Al-Asad said on Saturday, warning that a war in Iraq would be "a cover-up for Israeli atrocities and would lead to a settlement of the Palestinian issue based on Israeli terms".
