Seizing the opportunity

Events are moving at lightning speed and Arabs everywhere would love to believe that peace is at hand. All parties concerned must seize the opportunity to create a lasting peace in the Middle East. But it must be established from the outset that peace will not prevail if Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon insists that Palestinians accept less than the 22 per cent of their original homeland as stipulated in the 1993 Oslo accords.

President George W Bush is scheduled to visit the region next week and will meet with key Arab leaders. The Sharm El-Sheikh summit, followed by the Aqaba summit, present a golden opportunity to iron out differences and ease tensions. There is a desperate need for confidence-building and only Washington is in a position to bring the different parties together. Yet if the US is to act as an evenhanded mediator it will have to find the determination to rein Israel in. Arabs expect nothing less than that Washington will apply the necessary pressure on the Israelis for them to accept the roadmap unconditionally.

Arabs will be sorely disappointed if the Bush administration, on the pretext of the presidential elections next year, reverts to blind support of Israel in order to secure the Jewish vote and appease the Zionist lobby.

The roadmap must not be allowed to slip off the table, or to die a slow death like the Mitchell Report and the Tennet Plan. Washington must rise to the challenge.