Not enough yet

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The results of the Riyadh summit, which have set the Arab agenda for the forthcoming phase, merit close inspection. In keeping with "the Arab commitment to a just and comprehensive peace as a strategic option," the summit resolution on the Arab-Israeli conflict opens with an affirmation that "all Arab states adhere to the peace initiative adopted by the Beirut summit of 2002." Nothing wrong with that. The Arab peace initiative needed underlining in view of Israeli attempts to void it of substance along with American moves in the same direction.

Unfortunately, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian cause cannot be resolved simply by clinging to the Beirut peace initiative, which over the past five years led to no progress whatsoever. One cannot help but recall the Fez summit of 1982, initially sponsored by Prince Fahd Abdel-Aziz, which was stronger in its demands and less flexible in the concessions it offered. Here we are 20 years later, without a single word of that initiative having affected anything. Everything rests on the balances of power and those balances today are not in favour of the more generous Beirut initiative or anything like it. Real progress -- the Israeli evacuation of Sinai in 1982, Israel's recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1993, and the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 -- was only accomplished after real world events shifted the balances of power less in favour of Israel.

Credit is due to the summit participants for not adding "the only" to the phrase "strategic option". But does that change anything? Any initiative has to be backed by force, in the widest sense of the word. The official Arab order may not currently have the required military strength to push its agenda, but certainly it has other cards to draw on, many of which have never been used.

What would happen if Israel took the Arabs up on their offer to use the Beirut initiative as the basis for negotiations leading to a comprehensive settlement? Of course it would never do so because it would never voluntarily give up East Jerusalem or bargain away the spoils of its military victories, but let's suppose for the sake of argument that it did. The chances are high that this would open more cans of worms than it could close. For example, the initiative calls for a full Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab territories but doesn't explicitly restate the demand, stipulated in the Fez initiative, that Israel dismantle all its settlements in these territories. Given Israel's amply demonstrated intentions and negotiating style, one can already see talks bogging down over whether withdrawal actually entails removing the settlements as well.

The Beirut initiative is equally blurred on the question of Palestinian refugees, calling for a just solution to this problem "in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194". Everyone knows that this resolution offers Palestinian refugees a choice between return and compensation, so why be oblique? Why "in accordance with", which Israel will immediately seize upon to lodge endless objections, air opinions of its own on the substance of the resolution, and play various Arab parties off against each other? The Fez initiative made no bones about affirming "the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, to the exercise of their inalienable and indispensable national rights", and about demanding "compensation for those who do not wish to return". Such explicitness is the only way to pre-empt Israeli machinations.

The question that precedes the mire of negotiations is whether negotiations will take place to begin with. Yes, the Riyadh summit instructed a peace initiative ministerial committee to keep working and it called for the creation of a team to handle necessary communications with the UN secretary-general, members of the Security Council, members of the Quartet, and all other concerned parties in order to get the ball rolling. Not that anything has happened yet.

In all events, if there is to be any hope it resides not in one committee or communications team, but in the final paragraph of the Riyadh resolution, which charged the Arab League Council, at the ministerial level, with "monitoring the situation in order to determine the progress and efficacy of current peace efforts and to identify the next steps of action in light of this assessment". Perhaps this process of revision will bring some much needed rethinking, not just about the Beirut initiative but about Arab strategy in general towards Israeli intransigence and international bias.