Déjà vu experiences aside, this past week has been almost surrealistic in its juxtaposition between current overdrive efforts to revive the Arab-Israeli peace negotiations and the similar but failed effort four years ago. The parallels between the situation now and in 2000 are multiple and striking. The two most important parallels are the new options provided by a change in leadership (in 2000 it was Ehud Barak replacing Benjamin Netanyahu as Israeli prime minister; today is it Mahmoud Abbas replacing Yasser Arafat as Palestinian leader), and the multi-sectoral exploration of peace prospects on the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Syrian fronts.
Barak in Israel, Bill Clinton in the United States, Yasser Arafat in Palestine, and Hafez Assad in Syria were the key players in 2000. Today we have George Bush in Washington, Ariel Sharon in Israel, Mahmoud Abbas in Palestine and Bashar Assad in Syria. Despite different respective motivations and constraints than in 2000, the pitfalls that could scuttle this peace-making effort are virtually identical to those of four years ago, and must be avoided.
Every important and interested party is involved today in intense diplomatic efforts to resume negotiations for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace agreement, including Israel, the Palestinians, Syria, the U.S., the Europeans, Russia, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and the UN. We have not seen this level of diplomatic intensity and urgency in years. The process should not be left to the vagaries and vulnerabilities of crude domestic politics or incompetent leaderships in any of the principal parties, as happened in 2000. The added impetus for success today is the positive impact that Arab-Israeli peace would have on the situation in Iraq and wider relations between the U.S. and the Arab world.
An important recent book has been published in the United States that provides timely reading on this matter, and its lessons should be heeded. The book is a detailed narrative of the diplomatic efforts in 1999-2000 to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict on the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Syrian tracks. Written by Clayton E. Swisher, and entitled The Truth about Camp David: the untold story about the collapse of the Middle East peace process, it provides important insights into why peace-making failed on both the Syrian-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli fronts, even with the active, sustained personal involvement of the American president and the leaders of Syria, Israel and Palestine.
The American-Israeli-engineered spin since those days has been that the Palestinians and Syrians were not prepared to make the tough decisions needed for peace. Subsequent research in this book, and other accounts by the direct participants, has provided a more thorough historical narrative, which more accurately spreads the blame for failure among the Arab, Israeli and American parties.
One thing is compellingly clear, though, and relevant for today’s revived diplomacy: if regional peace-making is umbilically-tied to domestic political constraints in any one country, the whole effort will fail. This is a central reason why the 2000 diplomacy collapsed on both the Syrian and Palestinian fronts. Instead of preparing their public opinions for the tough mutual concessions needed to cement a permanent peace accord, Israeli and Palestinian leaders acted like vulnerable politicians who allowed public opinion to define their negotiating parameters.
Ehud Barak was unwilling to meet Syrian and Palestinian demands (and international legal obligations) on key issues such as territorial withdrawal because he was afraid that he would lose his parliamentary coalition. Arafat and the Palestinian leadership similarly failed to consult with the Palestinian people on the central issue of how to resolve the refugee issue fairly and on the basis of UN resolutions. The result was a heroic diplomatic effort that failed, because it was ultimately powered by the vulnerabilities and frailties of politicians, and the fears of their people, rather than the courageous leadership of historic statesmen.
The implications of the 2000 experience for today’s peace-making efforts seem clear. Israeli leaders must not negotiate with the Arab parties primarily on the basis of imperfect deals that would keep a strained domestic Israeli political coalition in power, especially a coalition in which extremist political parties hopelessly entangle domestic religious and fiscal demands with the wider issues of Israeli peace-making with the Arabs. Neither should the Israelis negotiate with their eye mainly on the minority settler fringe in Israel. Sharon or any other Israeli leader should instead mobilize that clear, solid majority of Israelis who are prepared to give up the occupied West Bank and Gaza, in return for a genuine, lasting peace accord.
The Palestinian leadership for its part should avoid the mistakes of 2000, by doing three principal things. It should coordinate much more closely with other Arab parties so as not to allow Israel or the U.S. to play Arabs off against one another. It should mobilize that clear majority of Palestinians who are prepared for an honorable, negotiated, fair peace accord, rather than let itself be constrained by the demands of hard-line minority parties. And it should vigorously consult the Palestinian refugee community in order to define a clear Palestinian national consensus on what defines an honorable and acceptable resolution of the refugee issue within the context of a permanent peace accord with Israel.
This important new round of Arab-Israeli diplomacy is full of hope, but it is not unprecedented. We’ve been here before, but we failed, and resumed savage warfare. So the first thing we should do now is to look back and acknowledge why we collectively failed, then send home the politicians and summon the statesmen to do their historic and honorable deed.
Rami G. Khouri is executive editor of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright © 2004 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 01 December 2004
Word Count: 914 words
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