BEIRUT — The most significant thing about the national unity government agreement signed February 8, by the Palestinian groups Hamas and Fateh in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, under Saudi auspices, is that it was signed in Mecca under Saudi auspices. It is probably more important for what it tells us about Saudi diplomatic stirrings than Palestinian-Israeli issues.
If this is the beginning of a new era in which diplomatically dynamic Saudis and politically pragmatic Palestinians assert themselves more forcefully on the regional stage, we might be on the threshold of better days ahead for the Middle East. I would not bet the family savings on this, but neither would I ignore the potential that is there.
We need not expect this accord to jump start a new Arab-Israeli peace process, mainly because Israel and the United States — with Western Europe increasingly in tow — have not seriously explored real openings for a negotiated peace in the past decade. The most forceful move ever made by the four-member Quartet (United States, UN, EU and Russia) that is supposed to shepherd the peace-making process was to slap sanctions and tough demands on the Hamas-led Palestinian government — without ever making equal, parallel demands of Israel. As such, the Quartet looks more and more like a legitimizing cover for Israeli-American positions that have killed any chance of a peace process.
Israel and the United States are likely to repeat the Quartet’s three demands: that the Palestinian government explicitly renounce terrorism, honor all existing Palestinian agreements with Israel, and recognize Israel’s right to exist. These are reasonable and legitimate demands — but only if Israel is required to abide by the same rules. And this is not the case. The Quartet sanctions the Palestinians without demanding simultaneously that Israel stop its colonization of Arab lands, its expansion of settlements, and its routine killings and assassinations of Palestinians and Lebanese.
Here is a clue to a breakthrough for Israel, the United States and the West: Offer to the Palestinians as much as they demand the Palestinians give to Israel.
In this respect, the Palestinian accord in Mecca will not meet Israeli-American-Quartet demands, and is unlikely to advance peace talks. However it could mark a positive turning point if the Israeli-American-Quartet camp were to see peace-making as a win-win situation, in which progress happened on the back of mutual gains by both sides, rather than mainly enforcing the unilateral demands of Israel.
The Palestinian national unity government has offered Israel two significant but symbolic olive branches: respecting all previous Palestinian agreements (such as the Oslo accords and the PLO’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist) and respecting the Arab Summit’s 2002 peace plan, which offers Israel full peace in return for full withdrawal from occupied lands, and a negotiated resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue. This same Palestinian government, though, also recommitted itself to other Palestinian documents and Arab positions that make armed resistance against Israeli occupation both legitimate and noble. The future path defining Palestinian policy will largely reflect how Israel and the West respond to the Mecca agreement.
Those who truly seek peace should see this Palestinian gesture as an opening and an opportunity to explore serious means of negotiating a comprehensive, permanent peace agreement. Israel will make an important choice in the coming months: It will reciprocate the Palestinian-Saudi gesture in kind and make equally broad but well-intentioned declarations of an intent to coexist in peace and equality; or, it will hold fast to its ironclad policy of refusing any diplomatic probes and persisting in its colonization, strangulation, and military assaults on the Palestinians.
The important Saudi mediation for the Hamas-Fateh agreement comes at a time when Saudi Arabia is also actively engaged with Iran on defusing tensions related to Lebanon and to the larger standoff with the West and the UN on Tehran’s nuclear industry. Saudi Arabia affirmed its clout within the region in fostering the Palestinian unity accord, which Syria and Egypt both had tried but failed to do. If Saudi Arabia is more willing to use its considerable moral (religious) and financial power to help broker conflict resolutions in the Middle East, we should all welcome that. But we must also respond to Saudi gestures, rather than let them wither on the vine, as happened with the Saudis’ 2002 Arab-Israeli peace plan that Israel and the United States ignored.
It is important to recognize the significance of a diplomatically stirring Saudi Arabia that can have a positive impact in Iran, Syria, Palestine-Israel, and Lebanon, for starters. As in 2002, Saudis and Palestinians have made a sincere, constructive gesture for peaceful coexistence. A return gesture of equal magnitude could change history. Snubbing this Arab gesture would only exacerbate existing tensions and conflicts in the region, and probably push them towards levels of suffering and destruction that would make the past five years look like a picnic.
Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 12 February 2007
Word Count: 810
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