AMMAN, Jordan — I sensed something was slightly unreal about the Jordanian capital Amman when I was there Monday. The distorted reality, I quickly discovered, reflected the presence in town of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whose Mideast diplomatic efforts increasingly look like a self-deceiving world of mirrors and make-believe.
As she intensified the elusive search for “moderate Sunni Arabs” to share in her adventure, Rice also launched a process of “parallel talks” with Israeli and Palestinian leaders who have gotten nowhere talking to each other once every few months. To overcome the chronic stalemate of sterile bilateral Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy, she now expands this into a trilateral failure, as the principal Middle Easterners do not talk to each other, but only talk to her. It’s hard to decide if this is a comedy or a horror show.
The most galling thing about Rice’s and Washington’s approach is its fundamental dishonesty. The Bush administration spent its first six years avoiding any serious engagement in the Arab-Israeli conflict, or decisively siding with the Israelis on most key contested points, like refugees, security or settlements. Now, with little time left in her incumbency, President Bush on the ropes, his administration in tatters, America’s army in trouble in Iraq, Washington’s credibility shattered in the region and around the world, and the Middle East slipping into greater strife and dislocation, we are asked to believe that she will dedicate her remaining time in office to securing the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Does she take us in the Arab world for idiots or robots? Or simply another generation of hapless Arabs with no options, and so must go along docilely with every American-Israeli initiative — no matter how insulting, insincere or desperate it can be? This one smacks of all three.
The Rice approach is not serious because she does not prod Arabs and Israelis simultaneously to comply with the rule of law and UN resolutions. Instead, in her hasty and insincere diplomatic fishing expedition she casts her net wide in an attempt to catch enough “moderate Sunni Arabs” to play by her American-Israeli rules. This is a direct consequence of two trends in the region for which the United States must share much blame: the invasion and collapse of Iraq into sectarian strife that has started to spread throughout the region, and the persistence of pro-Israeli American policies for some four decades now, which ultimately contributed to the birth of massive Arab Islamist movements that oppose and fight Israel, side with Iran, and defy the United States.
Now, Israel-America suddenly, magically, expresses interest in the 2002 Arab peace plan, after derisively ignoring it for the past five years, and they claim to seek a coalition of “moderate Sunni Arabs” who would take steps to improve it. The 2002 Arab peace plan, unanimously approved by the Arab world, offered to achieve permanent peace and coexistence with Israel, in return for Israel returning the Arab lands it occupied in 1967 and resolving the Palestine refugee issue through negotiations based on UN resolutions.
Israel-America wants the Arabs to make more concessions, gestures and overtures even before Israel has made any reciprocal moves of equal magnitude. They want all Arab governments, even novel elected ones like the Hamas-led Palestinian government, to pledge recognition of Israel before they can even be engaged as legitimate players in the peace-making game.
The problem with this approach is that it has been tried for 40 years, since the 1967 war, and it has consistently failed, because it did not tackle the legitimate needs of both sides at the same time. Notably, Israel’s peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt succeeded because both sides made gestures and concessions that were reciprocal and simultaneous, always anchored in the spirit and letter of UN resolutions.
Rice will surely find a few “moderate Sunni Arabs,” for ours is a region rich in mercantile traditions, full of people ready for a deal. But those who buy into Rice’s American-Israeli rules will be such isolated and discredited individuals that they will represent few people beyond their guards, business partners and cousins — a large cohort in many Arab lands, but not a credible basis for lasting peace.
Rice should stop futilely searching for “moderate Sunni Arabs”, who will be discredited by their association with her Israeli-centric approach to peace-making. She would do better to look for some law-abiding Israelis who would be prepared to repeat with Palestine, Syria and Lebanon the sort of balanced, negotiated peace Israel signed with Jordan and Egypt. The Arabs in 2002 made a serious peace offer. Israel has not. It’s time for the United States to stop fishing and fantasizing, and instead to work seriously for peace and justice for all in the Middle East, so that it could help to stop the rot that threatens the entire region as well as America’s own plummeting standing in the world.
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
—————-
Released: 28 March 2007
Word Count: 813
—————-
For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757