GENEVA, Switzerland — In the few days I have spent in Geneva this week, discussing such issues as Europe’s role in the world, the relevance and application of international humanitarian law, and Switzerland’s experience in impartially promoting conflict-resolution negotiations, the conversation inevitably returns to the Middle East. My pleasure at absorbing the lessons of Switzerland’s dynamic neutrality has been partially offset by the irritation of following the American vice president, Dick Cheney, in his travels around the Middle East.
Cheney speaks about promoting peace, but spends most of his time scheming to confront those nationalist and Islamist forces in the region that happen to represent a majority of citizens in Arab-Islamic societies. Defeating Hamas and Hizbullah, and checking the Iranian and Syrian governments, have become his primary diplomatic focus, rather than offering the United States as a truly even-handed and dynamic mediator that could actually make a historic contribution to peace if it really wanted to.
So, he noted a few days ago that Palestinian statehood is long overdue, but that continuing terrorism and rocket attacks could “kill the legitimate hopes and aspirations of the Palestinian people.” He said that peacemaking required “a determination to defeat those who are committed to violence” and deny Israel’s right to exist, meaning Hamas.
A few weeks ago, I was asked to speak to a university class in Boston on what I saw as the main lessons of Arab-Israeli peace-making attempts in the last quarter century, especially at Camp David twice and in the Oslo process. Cheney might find it useful to ponder my response as he flies around our region and watches it become ever more violent and unstable. My ten lessons for Arab-Israeli peace-making are as follows:
1. The process from the start requires clarity of goals in terms of what both sides expect to get out of the negotiations; “promoting a peace process” is not enough, because it is a means and not a goal.
2. Asserting equality in the rights, and the sequence of implementation of rights, of the main parties to the quarrel is crucial. Palestinian rights to statehood and a normal life cannot remain secondary to Israelis enjoying security first. The two must happen simultaneously, not sequentially.
3. The external mediator must commit to doing five core things: prodding both sides equally vigorously and consistently; persisting in the mediation and facilitation, regardless of temporary setbacks; defining ambiguities that stall progress; monitoring compliance on both sides; and, proposing compromises that can bridge differences.
4. Public opinion on both sides must be engaged in the process from its inception. People-to-people contacts must be started to support official talks, because citizenries that desire lasting peace will push their leaders to make reasonable mutual compromises towards that end.
5. The existential issues and fears that define both sides must be addressed early and squarely, and not left to linger while easier matters are discussed. The really tough issues as I see them include Jerusalem, real sovereignty, and a refugees rights resolution for the Palestinians; and, for Israelis, Jerusalem, Arab acknowledgment of a legitimate Jewish historical link to the land, and a permanent end of conflict and claims.
6. The principal negotiators must be seen to be legitimate, primarily in the eyes of their own people. It is a waste of time to negotiate peace with political leaders who only represent a fraction of their people, as the United States and Israel attempt to do with the Palestinians.
7. Related to this, any peace negotiations can only hope to make progress if they include a mechanism by which Palestinian leaders consult their refugee population in the diaspora and agree on a consensus national position on the big issues.
8. Legitimate and peaceful political means must be used early on to neutralize the militants in both camps who might try to wreck a negotiation that is desired by majorities on both sides — whether suicide bombers and rocketers from Palestine or settler-colonizers and assassins from Israel. This can be done by acknowledging and responding to the legitimate aspirations of the majorities on both sides. Most ordinary citizens will support diplomacy over fighting if they see and enjoy the fruits of serious negotiations.
9. External support for negotiations must be generated early, and sustained throughout the process. Europe, the Arab World, and Russia, primarily, should be consulted and brought in as real partners, not as the transparent fig leaves they are in the American-dominated and heavily Israeli-defined Quartet.
10. All the principal political actors must be involved in the process from the start, or it will have no chance of success. This means the United States and Israel must sit down with Hamas and Hizbullah, just as the Palestinians and Arabs have to sit down with Israeli settlers and rightwing racist zealots, who advocate ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Those who are seen to be legitimate actors in their own society must be included as diplomatic players.
Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.
Copyright © 2008 Rami G. Khouri
—————
Released: 26 March 2008
Word Count: 810
—————-
For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757