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Edition 1 Volume 1 - July 10, 2003

The peace process and the role of Arab diplomacy

• Between two major pulls - interview withNabil Shaath
Whenever policy was formulated, it was basically behind the plan that eventually became the roadmap.

• Arab diplomacy: myth and reality - byEric Rouleau
It is difficult to believe that all Israeli decision-makers ignored the fact that the Arab League was impotent.

• Freedom for peace - bySalameh Nematt
On the conflict in Palestine, the role of Arab diplomacy has been reduced to that of a helpless observer.

• Backing is needed--and not just over the phone - byYossi Beilin
If the Saudi Initiative had been proposed at Camp David, the summit might have had very different results.

Between two major pulls
interview with Nabil Shaath

BI: In what ways has Arab diplomacy changed vis-à-vis the Palestinian-Israeli conflict since the start of the Palestinian uprising?

Shaath: During the intifada, Arab diplomacy found itself between two major pulls. On the one hand, the Arab public was extremely motivated by the intifada to take strong actions in its support--especially the Islamic forces in these countries--which pushed matters into the streets and put great pressure on Arab diplomats, statesmen and leaders, asking them to support the intifada in its quest to end the Israeli occupation and give the Palestinian people their rights.

This materialized in the financial aid that came at the beginning of the intifada. After the first three months and in the year 2001, the Arabs gave the Palestinian Authority and many non-governmental organizations, including Islamic organizations, about $700 million. There were the famous food baskets that probably helped avert a real famine in Palestine that resulted from the closures in the Palestinian territories and the huge drop in income. It also helped the Palestinian Authority pay salaries, without which things could have become much more difficult.

On the other hand, Palestinian diplomacy was facing an American administration, especially after September 2001, that was intent on fighting terrorism. This meant changing priorities for American diplomacy in the area. There was preparation for the war in Iraq, and then the war in Iraq itself.

BI: How did the war affect Arab diplomacy?

Shaath: Arab governments facing this situation tended to be less active in their pursuit of policy in this area, but whenever policy was formulated, it was basically behind the plan of action that eventually became the roadmap. Those [most active] were basically Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. There was some support from the North African countries, particularly Tunisia and Morocco and some support from Gulf countries, particularly the Emirates and Bahrain. Qatar, although generally in support of political solutions, because of specific competition with Saudi Arabia and because of the support that Saudi Arabia gave to the roadmap, found itself in the shadows in this instance.

The general Syrian approach mixed militancy and support for the Palestinian opposition and Palestinian Islamic movements with caution towards the peace process, in this case the peace process that included Syria and Lebanon. Syria took, at least initially, a very negative attitude towards the roadmap and refused to allow it to be supported or even discussed in Arab League meetings.

And then came the war in Iraq and all of this really changed. After the war in Iraq, Syrian opposition to the roadmap was muted and the roadmap became the basic substance of Arab diplomacy and Arab policy. Support for the roadmap included support for a ceasefire, a hudna, that all the Palestinian movements were asked to adopt. At the same time, [there was] support for greater American involvement. Obviously, financial support for the Palestinians has dropped significantly over the last nine months. Specific support for the Palestinian Islamic militant organizations has not vanished, but there has been a drop in official support.

BI: Is that because of pressure or is that because of changing sentiment?

Shaath: I think that it is mostly because of pressure from the United States and Europe. In general, Arab government and public support for the intifada as an expression of armed resistance to Israel has varied over the last six months. It dropped, but also became mostly an expression of incredulity with Israel's willingness to go through with the peace process, rather than a desire to see the Palestinians continue to fight the Israeli army. I would say that now there is general Arab support for the roadmap and the peace process.

The Syrians are not publicly supporting [the process]. They are questioning why Syria and Lebanon are not more concretely involved in the roadmap, but they are not fighting it anymore. Maybe some of the steam has gone down as these countries have seen the Palestinians themselves seeking an end to the confrontations and returning to the peace process. Although the roadmap has many, many critics, people found that the roadmap might be better than the continuing confrontations and all their implications.

BI: How serious do you think that the Americans are about getting Syria and Lebanon involved in their own "roadmap process"?

Shaath: We know that the Americans have talked to the Syrian leaders about this several times, and sometimes harshly. I have no doubt that the Americans would like to see the Syrians involved in the roadmap and supportive of the roadmap, and not giving any support to the Palestinian opposition. But I am not so sure what is the net effect of that. There is some fear in Syria about the American conquest of Iraq, but one has yet to see how this whole thing leads to changes in Syrian policy. The Syrians are probably mulling in their minds several options, but I don't think that they have made up their minds yet.

BI: There seem to be two main theories about Arab involvement in the Camp David talks. There is the version that the Arab states didn't give Palestinian President Yasser Arafat any support, thereby contributing to the collapse, and then there is another version that faults US President Bill Clinton for cutting the Arabs out of the loop. How would you tell the story?

Shaath: President Clinton, late in the Camp David discussions, went to the Arab countries and asked them to pressure Arafat to accept the Jerusalem solution that was being discussed. I was delegated by President Arafat to handle all phone calls, so I spoke to Prince Abdullah and Prince Saud and President Mubarak and the Prime Minister of Jordan and many other Arab and Muslim leaders, as well as Mr. Soldano, the state secretary of the Vatican. Therefore, I know for certain that in the last week of Camp David, Mr. Clinton tried to involve the Arab countries simply by asking them to pressure President Arafat to accept what was being offered. The whole emphasis was on the issue of Jerusalem and al Haram al Sharif [Jerusalem's holy mosque]. I don't think that there was any attempt to involve the Arab and religious leaders on the issue of territory or refugees.

First of all, this was a very late attempt to involve the Arab countries. Second, it was very embarrassing because the Arab leaders saw it as an attempt to implicate them in an issue that had very high visibility and difficult public relations import. I don't recall one Arab leader who actually called to put pressure on Arafat to accept what was being suggested on the Haram al Sharif, whether internationalizing it or giving the Muslims sovereignty above ground and Israelis sovereignty below ground. All of them talked to me, saying, "We would like to reach an agreement that would bring peace to this area," but none of them actually took the position of saying, "If that agreement means you giving up sovereignty over the Haram al Sharif, do it." None. Not even the Vatican.

BI: Do you think that was a failure on their part?

Shaath: It would have been much easier had the compromises been about territories or even about refugees, but about the holy mosque...? The refugee issue at Camp David was discussed, but we never came to any real conclusion that required basic decisions and basic sacrifices by any of the two parties. The Israelis were not ready to discuss the refugee issue. There was no clear refugee committee. There was an impromptu decision to appoint [Israeli attorney general] Elyakim Rubinstein to the committee and then people were attached from other committees to join in the Israeli side on the refugees. The real issue that broke Camp David was sovereignty over Haram al Sharif, and that was too difficult for the Arab leaders to handle.-Published 10/7/03(c)bitterlemons-international.org

Nabil Shaath is minister of foreign affairs in the Palestinian Authority.

Arab diplomacy: myth and reality
by Eric Rouleau

Arab diplomacy is a rare commodity. Understandingly so, since there is no such thing as an "Arab nation", as it is currently alleged; the 20 odd Arab states have no common foreign policy on most issues.

True, the peoples of this region share a basic language, while speaking a variety of dialects, as well as cultural and religious values, mainly Islamic but also Christian, and these affinities generate natural solidarities, especially in periods of trial and affliction. However, other factors have built up separate and distinctive identities.

Each Arab people has its own specific character, local customs and traditions; virtually all of them were part of the Ottoman Empire, but they have had different experiences since their accession to statehood in the aftermath of the First World War. Before independence, some lived either under British occupation or French colonial rule. As sovereign states, they have been submitted to different political regimes, economic and social institutions. Some are rich, many are poor, and their vested interests are often contradictory. On a personal level, an Egyptian Muslim would feel closer to a Christian Copt than, say, to a citizen of Saudi Arabia or Morocco. Palestinian refugees were not integrated in "brotherly countries" not only because they were perceived as aliens, but also because they would and could not assimilate to the peoples that harbored them.

It remains that the idea of pan-Arabism persists in the form of a romantic yearning in the masses, and as a political slogan for some populist parties. Gamal Abdel Nasser, an authentic Egyptian nationalist, adopted this self-serving objective in the 1950s and '60s, hoping he could use it as leverage for power on the international scene. When he utterly failed to achieve unity first with Syria, then with Iraq and Yemen, he hoisted the banner of "scientific socialism" and tried to use the Arab League for his struggle against "western imperialism" and its "surrogate state," Israel. However, the pan-Arab organization was and remains more a useful public forum than a tool of coordinated action. Resolutions--conceived to please public opinion in member states--are rarely implemented.

Paradoxically, Zionists also actively cultivated the myth of pan-Arabism before and after the establishment of the State of Israel. It served them to argue that Palestinians were "Arabs" who could or should be "transferred" to any other Arab state; hence the policy of expulsions during the 1948 war, followed by the persistent opposition to the return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland; the "Jordanian option" was conceived to facilitate "territorial compromise" (in practice, expansion) and to prevent the creation of a Palestinian sovereign state. Pan-Arabism was also used as a scarecrow to cement national unity facing the threatening "Arab ocean", a hostile, aggressive and powerful Goliath determined to crush a small but courageous David. "Bitakhon" (security) and "ein breira" (we have no choice) became key words in the Israeli political vocabulary.

It is difficult to believe that all Israeli decision-makers ignored the fact that the Arab League was impotent, divided and, for some of its members, favorable to the Jewish state for their own opportunist reasons. The Palestine Liberation Organization, and especially Yasir Arafat have been, from the start, unpopular among Arab rulers, who feared them for condoning revolution and terrorism. For different reasons, King Hussein in Jordan and Abdel Nasser in Egypt had good reasons to mistrust them. Again it is difficult to believe that the Israeli establishment did not know that conservative Arab leaders considered Nasser more dangerous to their regimes than the Jewish state, that some of them secretly rejoiced when Israel defeated the Egyptian leader in the Six-Day War; that, according to a press leak, the happy event was celebrated by a champagne party in one of the Arab royal courts.

Today, Arab governments believe that the stability of the Middle East is seriously threatened by the ongoing Arab-Israel conflict, which fuels anger against both the Americans and their "local lackeys". Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, to name a few, are active behind the scenes in the implementation of the roadmap. It remains that the most significant move of the Arab League since its foundation was its commitment, in March last year, to full normalization with the State of Israel following the conclusion of a peace treaty, roughly based on the achievements of Israeli and Palestinian negotiators at the conference at Taba. The wording of the resolution clearly suggests that the offer is open to further negotiations, particularly on the sensitive issue of the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees.

Unfortunately, this unique initiative of Arab diplomacy has been treated with skepticism, scorn or hostility by Ariel Sharon's government. If taken seriously, it could still lead to the end of a century long conflict.-Published 10/07/03(c)bitterlemons-international.org

Eric Rouleau, journalist and author, was French ambassador to Turkey and Tunisia. From 1955 to 1985 he was a special correspondent and editorial writer for Le Monde.

Freedom for peace
by Salameh Nematt

If the events of the last three years in the Middle East served to prove anything, it is the ineffectiveness, if not dismal failure, of Arab diplomacy in regional politics. The two major crises that hit the region in Israel/Palestine and in Iraq were allowed to escalate dramatically--one leading to a vicious cycle of violence and the other to a full-scale war--with Arab states doing little more than admonishing the parties in conflict to avoid violence and resort to negotiations.

On the conflict in Palestine, the role of Arab diplomacy has been reduced to that of a helpless observer, with no real effect on the overall turn of events. As a result, a historic opportunity for a permanent settlement was missed at Camp David nearly three years ago, resulting in the escalation of violence and the rise of hardliners and extremists on both sides of the conflict. At a time when the region needed statesmen with vision--leaders such as the late Rabin of Israel and Hussein of Jordan--it found itself sinking more and more into destruction at the hands of leaders who thought more of their own political survival than of the future of their own people.

Apart from it being a failure of current Israeli and Palestinian leaders, it is also a failure of diplomacy by the US, Israel's strategic partner, and a failure of concerned Arab states, the presumed strategic partners of the Palestinians. An entire generation of Israelis and Palestinians, and beyond, have all but lost faith in a peaceful settlement. The daily scenes of bloodshed, broadcast live into living rooms in Israeli and Arab homes, have made it much more difficult to convince people on both sides of the possibility of peace. But is there nothing that can be done to restore people's faith in peace?

It took a lot of bloodshed before Arab diplomacy acted to produce the initiative adopted at the Arab summit meeting in Beirut. A lot of blood had to be spilled before the Bush administration abandoned its hands off approach and decide to get fully engaged in an attempt to halt the festival of death. We now have the "roadmap" and a commitment from Washington to the security of Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state in 2005. The latest peace initiative is based on a series of earlier aborted initiatives, including the one adopted by the Arab summit and actively pursued by Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. But can the latest plan be implemented by an Israeli government that came to power on the back of a promise to kill all peace initiatives and impose one of its own on the Palestinians and the world? Is it possible to expect that an Israeli government, which helped destroy almost everything achieved since the 1991 Madrid peace conference, will go along with a plan that seeks to restore what was destroyed? Can a Palestinian leadership, with a sidelined elected president and an appointed prime minister, do its part so that the failure of Camp David is not repeated?

Hopes are pinned on the current US administration to fulfill its commitments towards both sides of the divide. There are also hopes, with the recent announcement of a truce, that the Palestinians, with the help and backing from Arab states, will deliver their side of the deal. But most importantly, the whole process will depend, more than anything else, on the Israeli government realizing that a military solution is no solution, that a violent occupation breeds a violent resistance, that peace cannot be achieved without justice.

Over two hundred years ago, the Arab philosopher Abdul Rahman al Kawakibi wrote that "what an oppressor fears the most is people coming to realize that freedom is more important than life." The Palestinians have already reached that point where they would sacrifice their lives for the sake of freedom. It is time that Israel let them have their freedom and their lives, so that the Israelis will have theirs.-Published 10/7/03(c)bitterlemons-international.org

Salameh Nematt is a political analyst and communications strategist. He is the former Washington bureau chief for al-Hayat international daily newspaper, and former international editor of The Daily Beast.

Backing is needed--and not just over the phone
by Yossi Beilin

As more and more books and articles are written about the collapse of the political process in 2000, the importance of the Camp David summit held that July between United States President Clinton, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, becomes increasingly apparent. One of the reasons for the failure of that summit, even if not the main one, was the fact that the leaders of the Arab countries were not willing to give their backing to Yasser Arafat to reach historic compromises at a moment which was critical for the negotiations.

Clinton believed that a round of phone calls would be sufficient for the moderate Arab leadership (mainly Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia) to bombard the Palestinian leader with calls of support and to push him into making an agreement: after all, the continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict strengthens the opposition to these regimes and threatens their stability, and there is no one quite like their leaders to demand the cessation of the conflict against the backdrop of a fair compromise!

Clinton received hesitant answers over the telephone. Some leaders told him that they could not get involved because they were not familiar with the details of the political process, and they could not take upon themselves the responsibility of putting pressure on Arafat in a direction that could ultimately be dangerous for him. Others told Clinton that they would try to talk with Arafat and with the other members of the delegation. And indeed they did. Some of the members of the Palestinian delegation told me that in these telephone conversations, the Arab leaders expressed great interest in the success of the summit and encouraged them to make an additional effort to reach understandings.

One of the Palestinians told me that in light of such enthusiasm, he asked the Arab foreign minister who had called him to repeat what he had said in the phone call--on television. There was a long silence at the other end of the line, broken by a question posed by the minister: "Are you serious?"

"Of course," replied the Palestinian negotiator. "After all, that is the meaning of support: the fact that you believe in the need to end the conflict is no news to me, but it's important that it doesn't remain a secret in the Arab street!" The minister responded: "You do understand that you're not being realistic." A short while after this encounter, the minister appeared on TV, declaring how well he understood the Palestinians for not being prepared to relinquish their principles ....

We cannot make light of the internal constraints in the Arab countries, or of any matters that are perceived by the leaders of those countries to be such constraints. The leaders weigh up the meaning of their media appearance against the dissatisfaction likely to ensue from among the opposition groups, and the conclusion of their deliberations is to refrain from giving public support to Palestinian compromises. From this point of view, the non-inclusion of the Arab leaders in the details of the political dealings is an excuse rather than a reason.

In June 2000, I was asked by Prime Minister Ehud Barak to meet with President Mubarak of Egypt, to ask him to persuade Arafat to participate in the Camp David summit. One of the things I was authorized to tell him was that Israel would agree to make do with the annexation of 13 percent of the area of the West Bank. Mubarak asked me about the solution for Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, and after hearing my reply, he told me that it was important to reach an agreement with the Palestinians on these issues as soon as possible, and that the agreement needed to be political, and not religious. Any agreement between the two parties--so he promised--would be received positively by the Arab countries.

On July 23, a national holiday in Egypt known as Revolution Day, two days before the end of the Camp David Summit, Mubarak made a trip to Saudi Arabia, where he appeared with Crown Prince Abdullah before the media and announced that the Muslim world would not accept a concession concerning sacred principles. There is no doubt that Mubarak was greatly interested in the success of the summit, and I am certain that the highly publicized meeting in Saudi Arabia was held solely because he felt that he had no other choice. But the cost was high.

The Saudi Initiative, proposed in spring 2002, was a change that truly inspired hope: a totally Arab initiative, that won the support of the Arab League, to set up normal relations with Israel once it made peace with its neighbors. If an initiative like this had been proposed at the Camp David Summit, the summit might, perhaps, have had very different results.

Today, it is patently obvious that without intensive Arab involvement, it will be extremely difficult to achieve a solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Egyptian involvement in the appointment of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) as the Palestinian prime minister, the Egyptian efforts with Hamas to achieve a ceasefire, the Sharm al Sheikh summit and the Aqaba summit--all are encouraging signs, even in these troubled times, for the peace process. If a way can be found to combine the resolute American determination to bring about an Israeli-Palestinian agreement with the willingness of the Arab countries to support such an agreement, it would contribute a great deal toward the current situation, in which there is not much chance of the parties themselves surprising the world with a peace agreement that they pieced together while the rest of the world slept....-Published 10/07/03(c)bitterlemons-international.org

Yossi Beilin, a former minister of justice, currently chairs the Geneva initiative and is president of Beilink.

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