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COMMENTARY
February 20, 2002
Slippery slopes
Failure is the great liberator -- you may quote me on that -- and among the more exciting aspects of the present "war against terror" is the opportunity it presents the U.S. and its allies to fail in new ways and thus fix arrangements that would have stayed in place until they caused worse catastrophes. An example is the "peace process" between Israel and "Palestine" which has been soldiering patiently towards Armageddon down the road indicated by the Madrid peace conference in 1991 and Oslo declaration of 1993. These together with the more recent "Mitchell Plan" or plans named for the U.S. senator George J. Mitchell the veteran peace negotiator whose motto might be Bold action through infinitesimally tiny steps, remain the official rut no one can climb out of. They assumed peace could be achieved incrementally with Israel surrendering conquered land gradually returning to something like its 1967 borders in an atmosphere of constantly increasing Palestinian cooperation and goodwill. It was a dead end from the beginning and it is only under the pressure of events that the Bush administration and even some European ones have begun to see why it could never work. It could only work if both parties had a Western mindset. This "peace process" -- like any form of mutual disarmament -- made and still makes good sense to us because we're all Western rationalists. Unfortunately only one party to the agreement understood the concept of "land for peace" in this Western sense. Israel alone intended to play by the rules. But as Israel retreated the pressure of Intifada and terrorism was actually stepped up. To Yasser Arafat and more generally it must be said to the traditionalist Arab mind retreat is a confession of weakness and an encouragement to move in for the kill. The ultimate ambition on the Palestinian side remains not peace but Israel's annihilation. The last example of "land for peace" was Israel's unilateral withdrawal in May 2000 from south Lebanon. Western commentators simply assumed this would remove the cause of violence on Israel's northern border. Instead it exacerbated the problem. Hezbollah terrorists quickly occupied the lands that were ceded with the active participation of Syria and increased arms shipments from Iran. And now Israel's northern settlements are under worse bombardment than what drove Israel to march into Lebanon in the first place. Moreover -- and this is the whole point -- Israel's retreat from Lebanon has become a rallying cry for the Palestinian Authority's propagandists. Their argument is See! We drove the Jews out of Lebanon! A few more suicide bombs and we'll drive them out of here! There are many people still in the West who believe that if Israel would only retreat to its 1967 borders there would be peace. There are no longer any Israelis who believe this. For even Israeli pacifists are now inclined to admit that when this happens pigs will also fly. The whole diplomatic establishment of the U.S. and Europe has a vested interest in "the Oslo process" having spent so many years getting nowhere with it. The Arab world likewise long since agreed to the idea that Israel is compelled by international agreements to retreat and retreat eventually into the Mediterranean Sea. The "Arab street" has been told from Nablus to Baghdad to Algiers to Sana that this is the meaning of the "Oslo process". (The "Persian street" has its own opinions and has begun to realize that Israel might even be an ally in its heartfelt desire to be rid of the ayatollahs.) But the rulers of Egypt Jordan Saudi Arabia and several other peaceful Arab states (I think we could forget about the word "moderate") and the powers in the Bush administration outside the State Department know that the "Oslo process" is dead. A vacuum exists which nature abhors. Something must fill it. And this is where it gets interesting. A proposal is emerging that will fill the vacuum one which though outwardly naive has the great virtue that it seems to bypass Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority. The odd thing about this proposal is that it comes simultaneously from Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and a columnist in the New York Times. This latter is Thomas Friedman who has become a Middle Eastern power in his own right. A graduate of the Times' Arab regional bureaux Mr. Friedman enjoys a peculiar authority at home in the States because he explains the Middle East in very simple ways; plus a kind of love/hate relationship with major Arab leaders because more than any prominent unofficial American he has their number. He knows their vanities (and they know his). The idea is that all 22 members of the Arab League should present an unambiguous peace proposal to Israel at their Beirut summit in late March. The deal would be Israel withdraws to the lines of June 4 1967 in accord with U.N. resolution 242 allowing the establishment of a Palestinian state. In return all sovereign Arab states grant Israel full diplomatic relations normalized trade and security guarantees. It would seem that Mr. Friedman picked this proposal out of the air -- where it was being discussed in whispers by such as the kings of Jordan and Morocco. Last week in Saudi Arabia invited to a dinner by Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud himself Mr. Friedman was told that the de facto ruler was intending to make exactly this proposal at the Arab summit until he was prevented by his outrage at the recent behaviour of Israel's Ariel Sharon. (But hey it's always something.) My impression is the vacuum is being filled -- that for practical purposes this new boilerplate for peace between Israel and the Palestinians is already on the table. It looks so deliciously simple and plausible. It is at least two bricks short of a load. It demands that Israel surrender control over and even access to the Jewish Quarter and Wailing Wall in old Jerusalem and the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives facing the Old City -- among her primary national symbols. All these were desecrated before 1967 under Arab rule. And the offer of Arab "security guarantees" is meaningless. Neither Saudi Arabia nor Egypt nor Jordan is in a position to prevent terrorists stepping up their attacks on what's left of Israel by Iran and Iraq through Syria Lebanon and Palestine itself. For these latter an Israeli agreement would be interpreted simply as another retreat and a reason to escalate the "fight to the finish". It is a new kind of slippery slope for Israel to slide down too reminiscent of the chutes at Auschwitz. On the other hand it could serve in the future. For absent Iraq and Iran the two-facedness of Syria and their terrorist proxies in Lebanon Gaza and the West Bank the plan seems positively worth discussing. Step one is still for the Bush administration to make these latter regimes disappear. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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