Missing A Chance to End the War?: The Saudi Peace Initiative, or

How I Won Sharon Supporters Over to Peace Now

Gidon D. Remba

October 9, 2002

Here is a letter I've sent to several right-wing Israeli and American Jewish friends, who support Sharon. They are deeply skeptical of Palestinian and Arab intentions and trustworthiness, and of Peace Now's approach. They don't believe the Saudis or Palestinians are willing to accept compromises on Jerusalem, borders and refugees. But one has already written me back: "I'm just about convinced by your letter and the accompanying articles that you and Peace Now are right--we need to try. We need to take up and seriously explore the opportunity created by the Saudi-Arab League peace initiative." Here's how I persuaded her.

Saudi government officials are willing to accept Israeli sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and the Western Wall, and accept border modifications in the West Bank which would allow Israel to annex some settlement blocs, along the lines of the Taba proposal. This emerges from a report by Henry Siegman in the New York Times, following his meeting with Saudi officials. In the spring of 2002, an opportunity existed for Israel, the Palestinians and most Arab states to initiate a new peace process and end the violence, following the publication of the Saudi peace plan. That plan stimulated a round of diplomacy between the Bush Administration and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, on the eve of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's June visit to the White House. In early June, the New York Times reported on a new strategy which was beginning to take shape in the Bush Administration–a strategy which had promise, but which the Bush Administration subsequently abandoned. Because this approach still has merit, it is worth examining now.

The claim that the Saudis will not accept anything but a return by Israel to unmodified 1967 borders with no compromise on Jerusalem or the refugees is not borne out by these reports. If the US took the plunge and pushed a serious comprehensive peace initiative, there are indications that the Saudis and other Arab states would be willing to accept a compromise along the lines of Taba and the Clinton Plan, and sign a peace treaty with Israel on such terms. There's an opportunity here; the US and Israel should attempt to exploit it and see what the US-allied Arab states are actually willing to do in light of these statements. And the way to do that is to get peace talks going which involve those Arab states and Israel, and use the promise of those peace talks, along with Arab and US pressure on Arafat and CIA reorganization of the PA's security forces, to get the PA to take serious steps to fight terror and to enforce a cease-fire as the conference approaches. One can't expect successful peace talks if the Palestinians are not simultaneously doing their part to enforce a truce. But one can't expect them to take the necessary steps to enforce a truce, without making it clear that they will have some political gains to show for those efforts and for the results of stopping attacks on Israel. Hence the need for moving forward with a peace conference in which the US should endorse an outline for peace along the lines of the Saudi and Taba proposals, to be used as the basis for negotiation. It should be clear that this proposal does not involve Israel pursuing peace talks under fire. A truce would be a pre-condition for the opening of the peace conference, and the promise of a new US-backed peace summit, involving the Saudis and other willing Arab states, could be used as leverage to provide moderate Palestinians the cover they need to crack down on Hamas and other Palestinian militants.

You know what I'd like to see? First, let's try this and see if we can reach a cease-fire, and a political breakthrough, this way. If we can’t, the peace summit would be rescheduled, held out as a carrot to the Palestinians to put an end to their war against Israel, a truce which would become permanent with the success of the summit. Second, if the cease-fire takes hold under these conditions, Israelis will feel more secure again. Third, after the cease-fire has held for a while, and the peace talks progress either to an interim agreement under Sharon, or to an impasse–because Sharon won't go as far as necessary to enable a full agreement to be reached–then I'd like to see the next election in Israel. The main issue which will face the Israeli public at the polls will be how to respond to the opportunity of the new peace initiative, or the new final status talks that would follow an interim accord. With the violence having abated, and an opportunity to reach an agreement which the Palestinians, Saudis and other Arab states would sign, I suspect the Likud would lose the election, contrary to present electoral trends. To win, the Likud needs a security crisis, which is what we have now. As soon as we reach a sustained cease-fire and a real opening for renewing peace talks with the Arab world and the Palestinians, the national unity government will break up, and the right will lose its appeal to many Israeli voters (except of course for the right-wing ideological die-hards, who make up about 25%-35% of the population). Then perhaps we'd have a national unity government consisting of Likud moderates, Labor and other center-Left parties, or a Labor-center-left coalition. Either way, Israel will be better off.

You doubt this will work? OK, let's find out! To find out we have to try it. The politics of the right are predicated on refusing every opportunity to try serious diplomacy–both incentives and pressure, the carrot and the stick–to end the violence against Israel. Sharon's combination of escalating military force and minimal political incentives will not bring about a willingness on the Palestinian side to do what it takes to enforce a truce and enter into serious political talks. That's why I believe his approach is great for keeping Israel at war with the Palestinians for a long time to come, keeping the security crisis going indefinitely. This ensures that the right-wing gets to see a self-fulfilling prophecy in which they can perpetually cite all the nasty things Palestinians say and do as proof of why we should not attempt any other approach to dealing with them other than continuing the war.

In an important essay in the Jerusalem Post, former Mossad official and Israeli Foreign Ministry Director David Kimche compares the current situation under Sharon to former Israeli Prime Minister’s Golda Meir’s failure to pursue the Jarring initiative in 1971 in which Egypt stated that in exchange for return of the Sinai, "Egypt will be ready to enter into a peace agreement with Israel containing all the aforementioned obligations as provided for in Security Council Resolution 242" ("Golda's Mistake," March 4, 2002). Golda rejected the offer out of hand--the way the right now rejects the Saudi proposal out of hand–Egypt embarked on preparations for the Yom Kippur War, and a few years later got the very same territory back under a peace agreement with Israel which might have been possible in 1971, sparing thousands of Israeli lives. Of course, we never found out whether such a peace treaty was possible in 1971 because Golda refused to seriously pursue the diplomatic opening. I can only hope that history does not repeat itself for Israel.

The three articles by Henry Siegman, a New York Times reporter on the new diplomacy, and David Kimche follow. The opening has since past, the Bush Administration chose a different route–Sharon’s–but this alternative strategy remains viable. It can be revived at any time if there is the will to do so. It still offers the best hope for ending the Palestinian-Israeli war–with or without Arafat.

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Will Israel Take a Chance? By HENRY SIEGMAN

Will Israel Take a Chance?

By HENRY SIEGMAN

THE NEW YORK TIMES, Feb 21, 2002

Henry Siegman is Senior Fellow on the Middle East and Director of the U.S./Middle East Project at the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to that, Mr. Siegman was Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress for 15 years.

TEL AVIV -- The failure of Arab countries to support the Palestinian struggle for statehood by declaring their readiness to establish normal relations with Israel - if a peace agreement were reached - has long been a troubling feature of the Israeli-Arab conflict. That is why the statement by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah reported by Thomas Friedman on Sunday in The New York Times is of such great importance. The crown prince confirmed that his country is, indeed, prepared to normalize relations with Israel if it were to sign a peace accord with the Palestinians. The crown prince's statement will be greeted with skepticism in some quarters, where it will be seen as an effort to burnish Saudi Arabia's image in the United States. But no one who has heard him express his pain over the humiliation and suffering of the Palestinians can doubt the genuineness of his feelings on this subject - something one would be hard-pressed to say about other Arab leaders.

In a conversation with Crown Prince Abdullah two years ago, I asked him how Arab countries can demand that Israel assume the risk of yielding the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians when the Arab nations are unprepared to take the lesser risk of recognizing Israel. He replied that if Israel were to conclude a peace treaty with the Palestinians that is seen as just, Saudi Arabia would have no problem establishing normal ties with Israel. He also warned that if a political settlement is not reached, the conflict may assume dangerous religious dimensions. If that were to happen, he said, the conflict would become irresolvable, with catastrophic consequences for the stability of the entire region.

Remarkably, this latest development seems to have been greeted with a yawn by the Israeli government. And while Washington has welcomed the crown prince's initiative, it has yet to indicate how, or even whether, it will affect the Bush administration's current policy of giving free rein to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel in his dealings with the Palestinians, short of assassinating Yasir Arafat.

Perhaps there are two reasons for this lack of response. First, Crown Prince Abdullah's announcement was made to an American journalist, not to the Arab world. Second, his conditions for normalization with Israel seemed to require a complete return to Israel's pre-1967 borders and an agreement that all of East Jerusalem would serve as the capital of the new Palestinian state, conditions that leave little room for compromise. But the day after the appearance of Mr. Friedman's report, the Saudi government itself released the same information, which was then carried broadly by the Saudi and Arab media. And on Tuesday, Saudi officials told me that normalization of relations with Israel does not preclude Israeli sovereignty over the Western Wall in the Old City and over Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. They also indicated that Saudi Arabia would not object to the transfer of small areas of the West Bank to Israel in return for qualitatively and quantitatively comparable territory to be transferred by Israel to the Palestinians, provided such an exchange is the result of a freely negotiated compromise.

With these qualifications, Crown Prince Abdullah's statement represents a dramatic change in Saudi Arabia's position toward Israel and offers a new basis for renewed diplomatic activity. Normalizing relations with Israel's Arab neighbors has always been seen by Israeli governments on both the left and the right as crucial to Israel's overall security. One would therefore have expected the Israeli government to use this long hoped-for development to renew a diplomatic dialogue with the Palestinians. But Mr. Sharon and his government have given no indication that they have any such intention. If this lack of interest is confirmed in the coming days, it will prove what should have been evident all along - that the Sharon government seeks pretexts to avoid a political process, not ways to renew it. The targeted assassinations and reprisals, including the destruction of Palestinian homes in refugee camps, during the three-week period in which Yasir Arafat succeeded in lowering the violence dramatically, seemed clearly intended to provoke retaliations from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in order to avoid being cornered into political negotiations. Mr. Sharon's refusal to take any notice of the new Saudi position should finally bring home to President Bush and his advisers that Mr. Sharon's insistence that there be no negotiations until all Palestinian violence ceases can only be an excuse to hold onto the West Bank and Gaza.

In response to the Saudi initiative, Washington should tell Mr. Arafat that if he acts to reduce violence as he did in late December, the United States will oppose Israeli provocations, call for a halt to further settlement activity and press for a return to final-status negotiations without the unattainable conditions imposed by Mr. Sharon. Such a stance by Washington, against the background of new prospects for normal relations between Israel and most of the Arab world now opened up by Crown Prince Abdullah, would either move Mr. Sharon and his government to change their current policy or reinvigorate political demand in Israel for a government that is prepared to return to serious peace negotiations.

Henry Siegman is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

June 2, 2002

Will Arab Leaders Lead?

By PATRICK E. TYLER

NEW YORK TIMES

CAIRO - THE Arab nation, the collective term for the region that stretches from Casablanca to Baghdad, has never been much of a partner in the Middle East peace process. Now, on the eve of a critical visit to Washington by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, it seems possible that this is about to change.

After the Six Day War in 1967, when Israel seized Arab lands and said it would trade them for peace, the leaders of the Arab nation gathered in Khartoum and responded with three no's: no peace with Israel, no negotiation with Israel, no recognition of Israel.

A decade later, when the late Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat made a separate peace with Israel, the Arab nation ostracized Egypt from its leadership councils. Mr. Sadat was assassinated by Islamic extremists two years later.

Even after the Oslo accords of 1993 set a path toward final settlement between Israelis and Palestinians, the handful of Arab leaders who favored upgrading relations with Israel remained constantly on the defensive in front of the anti-Israeli passions at play in the larger Arab nation, as they do today.

But in the wake of the worst violence and destruction the Holy Land has witnessed in decades, the Arab nation is taking its first steps toward becoming a visible and collective partner for peace.

The concept began to take shape out of the confrontation in Crawford, Tex., a month ago between President Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Mr. Bush's challenge to the Arab leaders has come down to this: If he is to put his presidency on the line by wading into a contentious Middle East peace process, the Arab leaders will have to be in the room from start to finish to guarantee the Arab end of the bargain.

Instead of retreating to Khartoum, instead of playing to every whim of indignation in the Arab street, the Arab leaders will have to lead - to apply pressure on Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, as Mr. Bush applies it on Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister. And that implies that they can no longer criticize from a distance, or run for cover from the anger of Islamic conservatives; instead, they will have to take the heat for the compromises that Mr. Arafat will have to make on Jerusalem, on borders for a Palestinian state and on refugees' right of return.

Finally, they will have to guarantee Mr. Arafat's credibility and the transparency of the Palestinian Authority and the new Palestinian state.

No summit of Arab leaders has ever contemplated such a role, and yet it is now being discussed here, in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Morocco, the countries delegated by the Arab summit in Beirut this spring to formally offer a new Middle East peace initiative to Israel.

Mr. Mubarak's arrival in Washington this week will be an important advance - if he steps up to Mr. Bush's challenge to the region. His advisers indicate that he will, though they wonder how Washington intends to proceed.

"The Arab position is definitely evolving," said an adviser to President Mubarak on Friday, "and we are headed toward a higher plateau of partnership" - provided the Bush administration comes forward with a vision for a peace settlement and begins to lay out the steps to achieve it.

MR. MUBARAK was not at Crawford, and many analysts believe he has been sulking ever since Prince Abdullah stole the diplomatic limelight this spring with his simple proposal for peace - that the Arab states normalize relations with Israel in exchange for the return of Arab lands seized in 1967 and the creation of a Palestinian state.

That proposal was not only adopted by the Arab summit that met in Beirut; it was immediately embraced by the Bush administration and elicited qualified expressions of interest from Mr. Sharon even as Israeli-Palestinian violence was exploding intoits worst spasm.

At first, the proposal was seen by the Egyptians as old sand poured into a new hourglass. But as one of Mr. Mubarak's aides said on Friday, "The Saudi initiative has now been turned into an Arab initiative." If Mr. Mubarak has been keeping a low profile, it is because Mr. Bush has not clearly signaled how he will proceed.

Everyone in Mr. Mubarak's government seems to be aware that debates are raging among Mr. Bush's top advisers over the future of Mr. Arafat and whether Mr. Bush should take the risk of laying out an American vision for peace. Advocates within the administration argue that if such an effort were joined by the United Nations, Russia, the European Union and the Arab leaders, it could bring the Israelis and the Palestinians back to a negotiating table from which they could not easily escape without concluding a deal.

There are plenty of skeptics about whether such an enterprise is possible. Some see Mr. Sharon as the immovable obstacle. Some say the Arabs cannot deliver Mr. Arafat, or won't. Frustration levels are extremely high and the level of violence is creeping up again.

Some skeptics are already warning that the Arab leaders can't be relied on, that they will not deliver when the going gets tough on the Arab street. And the idea that the moderate Arabs can keep hard-liners like Syria, Libya and Iraq on board for tough negotiations over Islam's holy sites in Jerusalem boggles some minds.

But there is also the argument here that the Arab leaders are being driven to take risks by their people's demands, not because the institutions of democracy are sendingthem feedback - such institutions scarcely exist - but because satellite television and the Internet have so magnified discontent with the status quo.

In this environment, Mr. Bush has invited Mr. Mubarak to Camp David in order to continue the juggernaut that began with Prince Abdullah.

In the weeks after the bargain was struck at Crawford, it has come to mean that America is willing to take new risks for peace in the Middle East - as long as the moderate Arab leaders get on board to share the workload, the risks and whatever credit or blame there may be in front of the globe's one billion Muslims.

From Crawford, Prince Abdullah flew off to Sharm el-Sheikh, on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, and there, along with Mr. Mubarak and the leaders of Syria and Jordan, summoned the top aides of Mr. Arafat. They hammered out the list of political and security reforms that Mr. Arafat is now saying he is willing to undertake to bring an end to terrorism and create transparent and democratic institutions.

That list was carried back to Washington, along with a list of Arab expectations for Israeli actions to de-escalate the violence. Now the White House and State Department are in a ferment of planning, in anticipation of Mr. Bush's decision on whether to move toward a genuine peace process sometime this summer.

THE Beirut summit showed that Abdullah's proposal has the backing of the Arab nation - but so far it has been PrinceAbdullah out front, with the leadership of the Arab nation quite distant.

For Americans accustomed to the familiar images of English-speaking Arab leaders like the late Mr. Sadat, the return of Mr. Mubarak to a prominent role in the peace process would certainly be welcome. Even the Saudis, more exposed than they have ever been, seem anxious for Mr. Mubarak's return to center stage this week in Washington.

"For Saudi Arabia," said one diplomat in the region, "the more important and the more respectful Egypt's role becomes, the better."

Golda's Mistake

David Kimche

The Jerusalem Post

March 4, 2002

(March 4) - On February 14, 1971 a UN go-between named Gunnar Jarring delivered a message from the Egyptian Government to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem which caused a flurry of excitement among its recipients. The message was simple and clear: "Egypt will be ready to enter into a peace agreement with Israel containing all the aforementioned obligations as provided for in Security Council Resolution 242". This was the first time that peace with Israel had been formally put on the agenda as a possibility, hence the excitement. It was clear to the Foreign Ministry officials that the Egyptian move was caused primarily by their desire to win back Sinai to Egyptian sovereignty. Gideon Rafael, the Director-General, penned a positive answer and offered to start immediate negotiations.

Rafael's answer was never sent. The Prime Minister, seething with rage, tore it up, relieved the Foreign Ministry of further contacts with Gunnar Jarring, and sent a strong message back to the Egyptians rejecting their proposal, with a blunt "Israel will not withdraw to the pre-5 June 1967

lines". With Golda Meir's negative answer in their pockets, the Egyptians began the count-down to the Yom Kippur war in which some two thousand Israeli soldiers lost their lives.

We now have a similar message, delivered this time from Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah via Tom Friedman, the silver-penned journalist of the New York Times.

Is it serious? Can it be compared to the 1971 offer by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat that we rejected out of hand? Proposals of this kind can either be killed at birth, which is what Golda Meir did to the Egyptian offer, or they can take on a life of their own, fed and nurtured by caring hands, American and European hands for example. All the signs go to show that this is what may well happen to the Saudi initiative.

For all those who are seeking a way out of the present impasse, the Saudi proposal - of fully normalized relations with the Arab world in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries - has been received like manna from heaven, especially after the Saudis told an American-Jewish visitor, Henry Siegman, that they would not be averse to flexibility with regard to

the boundaries and to the holy sites in Jerusalem. In a situation in which the policy of the government is to have no policy other than the use of force, and at a time when the spiral of violence has reached new heights in the last few days, the Saudi initiative has supplied that rarest of commodities in this part of the world, a ray of hope. The magic word, peace, long buried under the weight of the intifada, has been resuscitated.

The most hated word in the Arab political lexicon, normalization, has been uttered, by the most conservative of all Arab regimes. As for the demand for a return to the 1967 boundaries, it has long been accepted in the US and Europe - and among a growing number of Israelis - that no peace will ever be possible unless the green line becomes the eventual frontier between two

independent states, with adjustments of the line to allow for the inclusion into Israel of concentrations of settlements.

The government of Israel has not rejected the proposal, yet. [Sharon proved true to form, and failed to pusue it subsequently–GDR.] It must, however, be evident that this government will not accept a formula which is conspicuously similar to the proposal made by former US president Bill Clinton in the sunset of his term of office, and which our previous government had accepted. Ariel Sharon is much more imaginative than Golda Meir was, and he can, without difficulty, find ways of stifling the initiative without seeming to reject it outright.

So, on the face of it, it would seem that Crown Prince Abdullah's enterprising venture into the realms of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will turn out to be a mere passing episode. Yet this is not necessarily so. There are signs of growing restlessness in the Israeli street. The week-end polls show that the government's popularity has plummeted, that a growing number of Israelis would be happy to see us leave the occupied territories. According to a Ma'ariv poll, 41 percent are in favor of the Saudi initiative even before it has been formally put on the table! If it is adopted by the

Arab League [as it was], and if it receives massive backing of Europe and the US [which it didn’t], the Saudi initiative could fill the political vacuum that a lack of a peace policy has created in Israel.

If, as expected, the government will prevaricate and try to kill the initiative, the Labor ministers will then be unable to find more excuses for staying in the government. They will have to leave or face political extinction. If they do leave, the count-down will begin for the next elections in which the Saudi initiative could become the rallying-cry for those who are no longer willing to accept the sort of peace and security that has been offered to the Israeli public by the present government.

These are still the opening gambits of the new initiative. It could be just a public relations venture on the part of the Saudis aimed at pleasing the Americans. It could fizzle out at the Arab League meeting, or the initiative could be altered in such a manner as to make it reprehensible to all Israelis, by, for example, adding conditions involving the right of return of refugees [it did not]. However, once out, the jinn cannot easily be put back into the bottle. A new offer has been put on the table. We should not ignore it. Rather we should encourage it to grow and blossom.

Let us not forget the lesson of Golda Meir's rejection of the Gunnar Jarring message. The Egyptians eventually got what they wanted, but we had to pay heavily for that rejection. The next time round the price could be higher.

Copyright 2002 by Chicago Peace Now and Gidon D. Remba

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