The Audacity Of Peace In The Middle East

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It appears President-elect Obama is flirting with the 2002 pan-Arab peace plan as a way to address the stalemate in the Middle East.

Back in 2002, When I was listening to the Arab peace plan as proposed by the King of Saudi Arabia, I remember having mixed feelings. The plan, branded as “historic”, proposed peace with Israel in return for a return to the 1967 borders. The plan sounded too much like something the Arabs would say to deflect accusations of inaction, or perhaps a way of putting the huge ball in Israel’s court to offload the burden of peacemaking on the rest of the world. I never really took it seriously.

But on the other hand, the plan makes sense and in my opinion is the only way to make a historic step forward. The problem is that it steps on too many toes: The Iranians (and their proxies) won’t sit idly by and watch their pretext to armed-resistance go away. The Syrians won’t just let go of their regional influence (which is based on its ability to make trouble), and The Israeli religious right won’t just “allow” Jerusalem to be divided and the Golan to break free.

As many observers have noted, peace in the Middle East can only move forward when a combination of factors take place simultaneously:

1- A committed American administration willing to bang heads together
2- An Israeli leadership with a mandate and willingness for peace,
3- A weakened “axis of evil”.

If this article is correct, we might have all the three happening at the same time: Mr. Obama would be willing to take the dive, Tsivi Livni -if with any luck she gets elected- supports the plan, Iran is hurting from low oil prices and Russia (which has taken to propping up Syria and Iran to spite Bush’s America) would be brought in with a quid-pro-quo involving an American concession regarding the missiles shield in Eastern Europe in return for more pressure on Iran and Syria.

As with many other plans by Mr. Obama, the one involving peace in the Middle East requires a healthy dose of “hope”.

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Discussion

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Ehud Barak, Israel’s PM in 2000 was willing to give a part of jerusalem to the palestinians in exchange for a comprehensive peace in the region. Unfortunately, it was shot down by Arafat and the arabs at the time as not being enough! I think there is a lot of hypocrisy going on among all the parties to this conflict and perhaps the only approach at this point is to accept the realities on the ground, and work to move things forward a small step at a time, by trying to reach some kind of “basic” agreement that everyone can accept and which would lay the framework for further talks. The dreams of a comprehensive peace has proven to be recipes for more failures.

Posted by VOR | November 17, 2008, 3:18 am
Hello Mustapha, This is my first of many posts on your blog. I hope to read more of your insights in the coming months.

Well let me just say that I agree with your call for hope in the regions peace process. As long as we live we must strive towards solutions.

Having said that I must warn you that I have written an article analyzing the 3 different obstacles currently in the path of a comprehensive peace process (namely Hamas-Fatah neotiations, Israeli elections and the new US administration’s policy in the ME)and recent developments in all 3 do not look promising. http://www.strategicforesight.com/is_no_news_2009.htm

As for the ‘axis of evil’ I think that recent developments in Iran namely: progress in developing nuclear enriched uranium and the prices of oil dropping by almost 2/3rds show that the situation can either escalate or de-escalate. Let’s hope for the best.

Posted by Gitanjali | November 21, 2008, 9:29 am
Hello Mustapha!
Allow me to add one more factor we need for successful Middle East peace prosses – we alsow need a palestinian leadership with a mandat to make peace. Now we have a lot of palestinian factions with different seeing and understanding of this.
We need strong leaders with 100% mandat for peacemaking. I think that Barak propasals (if there were any) were last minute try to solve the inner problems of his goverment and it was hard to expect that someone take them seriously.

Posted by aruf | December 13, 2008, 7:29 pm
Mustapha
when are you gonna blog back?

Posted by moe | December 17, 2008, 1:19 am

Hello, my name is Mustapha and I blog in The Beirut Spring about Lebanese society and politics. I started in February 2005 after the killing of P.M. Rafik Hariri.