Arab Summit and the Carrot of Palestinian
State
By Elias Akleh
04/02/07 "ICH"
-- -- Wednesday March 28th had witnessed the nineteenth Arab
Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Such summits had been a source
of anxiety for the Arab population, since they had been
accustomed to see these summits coming out with meaningless
patriotic rhetoric reflecting the status quo of Arab political
situations, more political concessions to Israel, and more
complicity to the hegemonic American policies for a “Greater
Middle East” (Greater Israel). This summit has proved to be no
different than its predecessors.
The Arab leaders were supposed to deal with political crises in
the Arab World such as occupation of Iraq, political division in
Lebanon, and the Palestinian problem. Yet, as usual, they failed
to come up with positive action plans to remedy any of these
problems.
As for the occupation of Iraq, the Saudi King Abdullah
acknowledged in his opening speech the fact that there is an
illegitimate foreign occupation of Iraq, and the existence of an
“ugly sectarianism threatening civil war”. His acknowledgement
of this very-well known fact aimed to divert any popular blame
from the Arab leaders toward foreign powers. He was trying to
deny the fact that the forces of this foreign occupation had
been launched from Arab countries, mainly from Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, Kuwait and Jordan, in 1990 and again in 2003, to murder
Iraqis and to destroy Iraq as a sovereign country. Late
conservative counts of the murdered Iraqis reached to one
million. Two other millions had evacuated their homes and ran
away to adjacent countries. The rest of the population are
facing gradual annihilation due to violence, lack of sanitary
water, shortage of medications, lack of electricity, chaos, and
a devastated economy. Despite all that destruction and
devastation the American-puppet Iraqi president Jalal Talabani
tried to paint a rosy picture of a “liberated” Iraq, who got rid
of the tyrant Saddam Hussein, established a “democratic”
government, and is rebuilding new infrastructures. Despite their
“sympathy” towards the Iraqi plight Arab leaders could not deny
that they had deserted the Iraqis to be completely manipulated
by foreign powers.
As for Lebanon, the Arab leaders had done nothing besides
acknowledging the status quo. They have not even mentioned the
Israeli aggression against Lebanon last summer leading to the
destruction of civilian infrastructures, Qana massacre, and the
spreading of the American supplied cluster bombs. The political
crisis between the American supported government and the
Hezbollah supported opposition, leading to the paralyses of the
government, was totally ignored. Lebanon was left to the
international forces to control Southern Lebanon in an attempt
to weaken Hezbollah by preventing arms shipments to them.
The main goal of the summit was to revive the five years old
Arab peace initiative offered to Israel in 2002. This peace
initiative offers Israel a comprehensive peace with full
diplomatic relationships with all Arab countries providing
Israel withdraws back to its 1976 borders, accepts the creation
of a Palestinian state, and agree to a “just solution” for the
Palestinian refugees. The initiative was immediately rejected,
in 2002, by the then Israeli Prime Minister “Ariel Sharon”, who
drove his tanks and armored vehicles into all the major
Palestinian cities.
Meeting all Arab peace initiatives with more state terrorism has
been a typical Israeli response. Accepting any permanent peace
agreement with the Arabs would put a stop to Israel’s expansive
ambitions and would end the “Greater Israel” dream. Arab
leaders’ anticipation of Israel’s rejection was reflected in the
comments by Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi Foreign minister,
stating that the Israeli rejection was not surprising. “This has
always been their approach. Whenever the Arabs come up with
resolutions … offering peace, they (the Israelis) reject them
categorically” he said.
Wanting to keep the occupied land and their illegal colonies
Israel opposes the return to 1967 borders, the establishment of
a Palestinian state with Arab East Jerusalem as its capitol, and
the right of return for the Palestinian refugees to their homes
inside Israel.
One wonders why would the Arab leaders revive their peace
initiative since they know very well Israel’s response to it.
Some attributed this to what they think is the American failure
in Iraq. They think that the American administration needs
Arab’s help in order to withdraw honorably from Iraq. They
believe that Americans have a change in foreign policies due to
the Democratic Party “taking over” the Congress. Although the
Democrats had called for withdrawal from Iraq, a proposal they
know very well would be vetoed by President Bush, they are in
fact a different mask to American corporatocracy that controls
both parties. Both the Republicans and the Democrats serve the
interests of oil companies and military industrial complex. They
do not serve the interests of the people. Both parties have
placed the Israeli interests over the American interests.
Some Arab leaders had stated that President Bush has re-affirmed
his commitment to the two state solution to end the Arab/Israeli
conflict, and that he is applying some pressure on Israel,
through his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to accept the
peace initiative. They cited Rice’s trips to the region meeting
both Israelis and Arabs to encourage them to revive the peace
treaty. Arab leaders pointed to the alleged “weakness” of the
Israeli government, after its defeat by Hezbollah last summer,
and to Bush’s low popularity and the defeat of his party by the
Democrats, and think that both are now ready to accept and to
support the peace initiative. Those leaders had built the
illusion that European Union would adopt the peace initiative,
and that they would apply pressure on Israel to accept it.
European pressure on Israel, who had always broke international
laws and violated UN resolutions, had always failed to come up
with any positive results. Arabs should have listened to the
speech given by the democratic Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the
American House of Representatives, to the Israeli Knesset last
weekend asserting, one more time, the American unconditional
support to Israel. With such support what kind of pressure would
force Israelis to accept a treaty they had violently rejected in
the past?
Many Arab leaders are trying to reflect to their already
agitated populations that they are trying to unite under the
leadership of Saudi Arabia to make their own political decisions
and to stop any foreign interference in the Arab World. They
claimed they are motivated to end the Palestinian suffering by
ending the financial and economic blockade against them through
the only choice they have; a peace initiative that recognizes
Israel’s right to exist on 78% of Palestine proper, and
substitutes Palestinian refugees’ right of return to what they
called a “just solution” to the refugee problem.
These leaders are trying to divert the attention of their people
away from the fact that many Arab countries had been willing
contributors to this financial blockade in order to topple the
democratically elected Hamas government. They wanted to mislead
the people into believing that Palestine could not be regained
since all the Arab armies combined are no match for the
“undefeated” Israeli army. History shows that this “undefeated”
Israeli army had been defeated many times; in March 1968 battle
of Karamah against Palestinian and Jordanian resistance, in
October 1973 against Egyptian army, in May 2000 in Lebanon by
Hezbollah forces, in July 2006 in Lebanon again by Hezbollah,
and in Palestine failing to defeat Palestinian resistance. These
defeats, except October 1973, were accomplished mainly by
resistance groups rather than by formal armies.
The peace initiative and the false hope of ending the
Arab/Israeli conflict through the two states solution are just a
political trick against Arabs to introduce the false hope that
peace with Israel, Arab’s mortal enemy, is now possible through
the present American administration, providing the Arab
countries do not oppose the American policies in the region
especially its aggression against Iran. US and Israel are
planning to hit Iran shortly, and they want to neutralize any
Arab opposition to US using Arab Gulf States as its launching
pads, and to prevent any retaliation against Israel. The carrot
of establishing a Palestinian state had been successfully used
to neutralize Arab opposition to the American aggression in the
region in 1990 Gulf War and in 2003 invasion of Iraq when some
Arab countries were used as launching pads for the American
forces to invade Iraq.
This carrot is being used now, through the revival of the peace
initiative, to allow the use of Arab Gulf states again as
launching pads for the American forces to attack Iran. Nuclear
“Shiite” Iran had already been portrayed as greater threat to
“Sunni” Gulf States than Israel. The presence of two American
nuclear aircraft carriers with their accompanying military
vessels in the Arabian Gulf is not there for mere diplomatic
resolution to the Iranian nuclear crisis. Dr. Elias Akleh
is an Arab writer of Palestinian descent, born in the town of
Beit-Jala. Currently he lives in the US.
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