While it has no such aims or interest, Israel continues to pretend -- and hoodwink some -- that if only a few conditions here and there were different, it could secure peace for the whole region, writes Hassan Nafaa* Israel is still in possession of large areas of the Arab land it conquered during the 1967 War. Arab policies towards Israel have radically changed since the war. But the Arab world has never been in a worse condition than it is today. Therefore it is perhaps useful to reassess the policies that brought about this sorry state of affairs. Recently, Shimon Peres admitted that Israel committed errors that impacted negatively on the entire region. Israel, he said, failed to use its victory to hold peace agreements with Arab countries at a time when Palestinian land was still under Egyptian and Jordanian control. Had it done so, Peres argued, many wars would have been avoided. Israel's policy of settlements was also wrong, Peres said, although he admitted to have played some role in shaping this policy. Peres also mentioned two other things: Israel waged the 1967 War for fear of imminent attack by Arab countries; and Israel didn't plan to occupy new land, but ended up doing so as a result of the war. Some may see such statements as a sign of a sudden awakening of conscience, or perhaps an indication that the Israelis are willing to admit the errors of the past and set things right in the future. But such a conclusion would be just as hasty as unlikely. In my opinion, Peres's statements contain half-truths and contradictions in a manner that reflects the state of confusion Israel has been going through since it lost last summer's war to Hizbullah and failed to impose a settlement according to its own terms on the Palestinians. First of all, it is not true that Israel was afraid of attack by Arab countries, because Israel knew that those countries were not going to start a war for which they were so ill prepared. Secondly, Israel knew that it would achieve an easy victory in the war because all Arab armies were infiltrated, inept, and generally unfit for war. It wasn't by coincidence that Israel waged its sweeping aerial attack on all Egyptian airports at a time when all our air defences were paralysed because the plane of Field Marshal Abdel-Hakim Amer was in the air. Thirdly, it is not true that Israel didn't intend to occupy new land, because everything in its history indicates the exact opposite. Israel never wastes a chance to occupy neighbouring Arab land. Israel has never given up land unless forced to or compensated in full and in advance. Suffice it to say here that Israel annexed Sinai after occupying it in 1956 and didn't withdraw until it came under intensive US and international pressure, and only after obtaining shipping access in the Gulf of Aqaba. Furthermore, it is hard to accept the argument that reaching peace agreements with Arab countries was easier before the emergence of the Palestine Liberation Organisation as an active player. The problem was never about who negotiated, but rather the solutions on offer. Let's keep in mind that immediately after the 1967 War, Israel decided to annex East Jerusalem and declare the unified city as its eternal capital. No Arab leader could possibly sign a peace agreement with Israel that doesn't bring East Jerusalem, especially Al-Aqsa Mosque, under full Arab sovereignty. So despite what Peres implies, the building of settlements was not a miscalculation, but a calculated move taken within Israel's plan to create a Jewish state on the Biblical land of Israel. Settlements are an integral part of the Zionist project Israel is gradually implementing. Peres is feigning moderation and remorse. He is doing so to entice Arab countries to keep trying to revive their peace initiative, the same initiative that Sharon bulldozed at the time it was written. Peres is trying to delude the Arabs into thinking that Israel is willing to move forward on the initiative, but in the framework of a deal by which Israel gives back the West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt in return for normalisation with all Arab countries. At least implicitly, Peres admits that there is one obstacle in the way. This obstacle is the Palestinians and their "extremist" organisations, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as those organisations and countries that support them, such as Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Syrian and Iranian regimes. So all those groups and countries should be contained and defeated before peace becomes a possibility. Peres is thus taking us back, in a roundabout manner, to that familiar idea that has come up of late of forming an axis of "moderates" that includes and is led by Israel to fight the axis of "extremists" that includes and is led by Iran. Under such circumstances, the Arab world needs to pause and think carefully about what happened to the region since 1967. In my opinion, the first lesson we should keep in mind is that Israel has never been and is not yet willing to accept a genuine and even-handed settlement of the conflict in the Middle East. So let's not buy into the Israeli myth that the Arabs were always wasting chances and realising their worth when it is too late. Israel has always acted in ill will. It has never, at any stage of the conflict -- especially following the 1967 War -- offered a solution that the moderates in this region can live with. An acceptable settlement would have been reached a long time ago had Israel reacted in good faith to the proposals of UN envoy Gunnar Jarring, who was sent to the region to explore ways of implementing UN Security Council Resolution 242; or to the suggestion that an international conference for peace be held following the 1973 War; or to Anwar El-Sadat's visit to Jerusalem and the talks that followed; or to the Madrid conference and the bilateral and multilateral talks that followed; or to President Hafez Al-Assad when he went to Geneva to confer with President Bill Clinton; or to President Yasser Arafat in the second Camp David talks in 2000; or to the Taba negotiations that followed. Israel used to think that it could impose a peace settlement on its own terms once the pan-Arab current, led by Gamal Abdel-Nasser, was out of the way. This was a myth. Israel succeeded in removing Gamal Abdel-Nasser from the scene. But it couldn't bring real peace to the region. It couldn't bring peace through the talks it had with people like Sadat and Arafat. Israel reached a peace agreement with Egypt in 1997. It signed the Oslo Accords with the PLO in 1993. And now it claims that it can bring peace to the region once the Islamists are out of the way. This is just another lie. Israel's only aim is to remove the obstacles to its own goals. Israel thinks it can impose its kind of peace once the likes of Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon, Khaled Meshaal in Palestine, Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, or Ahmadinejad in Iran are no longer around. But history tells us that it would fail, even if it were to conclude agreements with men such as Dahlan in Palestine or Gemayel in Lebanon or Khaddam in Syria. Should this happen, Israel and the US will find themselves having to deal with new groups and men whose names we don't know yet, but are likely to be closer to Osama Bin Laden and Ayman El-Zawahri than to Meshaal and Nasrallah. Israel's goals can only be achieved once the countries of the region disintegrate into factional entities. Israel may eventually succeed in destroying the region. But there is only one catch; it may not be able to save itself. * The writer is a professor of political science at Cairo University.
