The best chance for ending the Palestinian plight is for the Arabs to take advantage of the US defeat in Iraq, writes Ayman El-Amir* Israel marked its 59th anniversary of independence in mid-April by killing 10 Palestinians. Hamas, the Palestinian resistance movement, responded by announcing the end of a five-month-old ceasefire and aimlessly fired into Israel several homemade rockets that hurt no one. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is hounded by a government commission report blaming him for Israel's failed military campaign against Lebanon's Hizbullah last year, decided on a limited response in which only three Palestinians were killed and a dozen others arrested. Olmert's uncertain political future has cast a pall over peace prospects with the Palestinians. While Palestinians marked the moment with the usual manifestation of helpless grief over their expulsion from Palestine and the confiscation of their lands, Israelis were not exactly in a happier mood. Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted that: "An atmosphere of disappointment, despondency and anxiety prevailed in Israel in its 59th anniversary year." Palestinian-Israeli peace is as far from reach as ever. The latest shot in the decades-long process of war and peace was the decision of the Arab summit meeting in Riyadh in late March to "activate" the Arab peace initiative. First introduced in Rabat by Saudi Arabia in 1982, the land-for-peace exchange remains like the peace process itself in a state of suspended animation. Several contributing factors are in play. For one thing, the Hamas-dominated Palestinian government is throwing back at the Olmert government the argument which former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon used, in order to escape serious negotiations with the Palestinians -- that there is no peace partner to negotiate with. Hobbled by a fragile coalition and a set of old and new scandals, the Olmert government is much too weak to lead Israel into meaningful peace negotiations. Moreover, Israel and its leadership is still shaken by the military debacle of the war against Lebanon in July-August 2006 -- the first time in its history of six wars that Israel did not achieve decisive victory over its Arab adversaries. A government-appointed commission of inquiry censured Olmert for his "misguided and rash judgement" in launching the massive attack against the Lebanese resistance movement, Hizbullah. His coalition government is shaky and his Labour Party partners are lurking in the shadows, waiting for the government to fall, and new elections to be called. So far, the Israeli government is propped up by the myopic political and diplomatic support of the Bush administration. That administration itself, however, needs a lifebuoy to float out of Iraq, sustain its 30-country strong fighting coalition in Afghanistan and help it press on with the war on terror, confront Iran and hold off its Democratic opponents at home. It is a situation of the blind leading the blind. Meanwhile, Israel is not making it easier for any peace initiative to take root; it recently seized 57 more acres (23 hectares, or 230,000 square metres) of Palestinian farmland for the purpose of its infamous apartheid wall. On the other side sits Hamas, a democratically elected Palestinian government that has survived Israel's murderous campaigns, kidnappings and detentions, US-European political and economic strangulation, Arab pressure and Palestinian infighting. It retains the Palestinian people's support to engage confidently in negotiations without regard for the elaborate pre-conditions it is being pressured to meet before being accepted as a peace partner. After all, former Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat negotiated the Oslo Accords without recognising Israel. But the Hamas-led government can only have a negotiating partner if Israel has a majority government and the US a rational one. Another stumbling block is the upcoming ritual of the US presidential elections when allies and foes alike are supposed to hold their breath and wait. It is a hiatus for US foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. With the current administration embroiled in Iraq, struggling with Iran, and trying to save the Republican Party from overwhelming defeat, pragmatics dictates that the Palestinians will have to wait politely until mid-2009 when a new administration looks at their issue with fresh eyes. It is true, though, that former US president Bill Clinton vigorously tackled the Palestinian question in the last few weeks of his administration, almost like an afterthought. But it is also true that two months before the outbreak of the October 1973 war, during the second term of former president Richard Nixon, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger was arrogantly telling anxious Arab foreign ministers and diplomats that the Middle East file had not landed on his desk yet. At any rate, George W Bush is neither Kissinger nor Clinton, and it is doubtful that the Palestinians will dutifully wait that long in the tightening, crushing grip of the Israeli occupation. What choices do the Palestinians and Arabs have? One option is that moderate Arab countries, on which the US counts, try to goad both the Palestinians and Israelis into a new round of negotiations that would, at a minimum, resolve some peripheral issues such as the release of Palestinian prisoners in return for captured Israeli soldiers, as a "confidence-building measure", or extending the ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian resistance movements. But that may be sidetracking the critical issues of an overall Palestinian-Israeli settlement. This settlement involves the four major issues that were negotiated at Camp David II in 2000: Israeli withdrawal from the territories it occupied in 1967; the creation of a Palestinian state to exist alongside Israel; the status of Jerusalem; and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Most if not all of these issues are embraced by the Arab peace initiative based on the land-for- peace formula. Israel does not accept any of the four elements, though in essence they simply reflect international law. Israel, supported by the US as usual, wants to turn the principles of international law into bargaining chips. Thus the lands seized by Israel in 1967 go from being "occupied territories" to being "disputed territories". The other option for Arab states is to activate their initiative via the UN Security Council. This would be the place to build consensus for a new resolution that would provide for a settlement of the Palestinian question, not as a question of refugees, as in Resolution 242 of 1967, but under the right of self-determination. In resorting to the Security Council, two risks are involved; the US might veto any draft resolution that is not acceptable to Israel or, more dangerously, try and possibly succeed in passing a binding resolution that may be detrimental to Palestinian self-determination. Israeli interests determine US foreign policy in the Middle East and the European Union's inchoate foreign policy is guided by the US. There was a time when the US edged towards an "even-handed" policy in the Middle East. In the mid-1970s, the US went as far as voting for Security Council resolutions that branded Israeli settlements in the occupied territories as "illegal and an obstacle to peace". That was a time when the provisions of international law guided the approach of nations to international disputes, when campaign contributions and the American Jewish lobby did not dictate US policy in the Middle East. This policy was gradually eroded by the Nixon-Kissinger partnership and was finally overturned, not by the events of 11 September 2001, but by how Ariel Sharon manipulated the failure of Camp David II and the reactionary tenor of the incoming Bush administration. At no time was Sharon interested in a peace settlement. A new sense of Arab empowerment could shift the political and strategic balance in the region by reshaping alliances in such a way as to demonstrate to the US that it is not the reigning regional power with Israel as proxy pro-consul. As the US defeat in Iraq undermines its global influence, new or born-again powers like China and Russia are asserting themselves, with eyes wide open on Middle East/Gulf resources. Iran's rising power will not be stymied by US threats. Despite all US-Israeli attempts to provoke a Shia-Sunni war, an Iranian-Arab alliance is the Middle East's last and best hope for balanced security, regional stability and the elimination of foreign hegemony. * The writer is a former correspondent for Al-Ahram in Washington, DC. He also served as director of UN Radio and Television in New York.
