The Saudi initiative

Everyone welcomes it. No one agrees on what it means. Graham Usher writes from Ramallah on the Saudi initiative for ending violence and bringing peace
Yasser Arafat says he accepts it "completely." Ariel Sharon says it is "an interesting idea" and has asked Egypt, the Europeans and US to mediate a meeting with "anybody from Saudi Arabia -- to get better information about this initiative."
Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, took an unscheduled flight to Riyadh on the strength of it. And US Secretary of State Colin Powell, initially seeing it as a "minor development," said on Monday it was "an important step."
The flurry of responses is to the so- called Saudi initiative, aired publicly two weeks ago by Crown Prince Abdullah in an interview with Thomas Friedman for the New York Times.
Abdullah said if Israel withdrew to its pre-1967 lines the Arab states would recognise Israel and offer full normalisation of relations. He said he had considered submitting the proposal to the Arab summit in Beirut on 27 March but was dissuaded by Israel's repression in the occupied territories, which has claimed over 60 Palestinian lives in the last month.
Diplomats have gone further. Director of the Middle East Project at the US Council on Foreign Relations, Henry Siegman, told Israel's Jerusalem Post newspaper on Tuesday that the Saudi initiative is flexible enough to countenance Israeli sovereignty over the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem's occupied Old City. Saudi officials quoted in the US press said the proposal is not averse to border modifications, where West Bank settlements are annexed to Israel in exchange for equivalent land transferred to the Palestinians from inside Israel.
"We believe this is the most significant and strategic idea that has come from the Arab world since the convening of the Middle East conference in 1991," said PLO negotiator, Saeb Erekat.
It is easy to understand Erekat's enthusiasm. As it stands, the Saudi initiative mirrors the final status agreement that was beginning to coalesce during the last real negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians at Taba in January 2001, a deal in which Israeli sovereignty over parts of East Jerusalem and "land swaps" were very much on the table.
Were the initiative to be adopted as Arab policy, Arafat would have an Arab and Islamic covenant to make these concessions in return for a comprehensive peace package, a seal of approval he has long sought but never quite received.
It would also raise the heat on Sharon, who has spent a year in office trying to bar a return to Oslo, let alone the nascent agreement emerging at Taba. His problem -- and that of his government -- is that he cannot reject the initiative outright, given its provenance and the diplomatic steam that has built up behind it.
"I think the declarations of Prince Abdullah are of extraordinary importance because Saudi Arabia, for the first time, is openly taking the side of the peace process in the Middle East," said Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres on Tuesday.
He then ruled out any notion that Israel would fully withdraw to the pre- 1967 lines. Aides to the Israeli Prime Minister have said much the same thing, while the Americans have been keen on the "normalisation" part of the initiative and vague about the depth of Israeli withdrawal it would require.
Still, the Palestinians want the Arabs to embrace the initiative, with two provisos. The first is that Arafat attends the Beirut summit: he is currently holed up in Ramallah, following the Israeli cabinet's decision on Sunday to keep him there.
The second is for the initiative to be blessed by Syria and Lebanon, which also have occupied territories to recover. Beirut has given cautious support. Damascus has said nothing, other than what peace requires is political will from Israel "not further initiatives."
But if these wrinkles can be ironed out, together with "a just solution for the Palestinian refugees, I don't see any reason why the Arabs should not adopt the Saudi plan," says Palestinian Authority negotiator and security chief, Jibril Rajoub.
"The Saudi plan is practical and rational and I hope the Arabs [at the summit] will adopt it and then take it to the tables of the UN. This would put the international community in a corner and force it to exert pressure where it properly belongs -- on this crazy Israeli Prime Minister."
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