It is not a coincidence that serious political talks are taking place simultaneously these days between top Lebanese political foes, Saudi Arabia and Iran, the United States and each of Syria and Iran, Israelis and Palestinians, the Europeans and Syria, and, directly or indirectly, Israel and Saudi Arabia. For the past three years, since the situations in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine-Israel have all been conflated into a consortium of conflicts, there has been frequent talk that one way out of the region's stressed condition is to strike a Grand Bargain that resolves all these disputes simultaneously. That has always been a long shot. It is also obvious that these simmering conflicts and active battles are all linked to one another to some extent - especially as Syria, Iran, the US and Israel have their fingers in every one of these disputes. Therefore progress on any of these disputes could trigger movement on the others. If a comprehensive Grand Bargain remains elusive, March 2007 may prove to be the month when all the principal antagonists entered into the Great Talk Fest. On the premise that it is always preferable to talk than to shoot, and to share a meal rather than a cemetery plot, the diplomatic engagements that now define the Middle East offer a rare ray of hope. Talking is not a guarantee of success, but it is an essential first step in that direction, and a crucial sign that even the most virulent warriors will explore reasonable alternatives to their senseless death marches. The gallery of gab is impressive by any standard. Iraq, the US, and all concerned parties and neighbors met in Baghdad last weekend, established follow-up committees, and plan further higher-level talks. The US engaged Syria and Iran at that meeting, and a senior American diplomat also held talks in Damascus last weekend, prompting the Syrian government to call for a "serious dialogue with the US on all regional issues. An unofficial Syrian envoy (who is also a US citizen) plans to speak before an Israeli parliamentary committee this month. The European Union's top foreign policy official, Javier Solana, is in Damascus this week to revive stalled relations. The Israelis and Saudis have launched behind-the-scenes contacts to explore the feasibility of the Arab summit in Riyadh later this month re-launching the 2002 Arab peace plan, about which Israeli officials have made semi-positive noises recently. Palestinian and Israeli leaders continue to meet bilaterally, even if largely fruitlessly. Iran and Saudi Arabia hold high-level talks every few weeks, as a substitute for US-Iranian discussions. Lebanese majority politician Saad Hariri and the pro-opposition Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri have held three meetings in Beirut in the past week to resolve the internal Lebanese political crisis. This is talk taken to the level of epic. If talking is a small but important sign of possible progress, more significant is the simultaneity of all these discussions, for several reasons. It forces all concerned to clarify their positions and thus construct a possible negotiating framework, especially by identifying one's minimum needs and most important demands from the other side. It generates new possibilities for optimism in publics across the region, potentially opening the door for mass movements to push for reasonable negotiated agreements rather than savage battlefield legacies. It increases the possibility that reasonable tradeoffs and compromises can be made on more than one front (in other words Iran and Syria might ease off in Lebanon if their regimes were no longer threatened with removal by force, and Israel would concede more to Syria and the Palestinians if it were confident about Iran's, Hezbollah's and Hamas' willingness to coexist with it). We have now seen the two bookends of contemporary Middle Eastern politics. On the one hand, the common lesson of the Israel-Hezbollah war last summer, strife within Palestine, and fighting in Iraq is that local and foreign forces are prepared to fight each other to the death, and to destroy their respective societies if need be. Sampsons abound in the Middle East. On the other hand, antagonists who discern the potential dangers of their macho attitudes and militarism are also capable of acting more humbly and reasonably, by exploring possible peaceful resolutions of their conflicts. We shall soon discover if our decision-makers are the irresponsible killers they often seem to be, or still have enough sense and humanity left in them to pull pack from the brink of their own extremism. For the first time in many years, they have the opportunity to choose from both options that are on the table before them. Rami G. Khouri writes regularly in THE DAILY STAR
