Arabs Back Overture to Israel and Declare Support for Iraq
The New York Times
March 29, 2002
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Friday,
March 29 - The Arab
nations committed themselves
Thursday to accepting Israel as a
neighbor if it would meet a set of
conditions, many of which Israel
has long rejected, leading to the
creation of an independent
Palestinian state.
The fact that the proposal came
from Saudi Arabia and that even
hard-line nations like Libya and
Iraq joined the consensus on the
issue illustrate the distance the
region has moved since the Arab
countries punished Egypt for
signing the first Arab peace treaty
with Israel by expelling it from
the Arab League and severing
ties.
In a departure from previous Arab
peace attempts, many of which
consisted merely of lists of
belligerent demands, this one
assures Israel that, if it takes
certain steps toward ending the
conflict, the Arabs will forge
"normal relations" with it.
The initiative faces imposing hurdles. The two sides have
failed repeatedly to find a compromise on any of the
conditions that will lead to recognition. They include an
Israeli withdrawal from all territory occupied since 1967,
the return of Palestinian refugees and the creation of a
Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. [Text,
Page A14.]
Today, Israeli tanks and troops moved into Ramallah and
surrounded the compound of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian
leader. After a cabinet meeting to decide how to respond
to a suicide bombing that killed 20 in Netanya, Israeli
officials said they had decided to isolate Mr. Arafat.
Mr. Arafat said on Thursday that he was ready to
"implement an immediate cease-fire," but then in a news
conference he rejected the draft cease-fire agreement
being discussed with Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the
American envoy, saying he wanted to alter several aspects
of it.
Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon, rejected Mr. Arafat's comment. "The only thing
that can save him now is action to stop terror," Mr. Gissin
said on Thursday. "And he understands very well that an
event of this magnitude, the Passover massacre, will result
in a harsh Israeli reaction."
Mr. Sharon has rejected the idea of pulling back to the
borders before the 1967 war, when Israel captured the
Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, along
with the Sinai Peninsula, which has since been returned
to Egypt. "I don't think this initiative is going to make any
impact on Sharon" said Jamil K. Mroue, the publisher of
The Daily Star in Beirut. "He has no agenda for peace," he
added.
That impression among the Arab nations is why Crown
Prince Abdullah, in sketching out his vision in a speech to
a summit meeting of Arab leaders on Wednesday,
addressed the crux of his message to the Israeli public.
Indeed, some analysts believe that hard-line nations like
Iraq and Libya signed on only because they were sure the
Israelis would reject it.
The initiative by Saudi Arabia, whose very identity stems
from its role as the birthplace of Islam, was particularly
significant because it removed the Arab-Israeli dispute
from the religious sphere and defined it as a political
problem.
Even so, the Arabic version of the plan had at least one
significant religious note. It used a Koranic reference in
asking the Israelis to gamble on peace, employing a rare
formal Arabic word suggesting that they "incline"
themselves toward peace.
The same verb appears in a verse in the Koran that
mandates that Arabs make peace if they see that
tendency in an enemy. Roughly translated, the verse in
the chapter titled "The Spoils of War" reads, "If the enemy
incline toward peace, do thou also incline toward peace,
and trust in Allah."
But the suicide bombing by the militant organization
Hamas in Israel on Wednesday and the mobilization that
followed threatened to overshadow the initiative. Ministers
involved in hammering out the proposal said it should not
be buffeted by the daily toll in the conflict. Indeed, the
start of some form of negotiation may provide the hope
needed to halt the cycle of violence.
Asked about the suicide bombing, Prince Saud al-Faisal,
the Saudi foreign minister, said that the Arabs did not
condone the killing of civilians, whether Israeli or
Palestinian.
"Bloodshed has to stop," he said. "The Israeli people have
a right to live in peace if they respond to the conditions of
peace."
In Washington, Bush administration officials chose to
emphasize what they called the positive "vision" for peace
expressed in the Arab League communiqué and to gloss
over its embrace of familiar demands unacceptable to
Israel, like the right of return for Palestinians. "The
president applauds Prince Abdullah's speech," said a
White House spokesman, Gordon Johndroe. "We hope
other leaders in the region accept the plan as well."
The State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher,
went out of his way to say that the crown prince's
initiative was not a plan, or a package, and that the points
of any final settlement would have to be negotiated by
Israel and the Palestinians themselves. "The goal to be
gained is normal relations between the Arab world and
the Israelis, and the goal to be gained is security in the
region," Mr. Boucher said. He added, "The issue here is,
yes, it does have a practical, we hope catalytic effect" on
moving the parties toward that goal.
In Gaza City, a Hamas spokesman, Abdel Aziz Rantisi,
said the Arab summit meeting did not change anything
for his group, which is dedicated to Israel's destruction.
"As long as there is occupation, there will be a resistance,"
Mr. Rantisi said. "So we say it clearly: occupation should
be stopped and then there will be something else."
The initiative came in a separate statement from the main
summit communiqué, which saluted the Palestinian
resistance against Israeli occupation and called for no new
relations with Israel. Senior officials tried to put a
coherent spin on the seemingly contradictory statements,
calling the regular communiqué the old school Arab
attitude while saying that the initiative represented the
new. They also said it was possible to fight against the
occupation while offering an alternative vision.
The brief proposal, which was basically a summary of
existing United Nations resolutions on resolving the
conflict, shaped that vision by using far gentler language
than ever before on delicate issues like the return of
Palestinian refugees. It suggested that the subject was
open to negotiation, based on United Nations Resolution
194 passed in 1948, stating that the refugees have the
right of return or compensation.
Refugees were generally skeptical that the plan would do
anything for them. "They will just put words on paper and
set it aside," said Jamal Najjar, 42, who runs a sandwich
shop in the squalid alleys of the Shatila refugee camp
near downtown Beirut. "They don't really work at it."
"What is taken by force must be returned by force," he
said, repeating a phrase coined by Gamal Abdel Nasser,
the Egyptian president, after the Arabs' defeat in the 1967
war.
But Arab ministers involved in writing the plan said they
planned to fan out around the globe to give it some
momentum. "Now, we have a sharp weapon to influence
the international community and pressure Israel," Prince
Saud said at a news conference. "If Israel refuses peace,
we will return to violence. We will return to the threat of
widening conflict and to instabilities and God knows what
happens."
The initiative calls for a full Israeli withdrawal from Arab
land still occupied, including the West Bank with East
Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. In
exchange, the official text states, the Arab nations will
consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, enter into a peace
agreement with Israel, provide security for all the states of
the region and establish normal relations with Israel.
"What we are saying in the initiative is that when Israel
withdraws, we are offering everything," said Marwan
Muashar, the Jordanian foreign minister. "What the
average Israeli will get is total acceptance as a member of
the neighborhood, permanent peace and security. In our
view that is the No. 1 need of Israelis now."
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