Bring all parties to peace conference
Wednesday, April 24, 2002
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
Now that the shooting has more or less stopped for the moment inside Palestine, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is calling for a U.S.-sponsored peace conference to end hostilities.
It's a good idea, given that the United States has enormous clout and attendant moral responsibilities as the sole superpower.
But any such peace conference must be convened with some strict conditions.
The first one ought to be that if the two warring parties don't agree to a solution themselves by a time certain, one will be imposed upon them by the international community -- which pays a significant portion of the cost-of-dying bills for both parties.
The agreement must require both parties to treat as a crime any act by their citizens that violates the pact. The goal must be to marginalize violence as a political tool.
The second condition must be that not only the United States be on the hook to facilitate peace.
While European nations surely should be party to any peace conference, the Arab nations, first and foremost, must step up to the challenge of making peace work between Israel and the Palestinians. That ought to be the message President Bush delivers when he meets with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah tomorrow.
Arab nations have a vital role to play, and not just in providing financial aid for rebuilding Palestinian infrastructure and providing social services. They must help provide the moral leadership that leads to a just peace. That includes confronting those within their own nations engaged in supporting or exporting terrorism to Israel.
After all, Arab states, as neighbors to the conflict, are themselves most at risk of political destabilization from the continuing warfare. Three of them -- Jordan, Lebanon and Syria -- still have large populations of disenfranchised Palestinian refugees living on their soil or in refugee camps 54 years after the Arab-Israeli War.
It should be obvious that Arab states for their own self-interests must neutralize Palestine as a political flash point. The only way to do that is to assure peace.
And so must Israel, unless it wishes to live as a permanent garrison state. The only way to avoid that is to reach an accommodation with Palestine.
Israel assuredly has the right to live in peace. That means Israel must have defensible, mutually recognized borders, something it's unlikely to have if it continues to erect settlements in disputed territories. In addition to agreeing to an Arab proposal endorsed by President Bush that Israel withdraw to its pre-1967 borders in exchange for Arab recognition, a solution must be found to the dilemma of the refugees. Their plight is intolerable; it cannot be allowed to continue because it's inhumane and breeds terrorism. Until it is addressed, there will be no end to terrorism in the Middle East.
All told, there are 4 million Palestinian refugees. All told, there are 5.3 million Jews in Israel, plus 1.2 million Arabs. So if all 4 million Palestinians were to exercise a "right of return" granted them by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 in 1948, Israel contends it would be committing "demographic suicide." That's why the right-of-return issue is perhaps the most difficult to resolve.
However, it is not insoluble. The U.N. resolution also says refugees can be given financial compensation in lieu of returning to their claimed homeland. Another option is that they be restricted to return only to the new Palestinian state, not Israel or to Israel in limited numbers.
Former President Jimmy Carter wisely has urged that the international community contribute to the compensation in lieu of return effort in the name of global stability. The crisis in the Middle East, left in the current stalemate, threatens to spread.
If compensation is to work, other nations would have to accept Palestinians as eventual citizens. That's where the Arab states especially could make a most effective contribution to peace.
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