Arab
Summit And The Carrot Of Palestinian State
By Elias Akleh
04 April, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Wednesday
March 28th had witnessed the nineteenth Arab Summit in Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia. Such summits had been a source of anxiety for the Arab population,
since they had been accustomed to see these summits coming out with
meaningless patriotic rhetoric reflecting the status quo of Arab political
situations, more political concessions to Israel, and more complicity
to the hegemonic American policies for a “Greater Middle East”
(Greater Israel). This summit has proved to be no different than its
predecessors.
The Arab leaders were supposed
to deal with political crises in the Arab World such as occupation of
Iraq, political division in Lebanon, and the Palestinian problem. Yet,
as usual, they failed to come up with positive action plans to remedy
any of these problems.
As for the occupation of
Iraq, the Saudi King Abdullah acknowledged in his opening speech the
fact that there is an illegitimate foreign occupation of Iraq, and the
existence of an “ugly sectarianism threatening civil war”.
His acknowledgement of this very-well known fact aimed to divert any
popular blame from the Arab leaders toward foreign powers. He was trying
to deny the fact that the forces of this foreign occupation had been
launched from Arab countries, mainly from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait
and Jordan, in 1990 and again in 2003, to murder Iraqis and to destroy
Iraq as a sovereign country. Late conservative counts of the murdered
Iraqis reached to one million. Two other millions had evacuated their
homes and ran away to adjacent countries. The rest of the population
are facing gradual annihilation due to violence, lack of sanitary water,
shortage of medications, lack of electricity, chaos, and a devastated
economy. Despite all that destruction and devastation the American-puppet
Iraqi president Jalal Talabani tried to paint a rosy picture of a “liberated”
Iraq, who got rid of the tyrant Saddam Hussein, established a “democratic”
government, and is rebuilding new infrastructures. Despite their “sympathy”
towards the Iraqi plight Arab leaders could not deny that they had deserted
the Iraqis to be completely manipulated by foreign powers.
As for Lebanon, the Arab
leaders had done nothing besides acknowledging the status quo. They
have not even mentioned the Israeli aggression against Lebanon last
summer leading to the destruction of civilian infrastructures, Qana
massacre, and the spreading of the American supplied cluster bombs.
The political crisis between the American supported government and the
Hezbollah supported opposition, leading to the paralyses of the government,
was totally ignored. Lebanon was left to the international forces to
control Southern Lebanon in an attempt to weaken Hezbollah by preventing
arms shipments to them.
The main goal of the summit
was to revive the five years old Arab peace initiative offered to Israel
in 2002. This peace initiative offers Israel a comprehensive peace with
full diplomatic relationships with all Arab countries providing Israel
withdraws back to its 1976 borders, accepts the creation of a Palestinian
state, and agree to a “just solution” for the Palestinian
refugees. The initiative was immediately rejected, in 2002, by the then
Israeli Prime Minister “Ariel Sharon”, who drove his tanks
and armored vehicles into all the major Palestinian cities.
Meeting all Arab peace initiatives
with more state terrorism has been a typical Israeli response. Accepting
any permanent peace agreement with the Arabs would put a stop to Israel’s
expansive ambitions and would end the “Greater Israel” dream.
Arab leaders’ anticipation of Israel’s rejection was reflected
in the comments by Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi Foreign minister,
stating that the Israeli rejection was not surprising. “This has
always been their approach. Whenever the Arabs come up with resolutions
… offering peace, they (the Israelis) reject them categorically”
he said.
Wanting to keep the occupied
land and their illegal colonies Israel opposes the return to 1967 borders,
the establishment of a Palestinian state with Arab East Jerusalem as
its capitol, and the right of return for the Palestinian refugees to
their homes inside Israel.
One wonders why would the
Arab leaders revive their peace initiative since they know very well
Israel’s response to it. Some attributed this to what they think
is the American failure in Iraq. They think that the American administration
needs Arab’s help in order to withdraw honorably from Iraq. They
believe that Americans have a change in foreign policies due to the
Democratic Party “taking over” the Congress. Although the
Democrats had called for withdrawal from Iraq, a proposal they know
very well would be vetoed by President Bush, they are in fact a different
mask to American corporatocracy that controls both parties. Both the
Republicans and the Democrats serve the interests of oil companies and
military industrial complex. They do not serve the interests of the
people. Both parties have placed the Israeli interests over the American
interests.
Some Arab leaders had stated
that President Bush has re-affirmed his commitment to the two state
solution to end the Arab/Israeli conflict, and that he is applying some
pressure on Israel, through his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
to accept the peace initiative. They cited Rice’s trips to the
region meeting both Israelis and Arabs to encourage them to revive the
peace treaty. Arab leaders pointed to the alleged “weakness”
of the Israeli government, after its defeat by Hezbollah last summer,
and to Bush’s low popularity and the defeat of his party by the
Democrats, and think that both are now ready to accept and to support
the peace initiative. Those leaders had built the illusion that European
Union would adopt the peace initiative, and that they would apply pressure
on Israel to accept it. European pressure on Israel, who had always
broke international laws and violated UN resolutions, had always failed
to come up with any positive results. Arabs should have listened to
the speech given by the democratic Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the
American House of Representatives, to the Israeli Knesset last weekend
asserting, one more time, the American unconditional support to Israel.
With such support what kind of pressure would force Israelis to accept
a treaty they had violently rejected in the past?
Many Arab leaders are trying
to reflect to their already agitated populations that they are trying
to unite under the leadership of Saudi Arabia to make their own political
decisions and to stop any foreign interference in the Arab World. They
claimed they are motivated to end the Palestinian suffering by ending
the financial and economic blockade against them through the only choice
they have; a peace initiative that recognizes Israel’s right to
exist on 78% of Palestine proper, and substitutes Palestinian refugees’
right of return to what they called a “just solution” to
the refugee problem.
These leaders are trying
to divert the attention of their people away from the fact that many
Arab countries had been willing contributors to this financial blockade
in order to topple the democratically elected Hamas government. They
wanted to mislead the people into believing that Palestine could not
be regained since all the Arab armies combined are no match for the
“undefeated” Israeli army. History shows that this “undefeated”
Israeli army had been defeated many times; in March 1968 battle of Karamah
against Palestinian and Jordanian resistance, in October 1973 against
Egyptian army, in May 2000 in Lebanon by Hezbollah forces, in July 2006
in Lebanon again by Hezbollah, and in Palestine failing to defeat Palestinian
resistance. These defeats, except October 1973, were accomplished mainly
by resistance groups rather than by formal armies.
The peace initiative and
the false hope of ending the Arab/Israeli conflict through the two states
solution are just a political trick against Arabs to introduce the false
hope that peace with Israel, Arab’s mortal enemy, is now possible
through the present American administration, providing the Arab countries
do not oppose the American policies in the region especially its aggression
against Iran. US and Israel are planning to hit Iran shortly, and they
want to neutralize any Arab opposition to US using Arab Gulf States
as its launching pads, and to prevent any retaliation against Israel.
The carrot of establishing a Palestinian state had been successfully
used to neutralize Arab opposition to the American aggression in the
region in 1990 Gulf War and in 2003 invasion of Iraq when some Arab
countries were used as launching pads for the American forces to invade
Iraq.
This carrot is being used
now, through the revival of the peace initiative, to allow the use of
Arab Gulf states again as launching pads for the American forces to
attack Iran. Nuclear “Shiite” Iran had already been portrayed
as greater threat to “Sunni” Gulf States than Israel. The
presence of two American nuclear aircraft carriers with their accompanying
military vessels in the Arabian Gulf is not there for mere diplomatic
resolution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.
Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer of Palestinian descent, born in the
town of Beit-Jala. Currently he lives in the US.
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