Soccer Dad

Poor old saudi peace plan

Secretary of State Rice is curently making a push for diplomacy in the Middle East. In order to support this effort she's enlisthed the help of the Arab League, which will be meeting in Riyadh this week. The Arab League is expected to roll out the so called Saudi Peace Plan, around which the summit revolved in 2002 when it met in Syrian occupied Beirut.

In short the plan calls for recognition of Israel in return for Israel's withdrawal from all territories it captured in 1967. PM Olmert has expressed qualified support for the Saudi plan. (One of the obvious sticking points of the plan is not just areas of Judea and Samaria that are settled, but even Jerusalem where neighborhoods such as Ramat Eshkol, Gilo and Ramot would apparently have to be ceded according the Saudi plan.)

Israel's hesitations were not being met with a lot of understanding from Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia criticised Israel on Tuesday for setting preconditions to Middle East peace talks and urged it to accept an Arab initiative first proposed in 2002 and discuss details later.

"We only hear of conditions from Israel about everything, but no acceptance. You cannot have negotiations like that, you accept the proposals then you talk about this," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said.

"This seems a ludicrous way of doing business," he said at a news conference with visiting European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

A 2002 Arab League summit in Beirut adopted a Saudi initiative offering Israel normal ties with Arab countries in return for full withdrawal from land it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

One could argue that Faisal is being principled. But there are details of the plan, and its creation that aren't usually cited. Understanding these details makes the plan - a creation of then Saudi Crown Prince and now King, Abdullah, and NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

In February 2002, the American view of Saudi Arabia was not very positive. 15 of the 19 terrorist who perpetrated 9/11 were Saudi nationals and it looked more and more as if the United States was spoiling for war with Iraq. The plan seemed to be a way to solve both problems at once.

Saudi Arabia could look like a peace maker and the Sunnis could continue dominating the Shi'a of Iraq.

Friedman was not bashful in providing the PR to Abdullah. In his now famous column he wrote:

I am currently in Saudi Arabia on a visit — part of the Saudi opening to try to explain themselves better to the world in light of the fact that 15 Saudis were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. So I took the opportunity of a dinner with Saudi Arabia's crown prince, and de facto ruler, Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, to try out the idea of this Arab League proposal. I knew that Jordan, Morocco and some key Arab League officials had been talking about this idea in private but had not dared to broach it publicly until one of the "big boys" — Saudi Arabia or Egypt — took the lead.

After I laid out this idea, the crown prince looked at me with mock astonishment and said, "Have you broken into my desk?"

"No," I said, wondering what he was talking about.

"The reason I ask is that this is exactly the idea I had in mind — full withdrawal from all the occupied territories, in accord with U.N. resolutions, including in Jerusalem, for full normalization of relations," he said. "I have drafted a speech along those lines. My thinking was to deliver it before the Arab summit and try to mobilize the entire Arab world behind it. The speech is written, and it is in my desk. But I changed my mind about delivering it when Sharon took the violence, and the oppression, to an unprecedented level.

"But I tell you," the crown prince added, "if I were to pick up the phone now and ask someone to read you the speech, you will find it virtually identical to what you are talking about. I wanted to find a way to make clear to the Israeli people that the Arabs don't reject or despise them. But the Arab people do reject what their leadership is now doing to the Palestinians, which is inhumane and oppressive. And I thought of this as a possible signal to the Israeli people."

Well, I said, I'm glad to know that Saudi Arabia was thinking along these lines, but so many times in the past we've heard from Arab leaders that they had just been about to do this or that but that Ariel Sharon or some other Israeli leader had gotten in the way. After a while, it's hard to take seriously. So I asked, What if Mr. Sharon and the Palestinians agreed to a cease-fire before the Arab summit?

"Let me say to you that the speech is written, and it is still in my drawer," the crown prince said.

Abdullah's all too convenient "it's in my drawer" never convinced me. But apparently it convinced the always skeptical Friedman.

I pass all of this on as straightforwardly as I can, without hype or unrealistic hopes. What was intriguing to me about the crown prince's remarks was not just his ideas — which, if delivered, would be quite an advance on anything the Arab League has proposed before — but the fact that they came up in the middle of a long, off-the-record conversation. I suggested to the crown Prince that if he felt so strongly about this idea, even in draft form, why not put it on the record — only then would anyone take it seriously. He said he would think about it. The next day his office called, reviewed the crown prince's quotations and said, Go ahead, put them on the record. So here they are.

Abdullah apparently got what he wanted - a remade image - and Friedman was well on his way to his third Pullitzer and put Israel on the diplomatic defensive.

But as they say, the devil is in the details.

The problem with the peace proposal is that it is very specific about what it requires of Israel,

1. Requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well.

2. Further calls upon Israel to affirm:

I- Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.

II- Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194.

III- The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

but it remains nebulous about what the Arab world offers in return for those very real concessions.

3. Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following:

I- Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region

II- Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.

What happened next is interesting the idea didn't really take off right away. Friedman brought up this breakthrough in another column or two and the NY Times reported on its significance.

In the meantime Abdullah toured the Arab world in support of his plan. When he reached Syria he ran into trouble. Bashar Assad found the original meager concessions toward Israel too much and it didn't explicitly mention the return of the Golan to Syria.

Initially, the proposal garnered little attention in the Arab world. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was decidedly unenthusiastic about it, proposing instead that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Arafat come to Egypt to iron out their differences. In the weeks that followed, however, the proposal steadily gained American and European backing, leading Arab-League Secretary General Amr Moussa to endorse the initiative.

The proposal outraged the Syrians for several reasons. First, although Syrian relations with the kingdom have been close over the last decade, Abdullah did not consult or even inform Damascus about the proposal beforehand. Indeed, the Saudis may have chosen the unusual, indirect manner in which the proposal was released so as to avoid prior coordination with Syria. Second, Abdullah did not specifically mention the Golan Heights. The fact that Jerusalem was mentioned, while Syrian territorial claims were not, implicitly gave priority to the Palestinian track of the peace process.

The most far-reaching of Syria's objections to the proposal, however, concerned Abdullah's promise of "full normalization" of relations with Israel, which implied that peace would entail more than just a formal end to Syria's state of war with the Jewish state - Damascus would be expected to sever its ties to anti-Israeli extremist groups, end its boycott of companies trading with Israel, open trade barriers, and perhaps even permit Israeli tourists to visit. Whereas a cold, tense (and hence easily discarded) peace would be acceptable in return for every inch of the Golan Heights, a warm peace would lead dissidents in Syria to press harder for an end to the state of emergency, censorship and other authoritarian practices justified by the regime for national security purposes.

Syria has long refused to accept any association between the concept of normalization and its intermittent negotiations with Israel, despite considerable prodding from Israeli and American officials. During the latest round of talks in Sheperdstown, Virginia in January 2000, Syrian delegates even insisted that one of the four technical committees established to carry on different aspects of the talks be called the Committee on Normal Peaceful Relations, rather than the Committee on Normalization, as the Israelis had requested. Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Shara refused persistent American requests that he have a private face-to-face meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

But the biggest hurdle that Assad threw into the "peace" plan was his insistence that Israel withdraw from occupied Lebanese territory. Since the UN had endorsed the Israeli withdrawal two years earlier, the Security Council, surprisingly didn't endorse the Saudi proposal after the Arab summit. (It should be noted that the area in question is considered Syrian territory whose disposition should be decided by negotiations between Israel and Syria. Syria the overlord of Lebanon actually ceded Shebaa farms to Lebanon in order to maintain a justification for further Hezbollah activity against Israel.)

The very fact that Abdullah allowed Syria to dictate this, is a sign of his unseriousness. If a Israeli retreat can be declared by the Arabs to be null and void what other future concessions will be declared, post facto insufficient? Surely Friedman knew this and yet didn't raise a protest over the Syrian demand and Saudi capitulation. Nope, he had his "peace" initiative and he wasn't going to spoil the fun.

Because of their promotion of this plan, the Saudis are being characterized as champions of the Palestinians. But Elder of Ziyon points out that there's a limit to their enthusiasm.

So the Kingdom has no problem disenfranchising a half-million Palestinian Arabs, most of whom would undoubtedly be happy to become citizens of Saudi Arabia, to "avoid dissolution of their identity."

If Palestinian Arabs have such a strong identity, why would they need the Arab League to protect it by punishing millions of them, leaving them stateless?

This is no accident as the plan also calls for

4. Assures the rejection of all forms of Palestinian patriation which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries

Explicitly, then, this plan that champions the Palestinians also disenfranchises them, except in "Palestine."

And then there's the matter of the "full withdrawal" for "full recognition." Might it not be considered appropriate for the Saudis to offer some "confidence building measures" to show that Israel that it's serious? (Those "confidence building measures" are often asked of the Israelis, but entail risks, such as removing roadblocks where they might intercept terrorists. The Saudis would undertake no such risks.) But even now the Saudis barred an Israeli journalist in the entrouage of Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon from entering. Israel Matzav comments:

Even the Syrians weren't this bad. In 1995, US Secretary of State Warren Christopher traveled from Jerusalem to Damascus. One of the reporters who accompanied him was David Makovsky, then of the Jerusalem Post, traveling on an American passport. Or perhaps, the Syrians were just as bad but Warren Christopher was more willing to stand up for an (American) Jew than was Ban-Ki Moon.

Is Israel really so bad that a country that still beheads people following show trials would be tainted if an Israeli entered? The Saudi non-recognition of Israel is not diplomatic, it's pathological.

Finally there's the matter of assuming that Saudis and the Arab League are sincere, is there any chance that it would work? As Charles Krauthammer wrote five years ago:

That a phantom, undelivered speech--never seen, never published, never even sketched out--should earn the title of "plan" is a measure of the West's incorrigible Charlie Brown gullibility whenever an Arab leader merely breathes the word "peace." That some Israeli leaders have expressed interest in such smoke and mirrors is a measure of Israel's demoralization, its grasping-at-straws desperation in the face of unrelenting terrorism.

Daled Amos refers to Andrew McCarthy who wrote:

In what sense is Abbas a moderate? Abbas, successor of Yasser Arafat, is the head of Fatah. As I noted here a few weeks back, the Fatah constitution still calls for the “eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence[,]” through an “armed revolution” which is to be the “decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence” — a revolution that “will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated.”

How does the Times, or, for that matter, our government, ever expect to see the emergence of authentic moderates if it continues to wrap the mantle of "moderate" around those who are anything but?

That is, the biggest obstacle to Middle East peace isn't the lack of support for a cynical plan in the Arab world. It's the failure of the Palestinians (and the rest of the Arab world) to come to terms with Israel's existence. As long as the West tolerates the intolerance of the Arab world these plans will continue coming to grief.

UPDATE: More at SerAndEz.Cublicle King and Meryl Yourish. Why is it that when the Saudis make unconditional demands on Israel it's considered a peace plan and not an ultimatum?

Blogdigger tags: Saudi Peace Plan, Thomas Friedman, King Abdullah.

Posted by SoccerDad at March 28, 2007 5:54 AM