WASHINGTON — It’s hard to be optimistic in the face of the bloody intransigence that marks the Middle East. But I’ve been listening to the earnest pleadings of the Jordanian foreign minister, Marwan Muasher, and, for a while at least, I’m willing to suspend my skepticism.
Muasher says the key problem with earlier attempts to negotiate a settlement of the Israeli/Palestinian dispute has been the unquestioned notion that if the two sides can agree on a few small first steps and then build on those, they will find themselves moving, almost unavoidably, toward agreement on the big stuff and, finally, to peace. That has been the tacit assumption of much of the diplomacy, including the now-derailed Oslo accords.
And, says Muasher, it’s wrong.
The way to achieve peace, he says, is to agree on the end result and a timeline for getting there. That, as he explained it to a recent gathering of Washington Post writers and editors, is the important idea behind the new (and little-discussed) Arab Initiative for Middle East peace. The initiative, which Muasher says has been signed by every single Arab government in the world, envisions a settlement that would have Israeli and Palestinian states each freely acknowledging the other’s right to exist.
If the parties to the dispute could agree on that, and agree on a reasonable time frame for achieving it, then the details could be worked out fairly easily.
But what of the suicide bombings? The agreement commits the Arab states to forswear and work to end not just the suicide bombings but all violence against Israel by any Arab state. Such efforts would likely be successful because the Palestinian people and their supporters would finally have some reason to hope that the negotiations were headed somewhere. Moreover, a clear public stance against suicide bombings by the entire Arab world would give Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat "the umbrella he needs to be strong against the bombings."
Up to now, the approach has been to let the negotiations themselves dictate the end game, with the result that every issue, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, could derail the entire effort. The Arab Initiative would have all players acting "within a defined context, with defined terms of reference," explained Muasher, who was in Washington with Jordan’s King Abdullah. "The important thing is that the subsequent negotiations would be about achieving the terms of reference rather than arguing the terms of reference."
It reminds me a bit of the late 1970s gambit of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, who essentially convinced Israel’s Menachem Begin that the two of them should agree to make peace. With that agreement secured, diplomats, lawyers and staffers could work out the details.
There has been no official Israeli response to the Arab Initiative — which is to say the Israelis may not agree with Muasher’s assessment that the initiative "gives Israel everything it ever asked for," including recognition, secure borders and an end to anti-Israeli violence on the part of the entire Arab world. For its part, Israel would be expected to dismantle the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and withdraw from the occupied territories. America’s role would be to join the international community in overseeing the process.
What is intriguing about the idea Muasher advanced is that the end result would be the situation most of the major parties see as the ideal outcome. But a history of broken promises, domestic political imperatives and violence (on both sides) has made it almost impossibly difficult for them to negotiate their way to that outcome. That’s why it’s so hard to find much basis for optimism.
But suppose the parties could agree up front on the desired outcome, and then negotiate the details. That is pretty much what Sadat did, with his unprecedented visit to Israel in 1977. He thought he was cutting the Gordian knot — breaking the psychology that had stood in the way of peace. Begin, unfortunately, treated the grand gesture as merely the opening move in yet another round of negotiations. As a result, Sadat found himself isolated from his Arab neighbors. Four years later, he was assassinated.
Now as then, what comes of the Arab Initiative will depend a great deal on Israel’s response.
William Raspberry can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or willrasp@washpost.com.
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