My latest news analysis for IPS is just out. (Also, here.)
The title the IPS editor gave it was Saudi Arabia May Not Follow Obama’s Plan. Not a bad summary of the main thrust of the text.
I found it interesting and useful, while working on this piece, to catch up with some of the developments in the ‘Gulf Arab states’ dimension of peacemaking.
For example, I went back and gave a closer read to items like the remarks special envoy George Mitchell made when he was in Cairo on July 27 and the op-ed the Bahraini crown prince had in the WaPo on July 16.
In his June 4 speech in Cairo, Obama made some specific– and very preachily worded– requests of the Arab states:
- the Arab states must recognize that the Arab Peace Initiative was an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities. The Arab-Israeli conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems. Instead, it must be a cause for action to help the Palestinian people develop the institutions that will sustain their state, to recognize Israel’s legitimacy, and to choose progress over a self-defeating focus on the past.
It struck me, when writing today’s piece, that he was making two substantive demands of the Arab states there– “to help the Palestinian people develop the institutions that will sustain their state, [and] to recognize Israel’s legitimacy”. The day before, he had been in Saudi Arabia meeting the kingdom’s ageing but still apparently very savvy monarch, King Abdullah. So it is fair to assume he most likely gave Abdullah a heads-up on what these demands would be.
The Saudis and their allies in the other (and all much smaller) GCC countries seem since then to have been prepared to cooperate with the first of these requests but quite resistant on the second.
The Bahraini crown prince, Shaikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, has been the most responsive of any GCC personality to Obama’s requests/demands. Notable, of course, that it was not the small island state’s King who “authored” the op-ed, but rather, the crown prince.
Shaikh Salman wrote this:
- We must stop the small-minded waiting game in which each side refuses to budge until the other side makes the first move… All sides need to take simultaneous, good-faith action if peace is to have a chance. A real, lasting peace requires comprehensive engagement and reconciliation at the human level. This will happen only if we address and settle the core issues dividing the Arab and the Israeli peoples, the first being the question of Palestine and occupied Arab lands. The fact that this has not yet happened helps to explain why the Jordanian and Egyptian peace accords with Israel are cold. They have not been comprehensive.
We should move toward real peace now by consulting and educating our people and by reaching out to the Israeli public to highlight the benefits of a genuine peace.
To be effective, we must acknowledge that, like people everywhere, the average Israeli’s primary window on the world is his or her local and national media. Our job, therefore, is to tell our story more directly to the Israeli people by getting the message out to their media, a message reflecting the hopes of the Arab mainstream that confirms peace as a strategic option and advocates the Arab Peace Initiative as a means to this end. Some conciliatory voices in reply from Israel would help speed the process.
Some Arabs, simplistically equating communication with normalization, may think we are moving too fast toward normalization. But we all know that dialogue must be enhanced for genuine progress. We all, together, need to take the first crucial step to lay the groundwork to effectively achieve peace. So we must all invest more in communication.
I think this redirection away from Obama’s demand that the Arab states “must” move speedily towards giving the Israeli government “recognition of its legitimacy,” to a focus on urging his fellow Arabs to do more to address the Israeli “public” and their “media” directly is significant, and quite helpful. (Though how Salman expected to bring other Arabs around to his point of view by deriding their viewpoint as “simplistic”, I have no idea… The text in general looks as though it was written by a second-rate Washington PR firm.)
Recognition of the State of Israel as such is an act of state that– along with a bunch of other things– the Arab states have all promised to Israel as part of, or in the wake of, Israel’s conclusion of final peace agreements with all their neighbors. Why should anyone expect them to give it away now?
Anyway, a few more observations on this general topic:
- 1. The formulation Mitchell gave in Cairo on July 27 on (a) the need for a “comprehensive” peace, (b) how he defines this comprehensive peace; and (c) how and when he considers it’s realistic to get the Arab states to undertake “confidence-building measures” was significant and important. I don’t think it got anything like sufficient attention at the time… And I can’t even find the text of that on either the State Department or the White House website.
2. Of course, as I’ve written before, it riles the heck out of many Americans, including AIPAC, that the balance of power/interests between the US and Saudi Arabia– as well as between Washington and several other Gulf states– is such that Washington can never simply “tell” these states what to do, in the same imperialistic way it often tries to tell the big aid recipients like Egypt or Jordan what to do. (Oh, Israel is also a big aid recipient. Couldn’t we tell them what to do, also??) Regarding Saudi Arabia, the US is pathetically dependent on the Al-Saud to keep the oil spigots open and to recycle as much of their petrodollars as possible into propping up the chronically troubled US arms industries… In the case of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE, those states are all now vital nodes in the US military’s basing plans in the military campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan– as well as significant oil exporters. Okay, so there is a sort of co-dependence between many of these governments and Washington. But that is still a far cry from the deep dependence that the Mubarak regime or Jordan’s Hashemites have on Washington.
3. Regarding AIPAC’s recent campaign to gather senatorial signatures on the “Bayh-Risch” letter that urges Obama to “press” the Arab states to consider making “dramatic” confidence-building gestures towards Israel, it strikes me it is really a rather pro-forma effort on AIPAC’s behalf.
After all, the big confrontation between AIPAC’s buddy-buddy BFFs in the government of Israel and the US president is currently over the issue of Israeli settlements. But we don’t see AIPAC mounting a letter-writing campaign about that one, do we? No, indeed, because for many years now AIPAC has had a strong modus operandi of not even starting campaigns they don’t think they can win handily… And on the settlement-construction issue, their analysts have evidently figured out that that’s an issue on which they wouldn’t get much support in congress.
Good.
4. Regarding the Arab Peace Initiative in general, though it’s a great thing for Obama and all other serious peacemakers to have in their hand, I hope they’re all aware that the prospect of “normalization with the Arab world” is no longer one that sets many Israeli hearts a-beating. You can see some of my comments on this in my recent article in Boston Review.
Finally, my biggest question right now is over timing…. Assuming that Obama and Mitchell are really serious in saying they want to nail down the “comprehensive peace agreements” between Israel and all its Arab neighbors– when the heck are they going to start?
Ramadan is coming up on around August 20. Prior to that, Hosni Mubarak is due in Washington August 18. (One week from today.)
Can we expect a big announcement of the US’s broad diplomatic initiative sometime before Ramadan? If not, then it will probably have to be delayed until the end of September or so. But I hate the thought of that much additional delay…