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March 8, 2002/Adar 24, 5762, Vol. 54, No. 25
Arab world shows support for Saudi plan
GIL SEDAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - American and European diplomats are focused on a Saudi initiative for Israeli-Arab peace, but before the proposal can go anywhere it must get past Beirut.
Arab League officials will convene in the Lebanese capital later this month for a summit that is expected to consider the Saudi initiative, which calls on Israel to withdraw from all territory occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War in return for normalization of relations with the Arab world.
Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah mentioned the initiative in a February interview with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, but never formally presented it - out of anger at Israeli policy, the crown prince said.
Egypt has striven to keep economic and cultural contact with Israel to an absolute minimum. But Cairo also maintains that it has upheld its side of the 1979 peace treaty, which Israel anticipated would lead to a flourishing neighborly interchange. In Jordan, the other Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel, journalists and academics who have contact with Israeli counterparts are blacklisted, forced from their jobs and made to apologize.
The initiative in fact abandons the land-for-peace signposts - U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 - which have guided previous peace efforts.
The Arab world always has claimed that those resolutions call for complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem. Yet the record of the time clearly shows that U.N. diplomats rejected that approach in favor of vaguer terminology that would allow Israel to negotiate secure and defensible boundaries, even by retaining some of its war-won territory.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said this week that a return to the pre-1967 borders would endanger Israel's security, and warned Israeli officials to reject formulas not explicitly based on Resolutions 242 and 338.
Third, what room is there in the initiative for negotiation - on border adjustments, Jewish holy sites and the fate of Palestinian refugees?
Despite this vagueness, or perhaps because of it, the initiative stands a good chance to be adopted at the Arab summit.
That's because Saudi Arabia, the keeper of the Muslim holy sites, enjoys considerable influence in both the Arab world and the United States. In addition, the proposal now has the support of three key players - the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Syria.
Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat says he accepts the initiative "completely."
Cabinet member Saeb Erekat called it "the most significant and strategic idea that came from the Arab world since the convening of the" 1991 Madrid peace conference.
If the Arab League summit endorses the Saudi proposal, Arafat will receive Arab and Islamic backing for the Palestinians' conditions to end the conflict - complete Israeli withdrawal - as well as a road map to realize them.
One wild card, however, may be Arafat's ability to make it to Beirut. Saudi Arabia has said it will not present a formal plan if Israel does not allow Arafat to attend the Arab League summit.
Israel has kept Arafat confined to the West Bank city of Ramallah until he cracks down on terrorism, and has not said what it will do about the summit.
Egypt wants the United States to be more active in mediating between Israel and the Palestinians, and sees the Saudi proposal as an incentive for fresh negotiations.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said March 4 that Sharon had asked him to organize a secret meeting with Abdullah to discuss the Saudi initiative, but Abdullah rejected the idea out of hand, Mubarak said.
Mubarak, who was in Washington this week, presented his own proposal to host Sharon, Arafat and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to a summit in Egypt.
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