The three "No's" of the Khartoum Summit (June 1967) rejecting the
recognition of, reconciliation or negotiation with Israel did not
constitute the essence of the official Arab orientation following
the 1967 defeat. In point of fact, it was the Khartoum Summit that
instituted the shift from the strategy of "liberation" to that of
"erasing the effects of the aggression," and adopted the political
and diplomatic option as the chief course to follow in order to
regain the lands occupied by Israel in 1967. And if the military
option was not dropped altogether, it was relegated to a
precautionary alternative "to face any arising eventuality." As for
the economic weapon, especially petrol, the delegates saw the
potential of exploiting it as a "positive weapon" to bolster the
economies of the confrontation states and to help them in their
steadfastness (sumud). Instead of cutting off oil supplies as a
means of pressure on the countries backing Israel, the pumping was
resumed to even greater levels while a small percentage of the
returns was allotted to the countries directly affected by the
Israeli invasion. Thus the Khartoum Summit drew the parameters of a
strategy that places the emphasis on the political and diplomatic
effort, divorced from any pressurizing mechanism that would have
lent it the necessary clout to influence international or Israeli
decisions.
It is within these parameters that the official Arab position has
been fluctuating during the subsequent decades, most notably after
the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's declaration that the October
War (1973) was the last Arab-Israeli war - an implicit declaration
of intent to drop the Arab military option completely. This
coincided with the collapse of the oil embargo and the beginning of
negotiations on disengagement.
The Arab position has seen several developments - some of great
importance - regarding the substance and framework of a Middle East
settlement. They had varying degrees of impact on the course of the
conflict and the peace efforts, but they never rose to the level of
spearheading an initiative. They were mostly accommodations to
initiatives and conditions put forth by other parties concerned
with the conflict.
The early perception by the Palestinian leadership of these facts
led to a dramatic change in its strategic vision and to the
adoption of what was then known as the "Transitional Program"
(1973-1974). Reinforced by the upsurge of the Palestinian
resistance inside and outside the occupied territories, this change
was behind the first notable development in the official Arab
position regarding the substance of a peace settlement. Until the
1973 war, "removing the effects of the aggression" used to signify
a return to the pre-June 1967 situation. The only condition spelled
out by the Khartoum Summit in this respect was "securing the
withdrawal of the Israeli aggressors from the Arab lands occupied
after the June 5 attack."
A solution along these lines would have eliminated the Palestinian
reality from the Arab agenda after it had imposed itself as a core
element in the conflict. The Transitional Program was to block the
road to such an eventuality by underscoring two major demands: The
first is the right of the Palestinian people to "self-determination
on any liberated Palestinian land, including the right to establish
an independent Palestinian state within the borders of June 4,
1967." The second is "the right of the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) to express the will of the Palestinian people
regarding the future of their national question in its capacity as
their sole legitimate representative."
The Algiers Summit (end of November 1973) marked the first step
towards the endorsement of these two demands as integral to the
Arab concept of a peace solution. The summit posited that "peace
requires the fulfillment of a number of conditions," most
importantly:
* The Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories occupied in
June 1967 and at their forefront Jerusalem;
* The restoration of the inalienable national rights of the
Palestinians in accordance with what the PLO decrees in its
capacity as their sole representative.
Some months after the adoption of the 10-Point Program by the
Palestinian National Council (PNC) in Cairo, a clearer definition
of the essence of the "inalienable national rights" of the
Palestinian people came in the Rabat Summit (end of October 1974),
which affirmed "the right of the Palestinian people to return to
their homeland and to self-determination," and "their right to
establish an independent national authority on any Palestinian
territories liberated from occupation, under the leadership of the
PLO, as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian
people."
Then followed other summits with their resolutions, starting with
the Baghdad Summit (November 1978), dispelling any ambiguity about
the statement "full liberation of all the Arab lands occupied
during the June 1967 aggression… and to recover the national
rights of the Arab Palestinian people, including their right of
return, self-determination, and the establishment of the
independent Palestinian state on their national soil."
In spite of its being stripped of any pressurizing leverage, the
Arab position could have been more effective in determining the
course of peace efforts, had there been a concrete implementation
of the principle espoused theoretically by the successive Arab
summits that "just peace" is a "comprehensive peace" on all tracks.
This was the thrust of the Rabat resolutions (1974), which spelled
out the "inadmissibility of any partial political settlements,
emanating from the national aspect of the cause and its
indivisibility." But this principle was soon deserted because of
the need to comply with the American "step-by-step" policy, due to
the absence of any other pressurizing options.
The negotiations on "troop disengagement" that initially were
justified as essentially military arrangements produced partial
settlements that were political settlements par excellence, based
on limited Israeli withdrawals on the Egyptian and Syrian fronts,
combined with the stringent arrangements of an internationally
supervised truce which solidified the final exclusion of the
military option. The stagnation that emanated from these
settlements could only be avoided, given these conditions, by
following the logic of the step-by-step approach to its final
conclusion: a separate solution. This is what Sadat had decided to
follow when he signed the Camp David Accords and the
Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement.
While the separate peace agreement allowed Egypt to recover its
occupied national soil up to the borders of June 4, 1967
(irrespective of the severe restrictions that were placed on
Egyptian military presence and, consequently, on Egyptian
sovereignty rights in Sinai), it undoubtedly weakened to a perilous
degree the Arab negotiating position on all the other tracks. It
did away with the last bastion of Arab strength that could have
conceivably compensated the imbalance in the negotiation equation -
the solidarity predicated on the comprehensiveness of the
solution.
The Egyptian leadership, in an attempt to cover up the separate
nature of its agreement with Israel, sought to link this agreement
with an understanding about the features of a solution to the
Palestinian issue. Thus we had the "Palestinian Chapter" of the
Camp David Accords. This plan embodied the step-by-step approach,
partial and transitional arrangements, to become an ingrained
principle in the essential content of a peace solution on the
Palestinian track, and not only in its mechanisms.
Thus, for the first time, with the approval of an Arab partner, the
format of self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza was accepted for an
interim period of five years during which negotiations would be
held for a final settlement. What happened, therefore, was the
breaking up of the "comprehensive settlement" into separate tracks;
then the splitting up of the solution on one track (especially the
Palestinian) into separate transitional stages, without identifying
the final end for this presumed "transition."
Tackling the fissures in Arab unity as result of the above was the
primary concern of the Ninth Arab summit held in Baghdad at the
beginning of November 1978. The members issued a declaration
stressing their "non-approval" of the Camp David Accords and "the
rejection of all that emanates from these agreements." They called
upon Egypt to revoke these agreements and "not to act unilaterally
with matters pertaining to the Arab-Zionist conflict." Egypt's
membership in the Arab League was temporarily suspended as a
result.
This attempt to contain the tear in the fabric of Arab unity caused
by the Camp David Accords soon began to erode due to certain
important developments in the region, such as the outbreak of the
Iran-Iraq War, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982,
resulting in the exodus of the Palestinian leadership and
resistance from Beirut and the divisions that ensued among
Palestinian ranks.
The gradual breakdown of Arab consensus about Camp David can be
traced back to the Fez Summit. The first round of this conference,
held in November 25, 1981, a year after the outbreak of the
Iran-Iraq War, was characterized by sharp disagreements among the
Arab parties thwarting the arrival at a resolution. They regrouped
for a second round at the beginning of September 1982, after the
two wars in the Gulf and in Lebanon caused a fundamental shift in
the balance of power in the region. The summit adopted the plan of
Saudi Arabia's King Fahd Abdel-Aziz, after the introduction of some
minor rectifications, as an Arab peace plan. The new element here
was the proposal to place the West Bank and Gaza - after the
Israeli withdrawal from them - under UN supervision for a
transitional period "not exceeding a few months, as a prelude to
the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with
Jerusalem as its capital." The plan called upon the Security
Council "to provide guarantees for peace among all the states in
the region," thus implying the readiness of the other Arab
countries to join in a comprehensive peace with Israel, with
international guarantees.
The only mechanism adopted by the conference to activate its peace
plan was the formation a committee to "initiate contacts with the
permanent members of the Security Council, to probe their position
and that which the U.S. had recently declared." This was a
reference to the "initiative" launched by U.S. President Ronald
Reagan in the wake of the ceasefire in Lebanon, which reiterated
the commitment of the U.S. to a Middle East peace based on the
framework of the Camp David Accords. The initiative also made an
ambiguous reference to "the right of the Palestinians to a
homeland," without specifying its borders or the nature of its
sovereignty.
The period following the Fez Summit saw a total standstill in the
search for a settlement. Jordan's efforts - after the signing of
the Jordanian-Palestinian agreement on February 11, 1985 - failed
to reinvigorate the process, which ultimately led to the unraveling
of the agreement. In the absence of international interest in the
conflict, the most noted development in the Arab position was the
call for an international peace conference in the Middle East to be
held under the auspices of the UN, with the participation of the
five permanent members of the Security Council and all parties to
the conflict, including the PLO. But this invitation did not elicit
any response in light of Israel's insistence - with the blessing
and encouragement of the U.S. - on direct bilateral negotiations
with American mediation.
The Palestinian intifada that broke out in December 1987 was a
catalyst for a chain of dramatic transformations in the Arab
position regarding the Palestinian problem. These began with the
extraordinary Arab summit in Algiers in June 1988. A resolution was
taken that merged the Fez peace plan with the call for an
international peace conference "based on the relevant UN
resolutions," and insisting on "PLO participation on an equal
footing and with the same rights as the other parties." In keeping
with the spirit of the Algiers Summit, the Jordanian government
took the decision to disengage with the West Bank. This paved the
road for the declaration of independence of the state of Palestine
and the adoption by the PLO of a Palestinian peace initiative,
which proclaimed for the first time Palestinian readiness to accept
a two-state solution based on UN Resolutions 242 and 338.
This coincided with the end of the Iran-Iraq War and with
exceptional efforts to put an end to internal dissent and to clear
the air among the Arab countries, including ending the boycott of
Egypt and its return to the fold of the Arab League. All this was
decided in the extraordinary summit held in Casablanca in May 1989,
where a committee was formed headed by Morocco's King Hassan II to
hold international contacts "in order to revive the peace process
and to participate in the preparation for an international
conference." These Arab efforts, against the backdrop of the
intifada, helped secure wider international recognition of the
Palestinian declaration of independence and the upgrading of the
Palestinian representation in the UN. However, they collided with
two obstacles. The first was Israeli rejection to negotiate with
the PLO, although an official dialogue had been initiated between
the organization and the U.S. The second was the American-backed
Israeli insistence on the format of bilateral negotiations in lieu
of an international conference and following the framework of Camp
David as a basis for a solution on the Palestinian
track.
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait shifted international attention once
again to the Gulf away from the Arab-Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
But the contrast between the extraordinary international
mobilization to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait contrasted with
the decade-long dilly-dallying to put an end to the Israeli
occupation of Palestine, the Golan and South Lebanon, was a real
embarrassment to the Arab countries forming part of the U.S.-led
alliance. They were pushed into exerting significant pressure on
the U.S. to commit to an active resumption of the Middle East peace
process immediately after the completion of the "liberation of
Kuwait."
In the spring of 1991, Washington began effectively to prepare for
the Madrid Conference. It retained the prerogative to decide the
mechanisms and bases of the negotiating process. Outwardly, the
format seemed to take into consideration the demands of the Arab
countries and other international players for an international
framework for comprehensive negotiations based on UN resolutions.
In essence, though, the chosen format coincided with the
Israeli-American concept of direct bilateral negotiations as
charted by the Camp David Accords.
During the conference, negotiations on land and rights were carried
out in separate bilateral tracks. The Palestinian representation
consisting of personalities from the occupied territories, not
affiliated with the PLO, and incorporated into a joint
Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, negotiated over the conditions of
an interim period of self-rule during which negotiations (without
set goals) would be held regarding the permanent settlement. As for
the multilateral tracks, those were restricted to issues of
security, regional integration and economic and environmental
relations; i.e., everything that pertained to the normalization of
Arab-Israeli relations and the incorporation of Israel within the
region.
This formula could not lead to a comprehensive peace, nor could it
provide the Arab side with the minimum level of counter-balance
against the American-backed Israeli side. But it did facilitate a
dramatic breakthrough through secret negotiations on the
Palestinian-Israeli track that culminated in the Oslo Accords and
later opened the door for the signing of the Jordanian-Israeli
peace agreement.
With the erosion of the Madrid process and the fragmentation in
Arab ranks in the wake of the Second Gulf War, the region witnessed
a total collapse of the Arab political order which the
extraordinary summit held in Cairo in June 1996 failed to avert.
And in the absence of joint Arab action, it became unrealistic to
talk about an "Arab role" in the peace process at a time when such
a role was sorely needed, especially with the hitches in the Oslo
process and the deadlocked negotiations on the Israeli-Syrian
track.
The high hopes hanging on the Oslo process gradually dissipated,
especially after the Likud victory and the formation of Binyamin
Netanyahu's government in May 1996. The threats coming out of the
Cairo Summit to the effect that the Arab states "would review"
their position vis-à-vis Israel if the latter procrastinated
or reneged on its commitments lacked weight and credibility and
failed to overcome Israeli intransigence, which blocked the
progress of a peace process that had become a complete
hostage to American unilateralism.
The coup de grâce to the Oslo process came at the hands
of Ehud Barak's Labor government that proved just as inflexible as
Likud's, especially on permanent-status issues. In spite of the
personal intervention of U.S. President Bill Clinton, the Camp
David negotiations (August 2000) failed to rescue the peace process
from the impasse it had reached.
The second Palestinian intifada, which broke out on September 28,
2000 as a reaction to Israeli stalling and intransigence, was a
wake-up call for the Arab leadership. The anger that swept the Arab
street in solidarity with the intifada was, in one sense, a protest
against Arab impotence and inaction, and a pressurizing factor to
revive joint Arab action. The response was the extraordinary Arab
summit held in Cairo on October 21, 2000, and which was described
by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as the embodiment of "the pulse
of the Arab street everywhere and an expression of the great
justifiable anger that took hold of he Arab and Muslim nations in
their entirety."
The conference had been hastily convened and its resolutions were
restricted to restoring the regularity of the Arab summits, the
establishment of US$1 billion in funds to support the intifada and
Palestinian steadfastness, and the renewal of threats to freeze or
even terminate relations with Israel. The resumption of the joint
Arab action on the one hand, and the continuation of the
Palestinian intifada and its transformation into a bloody
confrontation with Israel on the other, compelled the international
community to assume a more active role to move the peace process
forward. They also led to the restitution of an internal dialogue
between the Arab countries in order to review their common stance
for a solution. Once again, Saudi Arabia took the initiative
through proposals floated by then-Crown Prince Abdullah
ibn-Abdel-Aziz. Following deliberations of more than a year and the
introduction of important amendments, these proposals were
unanimously adopted as an Arab peace plan at the Beirut Summit in
March 2002.
It was the first time that the Arab countries proposed publicly and
unanimously the establishment of normal relations with Israel
within the context of a comprehensive peace agreement that ensures
security for all the countries in the region - contingent on the
fulfillment of three conditions:
* The total withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 borders from all
occupied Palestinian and Arab lands;
* The arrival at a just solution to the problem of Palestinian
refugees to be agreed upon in accordance with General Assembly
Resolution 194; and
* The acceptance of the establishment of an independent and
sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,
with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The immediate and peremptory Israeli rejection does not diminish
the importance of the initiative. First, after over two decades of
discord and the race for separate solutions, it has succeeded in
reunifying the Arab position, based on a common notion of a
comprehensive peace that safeguards the minimum level of
Palestinian and Arab rights recognized by international legitimacy.
Second, it has presented a balanced approach that takes into
consideration the vital interests of all parties and, consequently,
is able to attract support and wide international acceptance. And,
finally, the Arab initiative has come to be regarded as one of the
reliable references adopted internationally for a process of peace,
and was recognized as such by the Road Map and UN Security Council
Resolution 1515.
The initiative has succeeded, then, in achieving one of its
functions: Arab consensus regarding a peaceful solution to be
presented to the world in a balanced and acceptable formula. But
real success in influencing the course of the peace process, in
reviving it and leading it to fruition calls for more than justice,
balance and international approval: It needs to be shored up by
concrete leverage to bring the international community to bear
pressure on Israel to seriously comply with the requisites of
peace.
The experience we have lived through over the last four decades is
proof enough that, in order to have an impact on the direction of
peace efforts, the Arab states should be committed to put into
effect the resolutions they have adopted theoretically at more than
one summit. Among these are:
* To safeguard Arab solidarity, to avoid internal strife and
peripheral conflicts, and to reinforce joint Arab action by giving
priority to the resolution of the Arab-Palestinian-Israeli conflict
ahead of the other challenges facing the Arab world;
* To adopt a common Arab negotiating line that adheres to the
formula of comprehensive and joint negotiations, within the
framework of an international conference on the basis of UN
resolutions and the Arab peace initiative;
* To commit to the resolutions which bind the level of relations
between the Arab countries and Israel to the degree of progress in
the peace process and the extent of Israeli adherence to its
stipulations;
* To reactivate the Joint Defense Treaty between the States of the
Arab League for the achievement of a strategic balance of power
that guarantees symmetry in the negotiating equation;
* To utilize the Arab economic potential to strengthen the
Palestinian and Arab negotiating position in accordance with a
realistic plan that takes into consideration the complexity of
internationally intertwined economic relations in an era of
globalization;
* To safeguard the independence of the Arab decision pertaining to
the core question, the Palestinian-Arab-Israeli conflict, and to
curtail negative external pressure;
* To adopt a determined, active and persistent policy to use
international platforms, especially the UN, in order to contain
Israeli intransigence, to expose the double standards in American
policy and to press for the achievement of a comprehensive and
equitable peace settlement based on the principles of international
legitimacy.