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Abdullah's plan: A clear path
As the Obama presidency starts to take shape, the Arab world should not assume that the Middle East is a high-priority issue for the White House.
- By Francis Matthew, Editor at Large
- Published: 22:11 November 26, 2008
- Image Credit: Illustration: Nino Jose Heredia/Gulf News
As the Obama presidency starts to take shape, the Arab world should not assume that the Middle East is a high-priority issue for the White House.
Barack Obama and his new administration will be thinking about the economy, and how to protect American jobs and companies. When they look overseas, their main focus will be on planning how to revitalise the world's sadly ignored multilateral institutions, and how to rebuild international trust in America over a huge range of issues.
The disputes between Palestine and Israel are too intractable and too high-risk for a new president to plunge in straight away. However, so many major international issues could be solved and so many new possibilities could open up in the Middle East if there was a just peace in Palestine that, almost inevitably, Obama will be led back to the importance of finding a solution.
Chance to define the agenda
This is why the Arab world should mount an immediate major initiative to rekindle interest in the peace process. While the incoming administration is still worrying over who will get which desk, and the position papers are still only draft policies, a serious Arab diplomatic push could take the initiative and define the agenda.
And the Arabs would be pushing at an open door in many parts of the world. Europe recognises that out-going President Bush's ill-fated Annapolis peace process is dead in the water.
The European Union is anxious to support the Arab Peace Initiative, as put forward by Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz and adopted by the 2002 Arab summit in Beirut, as a far more workable alternative to Annapolis.
Speaking in Abu Dhabi this week at the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research, UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband spelt out what he thought: "When the Arab Peace Initiative was launched in 2002 it was simply not given the attention it deserved. It was - and still is - one of the most significant and promising developments since the start of the conflict."
As Miliband spoke of the deteriorating situation in Palestine, and what he described as growing interest in the Abdullah Plan from senior Israelis including President Simon Peres, he also said "President-elect Obama has signalled that he understands the stakes. Arab leaders will do well to show him that the Arab Peace Initiative is still on the table; that this offer actively invites a serious Israeli counter-offer; and that there is a clear path for both sides to peace and normalisation. Europe needs to be there in support, and I believe it will be."
Miliband made clear that the UK and the EU see that the Abdullah Plan has a great advantage in that it offers a commitment to peace from the whole region. A peace treaty between Israel and Palestine based on the two-state formula of return of all land for complete peace would also include all the other Arab states.
Miliband spoke of a 23-state solution: the 22 Arab states and Israel.
The importance of the Abdullah Plan is that it is able to bring together all the different strands of political thinking in the Arab world while still remaining a very simple deal: a complete Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab territories in return for complete peace will envisage full diplomatic recognition and open borders from all the Arab states. This offers the radical Arab world the "victory" of complete withdrawal, and at the same time offers Israel the "victory" of complete acceptance by all Arab states.
Failure of current efforts
The fact that the European Union is ready to back the Arab Peace Initiative at this time makes clear that Europe and many other parts of the world recognise the failure of the present international efforts in the West Bank and Gaza.
As the incoming administration is working out what it wants to do, it is important that all Arab visitors to the USA in the next few months make sure that the incoming American officials are ready to use the Arab Peace Initiative as the basis of their plans. The transparent fairness which is the root of the plan allows it to be accepted by a wide range of opinion, other than die-hard Israeli fans of the military solution.
It is much more important for the Arab world to present its plan and get it incorporated into the agenda of the new Democratic administration, than to spend its time digging over speculation of Hilary Clinton's possible appointment to Secretary of State.
This route has two points of failure: firstly, if she is the new Secretary of State, Arabs leaders will have to deal with her anyway and better to do it with some public goodwill regardless of any private doubts; and second, we may all find Hilary reinventing herself into the outrageous pragmatist that she has shown herself to be.
If Clinton is offered a plan to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and she believes it might happen, she would seize the chance to be the Secretary of State who made it happen.
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