Abusing the Arab Peace Initiative

by Nicola Nasser
(Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait , Jordan , UAE and Palestine . He is based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories)

"The failed Qatari mediation in the still unresolved inter-Palestinian divide was in practice an American success in turning the Arab Peace Initiative (API) into a pressure tool that further exacerbates fractures both in Arab and Palestinian ranks, less than two weeks after the U.S. aborted a move by the Arab League to revive an overdue comprehensive approach to the Arab and Palestinian – Israeli conflict on its basis through the United Nations.The Unites States is now trying to find a common ground with regional powers to abuse this initiative as a regional framework for a coordinated effort vis-à-vis Iran , Syria and their Palestinian, Lebanese and Iraqi spheres of influence.

The fallout of the Lebanon war unmasked the impotence of Israel’s overwhelming military superiority, discredited negotiations as an Arab strategy to coerce Israel into accepting just peace, confirmed the United States as a biased broker in the conflict, gave impetus and credibility to Syrian and Iranian arguments, doomed the already moribund Palestinian – Israeli peace process, which was pronounced “dead” by none other than the spokesman of the Arab League leaders Amr Moussa, created a rift in the ranks of the Arab leaders, which rendered convening an Arab summit impossible after a few years of regular meetings, revived war as a possible alternative to resolve the conflict and widened the gap between Arab rulers and their people.

The U.S. and Israel swiftly snubbed the Arab move in the bud, but nonetheless perceived in it and its motives a common ground with some Arabs vis-à-vis Syria and Iran , “to recast the (regional) political landscape from the traditional one of Arabs versus Israelis … into a Sunni vs. Shiia alignment.” (1)

Immediately the U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, seized on the opportunity and embarked on a Middle East mission early this month to profit on the inter-Arab and inter-Palestinian divides.

Neither Hamas nor Palestinians are in short memory not to remember that the central committee of Fatah, the four-decade leader of the PLO and at the time the ruling party of PLO offshoot, the Palestinian Authority, issued a statement describing the API as another “stab” against the struggle of the Palestinian people. Is it too much now for Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haneya, of Hamas, to reject it as “problematic!”
The initiative does not address: (1) the nature of the envisioned Palestinian state or the level of its militarization, (2) the use of water resources, (3) access to Jerusalem and its holy sites as well as access to other holy sites within the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine or access between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, (4) the fate of more than 160 Israeli colonies home to more than 450.000 illegal Jewish settlers in the envisioned Palestinian state, (5) the borders and the border controls between Israel and the Palestinian state, and (6) the fate of Palestinian prisoners.

How could anyone blame Hamas for insisting on alternative terms of reference other than the terms which the PLO was coerced to accept when an Israeli academic and author, like Tanya Reinhart, decides to quit as emeritus professor at Tel Aviv University and “return” to Australia in protest against Israel’s handling of the Palestinian issue after condemning its government for lying to the world by using arguments about Israel's right to exist as a cover for grabbing land and resources from the Palestinian people. “Palestinians should not have to pay the price of the Holocaust,” she said, adding that Israel is imprisoning “a whole nation.” (2)

How could anyone blame Hamas for insisting on alternative terms of reference other than the terms which the PLO was coerced into accepting!