WASHINGTON, 1 March — Crown Prince Abdullah’s proposal aimed at bringing about an end to violence that has gripped the Middle East was welcomed warmly by Arab and Israeli groups here and in the Middle East too.
The plan, which has evoked worldwide interest while fostering hope of eventual peace in the region, was lauded for its direct approach by the Peace Now group’s official here.
“We haven’t seen the complete plan, so as far as we know, there is nothing substantively new. But what is important is who has said it, and that it raises the final status issue in a way it hasn’t been in a long time,” said Lewis Roth, Assistant Executive Director of Peace Now, a Washington-based Jewish peace organization linked to the Peace Now Movement in Israel.
“The Saudis are providing a political horizon for Israel to resume the negotiations beyond the bilateral talks.”
The initiative caught many on both sides of the conflict off guard, said Mamoun Fandy, a Middle East scholar at the Near East-South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington.
As the spiritual home of Islam, “the Saudis can bring along the entire Muslim world, from Indonesia to Africa, if they decide to make peace with Israel,” Fandy said.
In an oblique show of support, Hassan Yusuf, the West Bank leader of the Hamas movement, said his group “will not obstruct” a deal that requires Israel to withdraw from occupied lands.
Galia Goolan, leader of Peace Now, the Israeli Peace Movement, told Arab News yesterday by telephone that she thinks the Saudi proposal is an “extremely important initiative because it speaks exactly to the concerns of the Israeli public, which is normalization with the countries around us, our neighbors.”
“What the Saudi initiative addresses is exactly this crucial issue, we in Peace Now recently began a campaign here calling for Israel to leave the territories, because we believe that this is what the public wants.”
Goolan said she thought the current Sharon government would have to take up the initiative because “it will be difficult for the government to resist public pressure. If the Israeli public knows they can have peace and normalization, something they did not, until now, believe was possible, and that the only price is pulling out of the territories, then I think you will have very strong public pressure to do so.”
Goolan conceded that the extreme right-wing coalition of Sharon’s government may try threaten to pull out and collapse the government, but said: “It is very early to say how things will develop, but there is hope for public pressure to make out government (to giving up the occupied territories) act.”
