The Beirut Declaration, based almost entirely on Crown Prince Abdullah’s peace initiative, is the golden key that could one day unlock the door to Palestinian freedom and peace. That door however cannot be opened while it is jammed shut with the bodies of innocent dead from both sides and the massive hulks of Israeli tanks and bulldozers.
Nevertheless, the Declaration is now there. If extra weight were needed, it was added by the presence in Beirut of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as a keynote speaker.
The Arab summit might not have ended on such a positive note. The Israelis connived successfully to keep Yasser Arafat from attending. Had the Palestinian leader been “permitted” to leave his own territory, there was no guarantee that the Sharon government would have “permitted” him to return. The absence of King Abdallah of Jordan and President Mubarak of Egypt was also a disappointment. Nevertheless at the end of the two-day conference, all delegations were able to identify a common cause and unite around the Saudi plan.
Commentators had predicted after the first day’s proceedings in Beirut that the Israelis would be rubbing their hands in glee at the apparent confusion and contradictions that were emerging from the conference room. If Sharon and his fellow hard-liners were indeed rejoicing, their pleasure was short-lived. The terrible waste of yet more life at the Passover feast at Netanya shows once again that it is not Palestinians alone who need peace; Israelis too need it. Israel may unroll yet more plans for repressive military action. However, the Beirut Declaration demonstrates how pointless and wasteful further Zionist brutality will be.
It shows as clearly as anyone could wish that peace is there and it is a peace that is just and equitable for both sides in this bloody conflict. There is no further excuse for the Israelis to continue their futile attempts to gain the same ends by force. Not an ounce of blood that has been shed since Sharon set out to “teach” the Palestinians “a lesson” need have been spilt at all. The only gain that will come from continued violence is the awful accretion of bitterness and wrongs that each side will need to overcome.
The Arab world has demonstrated in Beirut that it has both the will and the vision to cut the Gordian knot of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Palestinians have endorsed this way forward. The United Nations and Kofi Annan see nothing but justice in the Beirut Declaration. Only the Zionist Israelis and their still astonishingly compliant US backers prefer to ignore this olive branch of peace.
It is hard at this time of terrible and unnecessary suffering by both Palestinians and Israelis to speak of hope. So many wrongs are being done and so much anger is being engendered. But there is nothing else to do except treasure the flickering hope that the violence will end, even though at the moment the doorway to peace seems so immovably blocked by hard-liners. Nevertheless, there should be little doubt that while the Beirut Declaration may not be the dream come true for the likes of Sharon, it will one day prove to be the key that opens the way to justice and freedom and peace for Palestine and the Middle East.
