If the Arab summit held in Beirut last year attracted global headlines by launching a Middle East peace plan, the one taking place in March this year in Manama is likely to be remembered for an even more bold initiative.
It was in Beirut summit the Arab leaders declared, for the first time, their willingness to embrace Israel as a Mideast nation with full rights including normal diplomatic relations if the Jewish state relinquished control of all Arab territories it occupied in 1967. The plan was proposed by Crown Prince Abdullah.
It will be again the crown prince who will set the agenda for the Manama summit, this time with a plan for putting the Arab house in order.
The new initiative, titled “A Charter to Reform the Arab Condition,” seeks the regulation of inter-Arab ties and the Arab countries’ relations with the wider world outside.
What Crown Prince Abdullah has offered is more a bold vision than a concrete plan with a specified time frame. No society can improve its condition unless and until it realizes the malaise afflicting it. In that sense the crown prince’s initiative is an admission that things can’t go the way it has been for years. The initiative gives a new direction to the political and social life of Arabs.
Now in the hands of an Arab follow-up committee comprising a number of foreign ministers, the initiative rejects external aggression against any Arab state. More important, it urges self-reform in each country and greater political participation. Nobody will deny these are the two essential conditions for fully utilizing the enormous Arab potential leading to comprehensive developments in all sectors. Arab leaders would also pledge to deal objectively with international changes, notably globalization and the rise of mega economic blocs.
It calls on Arabs to forbid the use of force against each other and stand united against any Arab country attacking another.
Saudi Arabia wants the Arab leaders to adopt the initiative in the form of a declaration binding on all Arab states. Those refusing the new principles should not be accepted into the pan-Arab nation.
Arab leaders would pledge in the declaration to work to “safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Arab countries, upgrade their defense capabilities and decisively back the Palestinians.”
In this context, the initiative makes it clear that the Arab Middle East peace plan, endorsed by the Beirut summit in March last year, remains the minimum acceptable condition to establish normal relations with Israel.
The initiative contemplates a greater Arab free trade zone. Arabs are to work earnestly toward the full implementation of the zone by the end of 2005. This will be the forerunner of an Arab customs union to be established within 10 years.
Although the charter reiterates the well-known Arab position on Iraq, one will be missing the woods for the tree if one sees it in the context of the war cries emanating from Washington. In one sense, the Iraqi crisis can be viewed as the symptom of the disease affecting the Arab politic. One should also resist the temptation to see the initiative in the broader context of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the smear campaign in the US and West against certain Arab countries and Muslims in general.
For us in Saudi Arabia, there is another, a more important perspective, through which the whole exercise should be viewed. It is after all Crown Prince Abdullah who is the architect of this plan. Maybe, this is the vision he has for the future of his country.
