Our main problem in dealing with successive US administrations — Democrat or Republican — has been Palestine, which we place so high on our agenda that it dominates every other topic in our talks with them. While it admittedly is the mother of all Arab issues, it can also be an impediment when an Arab country is engaged in negotiations with Washington.
We have a tendency to link any US policy toward Arabs with Washington’s bias toward Israel in the Arab-Israeli conflict. If American officials talk of human rights, our immediate reaction is to wonder: What about the human rights of the Palestinians in the occupied territories? If the talk is about monuments and holy sites, we ask what about Israel’s actions in destroying Arab and Islamic monuments in Jerusalem? And so the list goes on.
A case in point is a Dec. 13 interview of Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa with Asharq Al-Awsat. Commenting on Bush’s address regarding democracy in the region, he said that while he did not consider all this talk about democracy a threat to Arab states, it was his opinion that the threat “comes as a result of a melding of different matters — democracy on one hand and occupation and double standards on the other — into an indistinguishable whole. Thus we cannot accept a policy that is biased toward Israel to such an unprecedented extent... and then talk of democracy... What kind of democracy is this when nobody stops Israel erecting a dividing wall.”
While we do have common interests as Arabs, we also have relations with the rest of the world, and topping the list is our ties with the US. That relationship, with all its various political, cultural, economic and security aspects, does not negate our differences over some US positions on some issues.
But whatever our opinion of the US may be, most observers concur that it is in America’s interest for the situation in the Middle East to improve and for peace to prevail between Arabs and Israel. The US no longer has a rival in the region now that the Cold War is over and the USSR has ceased to exist.
If we close ourselves off, this will only lead to a weakening of the Arab position. This will in turn allow Israel to dictate terms on any US policy toward the Palestinians or any other issues relating to the region. That also means that it will be impossible to guarantee that the armed struggle doesn’t spread to neighboring countries, especially to Syria and Lebanon.
If there are clear differences between Washington and us over the Palestinian issue and we object to US bias toward Israel, does that have to be an obstacle on the path of our relations with Washington regarding matters that are no less important?
I don’t believe so. The Kingdom has made its views on the Palestinian issue clear through Crown Prince Abdullah’s peace plan, which was adopted by the Arab summit in Beirut.
The plan calls for Israeli withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders in return for peace and complete recognition of Israel’s existence and its borders and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. This plan was the main base for America’s own peace plan, the road map.
The Palestinian issue should not cast a shadow over our relationship with the US. It is fine to spell out the points where we differ with Washington, but we must look beyond these problems in order to discuss other issues that relate to Arab-American dealings.
If we don’t, we will lose everything — we will have tossed out every chance to reach an understanding with the US. In short, we must handle our national concerns without regard to the Palestinian issue, and we must approach the Palestinian issue without regard to our national concerns.
