Over the past 12 months Canadian diplomatic and media circles have been wondering if the country has lost its credibility as an unbiased mediator in the Middle East. This impression has also been spreading in Middle Eastern countries prompting some of Canada’s close associates to suspect the country may have changed its role as an honest mediator in the Middle East conflict.
We know that Canada is still capable of making valuable contributions to the peace and stability of the region. Its balanced stand had earned for it the respect of not only Middle Eastern countries but the rest of the world as well. It was Lester Pearson, the then Canadian prime minister, who offered to send a peacekeeping force to the region during the Suez Crisis in 1956.
Arab diplomats in Canada were given an opportunity to meet Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay at the beginning of September to discuss Israel’s war on Lebanon last summer and to explain the Arab stance on the issue. I had just arrived in Ottawa as the Kingdom’s new ambassador and presented my credentials conveying Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah’s wishes for further improvement in the relations between our two countries.
I explained to the minister that the Arabs were not sitting idle, as he said, in the face of what was happening in Lebanon. I outlined the diplomatic efforts launched by King Abdullah with the aim of enforcing a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon. We told MacKay that we wished Canada stood by the initiative to stop the bloodshed through diplomatic channels and that when the cease-fire is enforced then we would also like Canada to support King Abdullah’s initiative for Israeli-Palestinian peace, which has been endorsed and adopted by the Arab Summit in Beirut in 2002. This initiative seeks to establish peace based on the establishment of a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel in peace and amity. Arabs will have full diplomatic relations with Israel if the Jewish state withdrew from lands it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.
As for the Lebanon developments, MacKay considered Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist organizations threatening the region’s peace and provoking the Israeli attack. But I reminded him that there was neither Hamas nor Hezbollah when Israel attacked Lebanon first time in 1982. The crux of the issue, I said, is not Hezbollah or Hamas but the abysmally low level of security and stability in the region because of the failure to achieve peace based on simple justice. The region will remain a hotbed of extremism and violence threatening the security of the entire world if basic issues are left unaddressed.
Finally, MacKay agreed with our viewpoint and promised to convey the Arab view to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Later, MacKay visited the Middle East. After witnessing the ground realties, he wrote an article pointing out the need of the Palestinian people for peace and a life with dignity. Many of his observations were encouraging and reiterated the Canadian support to the Palestinians’ right to the “establishment of a democratic Palestinian state guaranteeing them a peaceful life.”
The kind of understanding expressed by the minister is a prerequisite for any practical solution to the complex issues our region faces. He also indicated in his frank talks with the Israelis that the wall in the West Bank and the expansion of the Israeli settlements are major obstacles blocking peace.
The Saudi government deserves to be lauded for its efforts to break the impasse created by Palestinian groups. The Kingdom has paved the way for the return of normalcy in the Palestinian territories. King Abdullah’s efforts to make the warring Hamas and Fatah leaders meet in Makkah have been crowned with success. Both sides agreed to end the infighting and have now formed a national unity government.
The Palestinian groups should convince the world that they stand by the Makkah agreement and want to create a situation conducive to the lifting of sanctions. Countries such as Canada should come forward to back the Makkah agreement. The declaration that the new national government would respect all previous agreements signed by the Palestinian Authority will open the way for negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel.
The Kingdom is currently busy with efforts to end the Lebanese stalemate by persuading the contending parties to sort out their differences through negotiations.
We believe there are several international issues on which the Kingdom and Canada have identical views. For instance, both want to establish an international order based on peace, justice and stability. Both countries have strongly condemned terror in all its manifestations. The Kingdom is doing a lot, as is Canada, to help developing countries achieve progress. The Kingdom is ranked highest among aid-giving countries with four percent of its GNP given as development assistance to poor countries over the past three decades. This is apart from $6 billion given to a number of developing countries to ease their debt burden.
The Kingdom emphatically demands that the Middle East, including the Gulf region, should be free from all weapons of mass destruction. The Kingdom supports the right of every country to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. It has urged all parties involved to settle the Iranian nuclear issue peacefully. Canada has the capability to produce nuclear bombs but has desisted from doing so, a matter that lends credibility to its efforts to make other countries get rid of all types of WMD.
Currently, the Kingdom is following the developments in Jerusalem, where Israel is apparently attempting to provoke more trouble by digging close to the Al-Aqsa Mosque weakening the mosque’s foundations. The Kingdom strongly disapproves of the excavations and other provocative acts calculated to trigger fresh violence in the region.
Canada is a nation built on the principle of an open society comprising various races and ethnic groups, everyone enjoying equal rights and obligations irrespective of their origin. I have been delighted to listen to the candid manner in which Stephen Dion, the leader of opposition Federal Liberal Party, expounded his party’s stand on the Middle East. It was the same familiar Canadian stance toward the Arab-Israeli dispute characterized by a desire to improve relations with Arab countries.
We have always admired the way Canada has handled the crises in the region in the past and now I would like to see Canada the way we had known, admired and respected it in the past.
— Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Sowayegh is Saudi Ambassador in Canada.
