When Crown Prince Abdullah traveled to the United States for his meeting with President George W. Bush, he carried with him the prayers of not only the Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, but also of the whole world. The fear, from Moscow to Brussels, from Tokyo to Marrakesh, is that if the Middle East powder keg explodes, the fire will burn more than Palestinians and Israelis. It will rage across the borders of the region, and into areas that may consider beyond its reach. Hence the high level attention world capitals are paying to the meeting and to the discussions he is scheduled to hold with other officials and nonofficials in the coming days. It is only America that can pull the fuse and stop the war dance of those who believe that the path to peace is paved with skulls and carcasses.
The prince’s message is very simple. Peace cannot be gained in the Middle East on the basis of enslavement of a people. F-16s and Apache gunships can kill and destroy, and tanks and bulldozers can demolish and level, but they cannot terrorize into submission a people who have nothing to live for. Israel has been too successful in its rampage. It has convinced the people of Palestine that their lives are not worth living. When you do that, when, in order to ensure your security, you rob a people of hope, you rob yourself of security, instead of achieving it. Bush’s “man of peace”, with all his massacres and executions, has not won either peace for his country or security for his people. Israelis will have them only when Palestinians have them. Not before. To say this is not to “incite terrorism”, but to reassert a common-sense truth. This is the message the prince is carrying to Washington. His initiative, endorsed by the Arab world in the Beirut summit, sets out the principles that will bring peace to the region on the basis of independent, sovereign nations living side by side, as equals, not as masters or slaves. There is nothing atrocious about the demand that any human society should have the right to live in dignity. To reject hegemony is not to indulge in terrorism.
The Arab initiative offers Israel everything, and demands from it nothing more than, what the United Nations and the international community have decided it should have and should give. It offers it security and acceptance by the Arab community, and demands from it the vacation of the Arab lands it occupied in 1967. It promises it Palestine as a friendly neighbor and demands from it the same treatment to Palestine.
What can be fairer than that? Arabs don’t know the answer to that; nor does the international community.
Nor does Washington, to judge from its specific proposals. Of course, Israeli-firsters have many demands. Those demands have more to do with their electoral calculations than principles. We all appreciate the need of senators and congressmen to keep those who contribute to their campaign chests in good humor. Even the Palestinians understand that. Still, they should forgive the Palestinians for their unwillingness to give up their right to live as human beings so that they, the senators and congressmen, can have an easier time getting re-elected.
The hope — of Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, Europeans, Asians and everyone else — is that President Bush will tell “the man of peace” in Tel Aviv that while the Sabra-Shatilla method may be effective temporarily, as Gorazde-Srebrenica method was for the other “man of peace” — the one in Belgrade — it cannot be a basis for a secure Israel.
