Today I am going to ask you to use a little bit of imagination. Try to think what the Middle East and the world would be like if a full peace — of the kind proposed by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in 2002 and again in 2007 — had been signed between Israel and all Arab countries after the 1973 war. I have little doubt that the Middle East would be a region of dynamic and flourishing business, tourism and overall development. This image that we hold in our mind’s eye should serve as a shared motive for us not to allow ourselves to miss another opportunity for our region to live in peace, stability and progress.
The Arab and Islamic world represent a wide swath of geopolitically crucial territory, and a large part of the world’s population. From the Atlantic to the Red Sea, and to the tip of the Gulf, the Arab “continent” covers 6,140,000 square miles and connects Europe, Asia, Africa and the Atlantic door to the Americas. The land mass is twice the size of the USA, bigger than any country in the planet. The “Islamic Belt” reaches on through Iran, Pakistan, parts of India and Bangladesh, to Indonesia. Beyond the 300 million Arabs these are now 1.2 billion Muslims. As a whole, it is a region bountiful in resources and labor, yet has remained deprived of the concomitant development through a lack of infrastructure, education and hope. This arguably represents one of the greatest historical losses of modern times.
Unfortunately, this lost opportunity is an enduring feature of Middle Eastern politics until the present day. We are still speaking about the same old details of an imagined peace — boundaries, the question of refugees, an end to the Israeli violations of international law — but the party which we face still sees only terrorism and does not believe in a sincere Arab desire for peace. If only we could surmount the blindness that has dogged us all and see the endless opportunities that would be offered us in peace.
The billions of dollars spent on weapons and other negative guarantees would have been spent on building schools, investing in our agriculture, industry and infrastructure. Saudi Arabia could today be a leader in alternative energies and in the myriad non-fuel uses of hydrocarbons. Our Arab “continent” — with its high-tech Israeli partner — could be a driving force in the world economy, providing jobs, a dignified existence and stability to so many deprived people. The huts and dirt roads which are dotted across our territories would be replaced with houses with electricity and solid tarmac links to the rest of the world. In fact, we could be a model of development to the rest of the world today.
Instead of pitying ourselves for the missed opportunities of peace and progress, let us pledge not to miss that opportunity again. Conscious of the endless benefits it would provide us and our Israeli neighbors, let us work wholeheartedly and obstinately for peace. Let us keep in mind those benefits and what our goals should be. When we have peace we can invest optimistically in our schools and universities, promoting a new form of responsible and sustainable development that will be an example for the world. Our region would be one of the tourist highlights of the world, with its mountains, endless coastlines and surprisingly rich deserts.
Peace would mean taking advantage and promoting all of these dreams, making us somewhat of a model and a guiding light for the world. We would have a peace of nourishment, of added value and of boundless creativity.
It is baffling to see what we have all forgone in our region by looking away from the real benefits that peace can bring. Israelis are still occupying and beating down the Palestinians and we Arabs spend our time making trips back and forth to the United Nations pleading for peace and the respect of international law. Other than that, we have been too busy protecting ourselves from invaders to seriously better our own situation.
What we would like to see is a Middle East that works for and takes care of its people, a Middle East that offers us all the opportunities that we should rightfully possess. We must seize the chance of peace today and all of our lives would be transformed. In ten years Israelis and Arabs together could be an economic powerhouse, a model of sustainable development and an immense message of hope for the world. Let us all leave behind our policies of fear and blindness and build bridges rather than fences. So many opportunities are waiting to be seized by us and we cannot allow ourselves to regret them again in ten years’ time.
— Hassan Yassin is a Saudi businessman based in Riyadh and former head of The Saudi Information Office in Washington, D.C.
