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Looking Straight at the Saudi Peace Initiative

[Ha'aretz] Asher Susser - The Saudi peace initiative is a welcome one, even if Israel does not accept all its details. However, it is impossible to conduct a serious discussion on the Saudi peace plan without knowing exactly what it says - that is, to analyze it textually. The initiative was first approved at the Beirut summit in March 2002, and was approved again at the Riyadh summit in March 2007. In Riyadh it was determined that: "The achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem should be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194 while rejecting all forms of patriation [resettlement]"(in Arabic - tawtin). This is where the real problem lies, since the beginning of the statement is not consistent with the end. How can an agreement with Israel be arrived at on the refugee question, which clearly cannot be based on the return of millions of refugees, if from the outset the possibility of resettling refugees who will not return to Israel is rejected? The problem is that this position, which opposes all resettlement, is impossible for Israel. Marwan Muashar, Jordan's first ambassador to Israel, who eventually became Jordan's foreign minister, who was among the main writers of the first Saudi initiative, reveals in his recently published book that he immediately realized the problem in this formulation, and explained this to his Arab colleagues. Nevertheless, the closing statement of the Beirut summit, which was published along with the initiative, asserts: "The [Arab] leaders regard Israel as bearing the full legal responsibility for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem and for their expulsion and reaffirm their total rejection of plans of solution or the schemes and the attempts intended to resettle them [tawinihin] outside their country." The writer is a senior fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.
2008-12-19 06:00:00
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