Arab March on Washington

9 January 2010
The foreign ministers of the [Arab] states in the moderate camp have been arriving in rapid succession in the US capital, Washington, in a quest for a way out of the current stagnation in the peace process. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday met with two Arab delegations. The first was Jordanian, headed by Mr Nasir Judah, and the second was Egyptian and was composed of Head of the Intelligence Service General Umar Sulayman and Foreign Minister Mr Ahmad Abu-al-Ghayt. There are reports of more visits ahead in the next few days.

Clearly, Mrs Clinton is putting pressure on her Arab partners to find an acceptable scenario - or rather, to provide an umbrella - for a resumption of negotiations between the Palestinian and Israeli sides as soon as possible and without obliging the Israeli side to fully freeze settlement building in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem.

President Barack Obama's administration is going through its roughest days. It has suffered two tough security-related slaps in the last 30 days. One was the storming of the US CIA den in Khost by a Jordanian suicide bomber (Hammam al-Balawi) and the killing of seven of its most important leading figures, together with Al-Sharif Ali Bin-Zayd, the Jordanian intelligence officer. The second was the success of the Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in penetrating the strict security measures at Western airports and his attempt to detonate an explosive device on a civilian airliner over the US city of Detroit.

However, the strongest and most humiliating slap was perhaps the one it received from Iran, which has refused to meet its demands concerning the enriching of uranium at the stipulated deadline, which was the end of last year. In fact, Iran dared to challenge this administration with a provocative response by test-firing a "Sejjil-2" long-range missile and occupying an Iraqi oil well.

Amid these setbacks, the Obama administration is looking forward to securing "any achievement" in the Middle East, where it has been pursued by defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan. To this end, it is resorting to its "loyal Arab allies" to pump some blood into the arteries of the sclerotic peace process, so as to give the impression that it is still committed to its pledges to establish a Palestinian state.

Logic says that the axis of moderate Arab states should take advantage of this US need and should therefore put pressure on the Obama administration, the popularity of which is decreasing to unprecedented low ratings, to get it to take a firm position against Netanyahu's provocative settlement policies. But then, when were these states logical in their decisions and positions? And when did they offer services that are not gratuitous to the master of the White House? And what did they reap in return for their involvement in the war against Iraq or the war against terrorism, apart from more subservience and humiliation?

In the next few days, the Arab foreign ministers, both the pilgrims to the White House and those who stay in their capitals, and their governments will start putting pressure on the weakest side - that is, on Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas who has "drunk the leopard's milk" and who turned the table on the Americans, the Israelis, and the peace initiative Arabs when he refused to return to the negotiating table without a complete freeze of settlement building and when he decided not to stand as a candidate in any future Palestinian presidential elections.

President Abbas has suffered many humiliations in the last four years of his presidential mandate and, similarly, he has committed many mistakes by putting all his eggs in the basket of a humiliating peace process and dropping other options. However, by his refusal to return to the negotiating table while settlement building persists, he has saved a great deal of his reputation and cancelled out some of his sins. This is why he should do more good deeds, because they cancel out the misdeeds that have marked him and his presidency, by adhering to his position and not retreating from it no matter how enormous the pressure on him may become.

What prompts us to say this are the signs of retreat that we have noticed, and which were expressed by the Palestinian president in his recent interview with Al-Jazeera. He said that since the Arabs have chosen peace and since they continue in this option of theirs, then he is obliged to go along with their option and will not reject their will. This means that he will acquiesce to their demands if they decide to return to the negotiations or take part in a regional summit in the presence of Binyamin Netanyahu in Sharm-al-Shaykh. It is a summit that Mrs Clinton is planning to convene perhaps next month.

President Abbas forgets that the Fatah Movement over which he presides did not consult the Arab official establishment when it fired the first bullet 45 years ago and that it has always adhered to the independent national option. Why then should it retreat from this option now and show commitment to the positions of Arab states that are mortgaged to US regional projects, which are against the Palestinian national project of justice and independence?

Mrs Clinton and her administration have been leaking information about her determination to achieve a settlement and establish a Palestinian state within two years, in a fixed time scale and with guarantees to the Palestinian side through a commitment to the June 1967 borders. Does this not remind us of what President George Bush Sr said about a settlement of the Palestinian issue in the framework of the Madrid Conference following the "liberation" of Kuwait, or the pledges of George Bush Jr before the invasion of Iraq and its occupation in 2003 about the establishing of an independent Palestinian state before 2005?

President Obama's administration is now facing two difficult tests. The first concerns the "escalation of the war against terrorism" and more specifically against the Al-Qa'idah Organization. The second is about taking decisive steps against the Iranian regime that has humiliated it and challenged it in a provocative way. These steps might begin with a stifling economic blockade that could escalate into an air bombardment later. Both actions might be taken concomitantly, however, and in both cases the Obama administration will need the moderate Arab camp. In fact, no blockade against Iran can succeed without the participation of the Arabs and particularly without those of the Gulf region, Iran's neighbours. Also, Israeli or US air raids against the Iranian nuclear installations cannot achieve their objectives without their aircraft taking off from bases in the Arab states, or flying in their airspaces.

The states in the moderate Arab camp made their cooperation in the two wars against Iraq and Afghanistan conditional on Washington supplying them with fig leaves to hide their nudity by "activating" the peace process in an attempt to contain the anger of the [Arab] street or at least part of it. These same states now want to repeat the same scenario with a speedy resumption of negotiations.

Our peasants used to see the arrival of the pied wagtail birds as a sign that the olives were ripe and that it was harvest time; for our part, we see this eagerness to resume negotiations, in light of the current challenges facing the US projects, as a prelude to a new war against Iran and its allies in Lebanon and Gaza, as well as an escalation of the ongoing war against terrorism.

The point is that last time, the "pitcher" - or rather the pitchers of the United States and its Arab allies - did not break [reference to the proverb: So often goes the pitcher to the well that at the end she breaks], but this will not be the case next time, or so we believe!

The states in the moderate Arab camp have been the worst enemies of "Arab identity" and they are the ones who have combated it most, accusing those who uphold it of heresy, atheism, and secularism. Consequently, when the Arabs in the moderate camp suddenly realize how important "Arab identity" is and ask Hamas to give it precedence over other identities - meaning the Iranian and Islamic ones - we should expect the worst to happen.

The Islamic identity was considered to be good when it was truce-abiding, quiet, and used in the service of the US projects, and the "Arab identity" was seen as "bad" because it combated these same projects. But now suddenly the case has been inversed, together with the positions.

Our consolation is that this deception has not long to go, or rather it is nearing its end. The region is on the threshold of a definitive change, and perhaps this year will be the decisive year.