A rchive Date
[ 12-12-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Palestine ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/mansur_toronto.html
Arabs hold the key to peace
The Israeli-Palestinian dispute is the mother of all conflicts in the Middle East
By SALIM MANSUR -- For the Toronto Sun
December 12, 2002
LONDON, Ont. -- As the showdown between the United States and Saddam Hussein's Iraq heads to a denouement, the core issue of the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has become obscured by 9/11.
The Israeli-Palestinian dispute is, borrowing a phrase from the Iraqi despot, the mother of all conflicts in the Middle East. Its resolution may not immediately bring to an end the multiple layers of conflicts that go beyond the Arab-Muslim world, and have struck fear across continents.
But without its resolution the divide between America and the Arab-Muslim world may become too vast to bridge, and it will not matter who bears greater responsibility if a civilizational war - that hard-hearted people on both sides seem to want - engulfs us all.
The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict spans the 20th century, and its effects have become deeply woven into the politics of the Middle East. The question at this late hour, if peace with justice is to be snatched from the jaws of a calamitous war, is whether an ownership of this history can be taken by those involved in the conflict and, thereby, responsibility for the past leading to the present that has gone so wrong.
Taking responsibility for history may not avert war entirely, but without it peace cannot occur, nor reconciliation begin among those who have fought each other for so long.
A significant step was taken at the Arab summit held in Beirut, Lebanon in March. For the first time since the United Nations' partition of Palestine and the establishment of Israel in May 1948, Arab states adopted a resolution that called for the creation of a Palestinian state in the Israeli occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza in exchange for normal relations with Israel on the basis of a comprehensive peace agreement.
But at Beirut there was none among the assembled Arab leaders prepared to take ownership of a tragic history, and bring closure to it, by reaching out to the Israelis and Jews worldwide, as the late Anwar Sadat, president of Egypt, did when visiting Jerusalem in 1977.
Years wasted
In retrospect, the Beirut declaration could have been made in November, 1947, and the Arab world would have been saved the terrible waste of the intervening years that have left it so greatly divided, its civilizational inheritance crippled, its resources squandered in wars, its economic and political development stunted.
In an ideal world, there would be no victims of injustice and evil. The case of Palestinian Arabs against imperial Britain's design to establish a homeland for the Jews, as made out in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, was beyond reproach. The Holocaust, however, changed the circumstances entirely for Jews and Arabs alike.
A deeper understanding of the immense evil that almost consumed Europe, and at the heart of which was the fate of European Jews nearly driven to extinction by Hitler's regime, could have been the basis of a magnanimous Arab response in keeping with the traditions of Moorish Spain, with entirely different consequences for everyone involved.
A noble history
The predictable Arab response to the creation of Israel was not merely a strategic miscalculation, an over-estimation of its unity of purpose against external powers and an under-estimation of the resolve of Jews to survive, but contrary to all that is noble in Arab-Muslim history.
In going against their own virtues of generosity, tolerance and accommodation that went into the making of Islamic civilization, the Arabs engaged themselves not only in a war against Jews, but against each other and, increasingly, with America.
By opting for war, irrespective of justifications offered, the Arabs cornered the Israelis. Arabs could lose wars and survive, as they did, but the Israelis faced elimination if they lost a battle.
For Arabs, taking ownership of this history will mean repairing the damage they have wrought upon themselves. It will mean abandoning the politics of denial and recrimination, and embracing the modern world in which they have a great deal to contribute, as they did in the past.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Thursdays. He can be reached at smansurca@yahoo.ca Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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