These are dangerous times in the Arab World. The glimmers of hope which first emerged in the mid-1990s that the Arab-Israeli conflict could be resolved (the emphasis here is on the word could) have been replaced with the resignation that Tel Aviv is not capable nor willing to make peace with its neighbors except on its own terms.
Arab leaders and Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, indicated that their patience was now wearing thin. It has been seven years since all 22 members of the League signed off on the Saudi-sponsored Arab Peace Initiative which embraced UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338.
Over 25 years after Anwar Sadat, the then-president of Egypt, made a surprise visit to the Knesset to lay out his visions of a land-for-peace formula to end the wars which have raged in the Middle East for decades, the Arabs were now ready to offer Israel the same momentum.
Withdraw to the pre-June 1967 borders, they said, and allow hundreds of thousands of refugees to return to their homes in Israel proper. In exchange, Arab countries would immediately recognize Israel and initiate diplomatic relations.
Ariel Sharon, who was besieging both Jenin and Ramallah – in the latter case, surrounding Palestinian president Yasser Arafat – dismissed the Arab initiative.
Then came the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, to which the ArabLeague had no response.
In 2007, the Arab League reiterated the peace initiative at the Riyadh Summit. Israel responded with yet another siege – that on Gaza, effectively trying to apply the medieval tactics of starving local populations into subjugation; a measure designed to punish the Palestinians for voting into power Hamas, the Islamist resistance movement.
At the end of 2008, as Washington prepared for a change of leadership, Arab leaders and diplomats leaned on their American allies to support the Arab Peace Initiative. As the media continued to address and report on the initiative, Israel responded with a massive bombing barrage and offensive on Gaza, a move that the UN has said may amount to a war crime.
The Israelis applied the tried-and-tested tactic of embargoes and sanctions to debilitate the densely-populated Gaza Strip before launching a series of military strikes.
The military strikes were designed with two objectives in mind. The first, for domestic consumption, was to strengthen the Israeli-far right by doing away with the so-called centrist and left-leaning Israeli political parties. Kadima, the Likud off-shoot created by Sharon allegedly to facilitate the 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, was in fierce competition with the so-called peace-pushing Labour party to appear more militant against homemade Palestinian rockets.
Ehud Barak, Labour s leader, duelled with Tzivni Lipni, Kadima s leader, to appear more determined to take the war to the streets of Gaza.
In the end, all three parties became mirror images of one another, allowing the rise to prominence of hard-line anti-Arab Zionist parties such as that led by Avigdor Lieberman.
The Israeli government recently formed by Benyamin Netanyahu, the new Israeli prime minister, will be the most hard-line and right-leaning since Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin in the 1980s.
The second was to create conditions that hinder any move towards negotiations in the region.
Where does that leave the Arab League and the Arab Peace Initiative?
Leaders gathered in Doha, Qatar have expressed their dismay that promises made by George Bush, the former US president, to create a viable Palestinian state by 2009 have remained unfulfilled. Sensing the anger brewing within their countries they have said they reject further promises and would like to see concrete movement toward the peace initiative from Tel Aviv.
They hinted that they would now consider a timeline – a deadline of sorts, which is apparently to be announced – for Israel to accept the initiative.
The Syrian delegation said they considered the initiative dead and likely abandoned.
Other leaders tried to put on a brave face and said the initiative was still on the table.
The Israelis have not responded. Nor will they; they have no reason to. If we are to consider that the Arab leaders are now taking into account the anger of their peoples, they have done so too late. And the Arab League position falls far short of even applying pressure on Washington to lean on Tel Aviv to embrace the initiative.
Israel has managed to elude critical criticism of how it waged war in Gaza.
Israel knows one fact that most Arabs have chosen to ignore: it has won.
When Lebanese Shia celebrated Hezbollah s victory over Israel during the 2006 Lebanon war, this writer was highly skeptical.
Israel s invasion into Lebanon in the summer of 2006 was a calculated move – Tel Aviv apparently temporarily sacrificed the reputation of its military prowess for a greater reward: the political realignment of Arab loyalties in the Middle East. After the war, a split emerged between Arabs. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan in one camp with the rest of the Arabs in another.
Then following the Gaza war of 2009, this split was further exacerbated and has now manifested itself in the near-collapse of the Doha Summit.
Golda Meir once said that the Arabs always fail to grab an opportunity once it poses itself. Others have said the Arabs always agree to disagree. Very amusing; however, what is far more dangerous and unspoken is that the Arabs have yet to learn the wiles of their enemy.
When it comes to the Arab World, the Israelis follow two rules of war:By deception, thou shalt wage war; and, know thy enemy.
The Israelis know their enemies – they are well aware that the greatest dangers to Arab unity are the Arabs themselves. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the late Egyptian president, realized that early on and tried to close ranks, but failed.
Now, with the Arab peace initiative following the Road Map and Annapolis to the grave, the Arabs have nothing with which to bargain with Israel. Their near impotence as Israeli tanks paved over civilians in Gaza, or bombed into oblivion entire neighborhoods of Beirut, signals that nothing and no one can stop the Israeli juggernaut.
And the Israelis know how to play the Arabs. After winning the confidence vote at the Israeli Knesset on April 1, Netanyahu announced that he was looking for a comprehensive peace deal. His choice for foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, stated that he will move away from the Annapolis Accord. Two things at play here: the first is that the Annapolis Accord was a failure of monumental proportions and has seen no momentum whatsoever in the past 18 months. Second, Lieberman is making a hardline stand – letting the Palestinians and other Arabs that even a fundamentally flawed accord such as Annapolis will simply not suffice.
Perhaps, there is some kind of Karma in the fact that the Doha summit comes to a close just as Netanyahu s government is approved.
Much has been said at the Doha summit, none of which carries much substance. However, one thing has gone unsaid is that Israel has already won.
In 1979, the Arabs made a colossal mistake by abandoning Egypt after it signed a peace deal with Israel. They only allowed it back into the fold a decade later, but by then the Arab world was in turmoil. Israel had invaded Lebanon, Iraq and Iran were at war, and intra-Arab hostilities were slowly brewing.
The Arabs are doing it again – this is the second summit boycotted by Hosni Mubarak. While Arab consensus-building teeters on the brink of collapse, the very ideals supported by that unity – chiefly, the liberation of Palestine – appear to have become far less of a priority in recent years.
It appears that their may never be a Palestine; its impoverished, besieged, psychologically traumatized people have been abandoned.
Alexander Gainem is a journalist and commentator who has been writing onMiddle Eastern affairs since 2001.
