The Warped Mirror: The time for peace has come

Given that anything that sounds like "Wahabi" usually triggers associations with Saudi Arabia, it was perhaps somewhat startling to see a recent Jerusalem Post article entitled: "Whbee to Arab states: Stop vilifying Israel". But it was of course no Saudi official who urged the Arabs to recognize that the "time has come [...] to cease using international forums to vilify Israel and to [stop] indulging in point-scoring, which merely serves to postpone confidence-building in the region; and to publicly condemn those forces of hatred and violence which, ultimately, undermine everything they stand for". These words were part of a speech given by Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Majalli Whbee at the Mediterranean Seminar held in mid-December in Tel Aviv by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
 
Because the annually held meeting was hosted this year by Israel, several of the Arab member states - Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco - preferred not to attend, while Jordan and Egypt sent only two junior representatives. Openly challenging this attempt to once more use an international meeting to boycott Israel, Whbee suggested that the countries of the region should "ask themselves what is the greatest threat to their future. Is it Israel, which has no designs on any of them, or is it the hatred and viciousness propounded by those who strive to drag them into a backward world order."

If there was any need to illustrate how pertinent Whbee's question was - and how obvious the answer is - another spate of vicious terrorist attacks came right away, timed to coincide with the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. As Nasser Weddady from the American Islamic Congress noted sadly: "The Muslim new year has come in with a bang. On the eve of the high holiday of Eid al-Adha, explosions abound. Outside Beirut a car bomb kills four. A double-blast in Quetta, Pakistan, destroys eight lives. Twin suicide bombings in Iraq's Diyala Province murder 26, including six women and children. Two bombers in Algiers, one a grandfather, claim over 35 victims. This year-end killing spree - whose victims were nearly all Muslim - has again revealed a profound failure to stop violent extremism across the Muslim world. The international community, increasingly numb to a steady tide of slaughter in Muslim lands, has little to say. Muslim leaders offer a ritual disclaimer that the radicals don’t represent Islam - a 'religion of peace' - and then retreat into silence."

Weddady urged his fellow Muslims to realize that it "is long past time to mount a vigorous campaign against the cult of death and reaffirm a culture of life." He also argued that it was imperative to "avoid the temptation to rationalize murder" and explicitly rejected the popular demand that "'we must understand the root causes.' There can be no 'buts' - no qualifications or justifications that indulge the political grievances and religious sanction claimed by extremists."

While Weddady's thoughts were mainly addressed to a Muslim audience, the notion that certain "root causes" and "political grievances" should be considered as some sort of justification for extremism and terrorism has become popular far beyond the Muslim world. And inevitably, the "root causes" and "political grievances" always have something to do with the "little Satan" Israel or the "great Satan" America. But in view of the "steady tide of slaughter in Muslim lands" decried by Nasser Weddady, there seems to be a growing realization that indeed the time has come to stop looking for scapegoats.

This realization is reflected in the approach that has evolved in the context of the renewed efforts to negotiate an agreement that would end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While too many people deluded themselves for too long that all it would take for peace to prevail is an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, the disengagement from Gaza and the subsequent developments there have demonstrated the futility of a political discourse obsessed with Palestinian rights, but oblivious to any Palestinian responsibilities. Not that long ago, it would have been almost unthinkable that the Quartet's Mideast envoy could openly declare - as Tony Blair has repeatedly done - that it is incumbent on the Palestinian side "to prove that it can run a State, govern it well."

Similarly, it was long regarded as perfectly sufficient to explain and excuse the disarray of Yassir Arafat's Palestinian Authority with problems created by Israeli settlements and Israeli security measures. Now a recent paper by Michael Eisenstadt highlights that just blaming Israeli policies contributes little to solve the complex problems that will have to be addressed if efforts to create a viable Palestinian state are to have any chance of success. As Eisenstadt argues, "the Palestinian Authority has long been crippled by 'the four Fs': fawda (chaos), fitna (strife), falatan (lawlessness), and fassad (corruption)."

Focusing on the question of what Palestinians, Israel, and the international community can do "to avert the worst-case scenarios of outright collapse or civil war", Eisenstadt emphasizes that the Palestinians "face numerous obstacles to meaningful reform and stability, including economic stagnation, unsustainable population growth, a self-defeating strategy of armed struggle, and Yasser Arafat's enduring legacy of corruption and unaccountability. These problems have been exacerbated by - and, in many cases, have given rise to - external obstacles such as Israeli security restrictions, international sanctions against Hamas, and continued interference from Iran and Syria. Failure to formulate a comprehensive, multilateral plan for overcoming these obstacles could have untold implications for the Palestinians, the regional security equation, and overall US interests in the Middle East."

While Eisenstadt's paper may do little to inspire optimism that by the end of 2008 we will be able to say that the time for peace in the Middle East has come, it certainly echoes the message of Majalli Whbee's speech: the "forces of hatred and violence", nurtured to harm Israel, are destabilizing the whole region and are threatening their creators no less than the Jewish state that all too many still refuse to accept. Yet, as much as the Middle East's overall political situation may support the pessimists who see little reason to hope for positive changes, it is still important not to ignore indications that the ranks of those who are willing to once again give peace a chance are strengthening - not least among the Palestinians, who, for the first time in their history, have a government that has dropped any reference to "armed resistance" from its platform. As one Palestinian representative declared: "There is a peace process and national struggle can come through peaceful means, rather than through rockets and chaos."