Max Singer
MAX SINGER (, II I S 1 ( ()l llMMST Haffez Assad and Saddam Hussein are realists and their fundamental political positions are weakening. Compared to a year ago, prospects along one path to...
...Then peace-minded Palestinians could also call on their Arab brothers to offer peace to Israel in exchange for Israel settling its dispute with the Palestinians...
...Despite recent discouraging events, the State Department insists that it is better to persevere than to give up working for peace...
...It makes less sense when there is an alternative path to peace...
...The current peace process has forced the State Department to soft-pedal PLO violations of these commitments...
...will help Israel hold Arabs to their commitments...
...If the great democratic powers then make it clear to the Arab countries that the path to respectability and full participation in the modern world requires ending their primitive refusal to make peace with Israel (a step Sadat took in 1977), the Syrian and Iraqi governments will feel great pressure to change their policy...
...The Soviet Union is on the way to disappearing as an arms-supplier and supporter of the hard-line Arab states...
...But in the Middle East—and elsewhere—extreme threats are sometimes a response to a perception of personal weakness...
...The grip of Iran's religious fanatacism on the Arab world continues to weaken...
...Saddam Hussein, for example, threatens to burn up half of Israel with chemical weapons...
...A lawyer and the president of The Potomac Organization, he is the author of Passage to a Human World: The Dynamics of Creating Global Wealth (Hudson Institute, 1987) and Beyond Containment (ICS, 1983...
...If the United States were to switch to this alternative approach to peace, the State Department would no longer need to avert its gaze from evidence of the PLO's failure to comply with their commitments t6 renounce terrorism...
...Furthermore, the intifada had shaken Israeli acceptance of continuing the status quo indefinitely...
...9 Max Singer is an independent public policy analyst in Washington, D.C...
...Compared to a year ago, prospects along one path to peace in the Middle East seem much bleaker...
...Despite the bellicosity of the recent Arab summit, this alternative approach looks much more promising than it did a year ago...
...Whether or not last May's unsuccessful speed-boat attack against Israel's beaches by Arafat protege Abul Abbas turns out to be the final straw for the hopes of the current peace process, it doesn't look good...
...But hopes for peace along an alternative path have become much brighter...
...it is that the overall political situation is changing in a way that may make them vulnerable to pressure to make peace...
...If the current peace process were the only possible approach to peace, this response would be admirable...
...The PLO gets most of its money and power from the Arab states...
...While Haffez Assad and Saddam Hussein, the current dictators of Syria and Iraq, seem as adamantly opposed as ever to negotiations with Israel, their political positions are weakening...
...The kingdoms of Jordan and Saudi Arabia are not strong enough in the Arab world to make peace by themselves...
...and excuses for excluding people from power have lost their legitimacy world wide, the dictators of Syria and Iraq are likely to feel alone and vulnerable...
...Peace treaties between Israel and Syria and between Israel and Iraq are the keys to ending the Arab states' 42-year-old war against Israel's existence...
...This makes it difficult to build a peace that must rest, in part, on Israel's confidence that the U.S...
...This would change the situation facing Assad and Saddam Hussein...
...It may seem bizarre to suggest that the peace process should focus on Assad and Saddam Hussein—particularly in the light of their recent rhetoric...
...The majority of Arabs want to put traditional Islamic constraints behind them so they can enter the modern world of health, education and peace...
...The Israelis showed half-hearted interest, at best, all along...
...Terrorism, even by Arafat's part of the PLO, has continued...
...Arafat's magic words have not become a general PLO recognition of Israel...
...In a world in which communism is discredited and the Soviet Union can no longer be played off against the U.S...
...While the Palestinians-first approach to peace has been foundering, dramatic changes in the world have radically improved the long-term prospects for the Arab states-first path to peace...
...But it will be much easier for Israel to think of safe ways to live with Palestinians when there are peace treaties between Israel and the Arab states, whose armies have so often attacked Israel...
...As 1989 started, Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat had just uttered the long sought "magic words," recognizing Israel's right to exist and renouncing terrorism...
...The alternative path is the Arab states-First path, to pursue peace with the Palestinians in the context of peace negotiations with the Arab states...
...They are realists...
...From Central America to Eastern Europe, democracy has demonstrated more universal appeal than had been expected...
...this desire continues to build potential resistance to fundamentalist Moslem objections to making peace with Israel...
...The suggestion here is not that the Syrian and Iraqi leaders want peace...
...When a deranged Israeli slaughtered a group of Palestinian workers last spring, the PLO and Arab governments responded not by trying to contain the tragedy but with incitement and slander that showed little concern for the peace process...
...The Arabs now seem less concerned about the current peace process than they are about preventing Jews fleeing antisemitism and turmoil in Russia from getting to Israel...
...The current peace process takes the Palestinians-first path...
...We should not think of PLO policy as isolated from the rest of the Arab world...
...it will not long be a reliable counterweight to the United States in the Middle East...
...Israel must make peace with the Palestinians, too, and that will require concessions and border changes...
...Suppose the United States and others called on Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to make peace with Israel so that it would be easier to find a solution for the Palestinians...
...if the pressure is turned on, they may find it necessary to change their approach...
...If the Arab states become ready to make peace, their influence on the PLO will make the PLO much easier to negotiate with...
...At least half the Israeli populace was so discouraged about prospects for peace with the Arab states that it was willing to try making peace with the Palestinians first...
Vol. 15 • August 1990 • No. 4
