As U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wound down her latest and most intense round of Middle Eastern "shuttle diplomacy" Monday, a star-studded international cast of former top-ranking diplomats and government leaders said they were "convinced there exists now a major opportunity to reach a comprehensive Arab-Israeli settlement."
But the 24-member board of trustees of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) stressed that the opportunity is not "open-ended" and that the status quo cannot be maintained indefinitely.
"If the current chance for a breakthrough is not grasped over the next few months – with the government of Israel and the U.S. having the most critical role in this respect – there is a real possibility that support for a two-state solution among Palestinians and in the wider Arab world would disappear, with all the renewed tensions this is bound to generate," according to the ICG board, which is co-chaired by former European Commissioner for External Relations Lord Chris Patten and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Thomas Pickering.
The statement called for intensifying diplomatic efforts on five different tracks, beginning with this week’s Arab League Summit in Riyadh, where Arab leaders are expected to reaffirm their support for normalizing relations with Israel in exchange for the Jewish state’s return to its 1967 borders.
But it urged the leaders to go further by undertaking an international tour, including to Israel, to explain their "Arab Peace Initiative," a Saudi-authored plan that was adopted by the League at its Beirut Summit in 2002.
The group also called for the "Quartet" – which includes the U.S., the European Union (EU), Russia, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is also shuttling in the region this week – to offer its own "detailed outline of a two-state solution" in order to move all parties toward discussion of a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"Aided by the Arab initiative, and the renewed willingness of the U.S. secretary of state to engage, there is currently greater consensus than ever on the need for an endgame-first approach, and on the necessary contours of a political settlement," according to the ICG statement.
"But the international community needs to provide as much clarity and detail as possible upfront on what the contents of a final agreement might look like – including on the issues of boundaries (based on the 1967 line with appropriate territory swaps), refugees, and the status of Jerusalem – in order to encourage the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships to make the necessary compromises," it said.
The ICG board also urged the international community to ease the financial boycott of the new Palestinian national unity government, prepare to engage politically with its Hamas-led leadership in order to clarify its interest in a final settlement based on the Arab Peace Initiative and any plan put forward by the Quartet, and encourage the resumption of peace talks between Syria and Israel.
The ICG statement, which follows a visit to the region by the group’s Middle East experts, comes amid growing support within Israel for pursuing the Arab League plan, which the new Palestinian national-unity government is expected to explicitly endorse at this week’s meeting.
Top Israeli government officials, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, have spoken positively about the Initiative in recent weeks, as has even the former Likud prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
On Saturday, meanwhile, more than 100 leading Israeli and Palestinian figures, including current and former members of both peoples’ parliaments, issued a joint statement noting that the Initiative "provides all interested and concerned parties with a comprehensive-solution process in order to solve all aspects of the Middle East conflict."
"The initiative is really gaining momentum," said Ori Nir, a spokesman at Americans for Peace Now (APN), a Washington-based Zionist peace group. "Even a week ago, it wasn’t really on the [Israeli] public agenda, but now you have cabinet ministers talking about it."
At the same time, a new poll released over the weekend by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that nearly three out of four Palestinian respondents in Gaza and the West Bank support the initiative and also negotiations with Israel in order to reach an interim stage where a Palestinian state is established in Gaza and much of the West Bank, followed by negotiations on the remaining issues of the conflict, including permanent borders and refugees.
The ICG’s statement, which was adopted unanimously during a meeting of the trustees over the weekend in Vancouver, noted that the convergence of three key developments over the past month – the formation of the new Palestinian government in which both Fatah and Hamas are participating; the renewed commitment by the Arab League to its Initiative, and the more-positive response it has received in Israel – combined to create a "genuine opportunity" for a breakthrough "which must not be missed."
It called in particular for the international community to engage the new Palestinian unity government despite Hamas’ participation in it. Since its formation ten days ago, Israel has said it would deal only with President Mahmoud Abbas, while the U.S., the EU, and the UN have insisted they would continue boycotting government ministers, including Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh, from Hamas until the party explicitly renounces violence, recognizes Israel, and endorses all previous peace agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
"Any attempt to boycott, undermine, or marginalize the government will hamper efforts to reach a cease-fire and to promote a political settlement," the statement asserted.
"In conversations with senior Hamas leaders, [the ICG delegation] found important movement on issues critical for advancement of the peace process: commitment to a reciprocal, comprehensive cease-fire, agreement that a establishing a state within the 1967 borders is the common Palestinian objective; acceptance of President [Mahmoud] Abbas as the sole, empowered negotiator with Israel; and a pledge to abide by any agreement that has been democratically ratified by proper Palestinian institutions," it said, adding that any clarification of these positions should be obtained through "dialogue with the government."
In addition to the two co-chairs, other trustees included ICG president and former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans; a former top adviser to Jordan’s King Abdullah, Adnan Abu-Odeh; former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, former Canadian prime minister Kim Campbell; former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer; former Malaysian deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim; and former Dutch prime minister Wim Kok.
Significantly, the group also included two outspoken advocates of Washington’s invasion of Iraq, who have also generally opposed U.S. pressure on Israel to make territorial concessions to its Arab neighbors – former Democratic Rep. Stephen Solarz and Kenneth Adelman, a prominent neoconservative who was perhaps most famous for his prediction that the Iraq invasion would be a "cakewalk."
(Inter Press Service)
