Saudi posturing vs. true peace

It is indeed tragic, as the Bangor Daily News points out editorially, that our State Department’s Visa Express program “allows Saudis [including , as it turned out, three of the Sept. 11 hijackers] entry into the United States without so much as a perfunctory interview” (July 17). As long as the United States is dependent on Saudi oil, what the BDN calls America’s “soft touch policy” on Saudi Arabia is bound to continue. Nevertheless, if only because 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi nationals, we must remain vigilant in our dealings with Saudi Arabia and especially in regard to their proposals on peace in the Middle East.

A case in point is Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah’s recent initiative. It was formally presented to President Bush in Crawford, Texas in April and is still on the table. This proposal is commendable for its novelty. For the first time, all 22 Arab states agree to conditions under which they would recognize the State of Israel. It is also commendable as a bargaining position subject to further negotiation. On the other hand, if the Saudis are asking Israel to accept or reject “a cat in a bag,” this initiative is a non-starter. That is because of at least one condition in it which would almost certainly destabilize the Middle East to the detriment of the interests of both the United States and Israel.

The Saudis ask Israel to withdraw to its pre-June 4, 1967 borders. Those boundary lines – “Auschwitz borders” in the words of then-Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban – gave Arab states the opportunity to attack Israel and desecrate Jewish religious sites for 20 years. Within the confines of Jerusalem’s Old City as defined by the pre-June 1967 borders the Arab Legion systematically destroyed or desecrated synagogues, schools, homes and other relics of 2,000 years of Jewish residence in that city. Where Arabs had the tactical advantage of high ground, they subjected the Jewish populations within artillery range to incessant bombardment. The Arab Legion fired regularly from the ramparts of Jerusalem’s Old City in the direction of West Jerusalem’s densely populated downtown residential neighborhoods. Syria launched frequent artillery barrages against the Central Galilee, notably against Kibbutz Ein Gev. There are comrades of that Kibbutz who never slept one night of their childhood outside of a bomb shelter.

In suggesting that Israel withdraw to the pre-June 1967 borders, the Saudis’ territorial “remedies” even exceed the nearly universally-accepted parameters of United Nations Resolution 242. That resolution calls on Israel only to withdraw from SOME of the territories captured in June 1967 – the French adjective DES [=”some”] is used to describe territories in the official text – and not from every inch of land of captured land, which would once again expose Israel’s dense population centers to artillery bombardment and Jewish religious sites to destruction and desecration.

The Saudi proposal implies that indefensible borders and desecrated religious sites would not be a problem if Israel would only enable the Palestinians to establish their own state in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The Saudis fail to mention that extremist Islamic groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad reject any negotiation whatsoever with Israel and are bent on the obliteration of the Jewish state. The Saudi proposal fails to specify how those extremist groups will be dealt with. The Saudis also fail to mention that on at least three occasions Israel has offered to recognize a Palestinian state in virtually all of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

The first offer came at the moment of Israel’s birth 55 years ago, pursuant to United Nations resolutions creating Jewish and Arab states in what had been the British territory of Palestine. The Arab response was to attack the fledgling Jewish state [the Arabs were defeated] and for Egypt and Jordan to confiscate precisely the territories the United Nations had set aside for a Palestinian state, namely the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak twice repeated the recognition offer and did not even get a counter-proposal from the Palestinians. Instead Israel received a barrage of al-Qaeda-like, kamikaze-style bombings. When extrapolated over a population of six million, those attacks have been even more devastating than the tragic attacks on the United States on Sept. 11.

Given the recent concessions that Israel offered the Palestinians, and the Palestinians’ hostile response, the deterrent strength of America’s oldest democratic ally in the Middle East must not be impaired. Genuine peace negotiations should involve significant concessions from both sides and not only from Israel as the Saudis advocate. Although called a peace initiative, the Saudi proposal eludes the conditions for true peace in a region vital to the interests of the United States.

Dr. Jonathan Goldstein, a research associate of Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, is a summer resident of Glenburn. His books include, most recently, “China and Israel, 1948-1998: A FiftyYear Retrospective” (1999)” and “The Jews of China” (2000).