Arabs to Israel: Assume a can opener
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 29, 2007
A new renewed offer from the Arabs to Israel:
Arab leaders at their summit Thursday agreed on a call for Israel to accept their land-for-peace offer and open direct negotiations with the Arabs. Unlike past summits that at times saw overt feuds break out, the gathering of Arab kings, emirs and presidents showed unusual public unity as it revived the peace offer, which they first made in 2002 only to meet rejection from Israel. . . .U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan hope the smaller groups will be able to be more flexible in promoting the offer to win acceptance, despite the summit’s rejection of changes. . . .
The initiative offers Israel recognition and permanent peace with all Arab countries in return for Israeli withdrawal from lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war. It also calls for setting up a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital and a “just solution” to the issue of Palestinian refugees forced out of lands in what is now Israel. . . .
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa rejected amending the peace offer, saying, “They tell us to amend it, but we tell them to accept it first, then we can sit down at the negotiating table.” But he said the Arabs must “do more to convince” the Israelis on the offer.
That’s right: “They tell us to amend it, but we tell them to accept it first, then we can sit down at the negotiating table.”
Does that sound unreasonable to you? That is because you are stuck in your racist, orientalist way of thinking. It is not unreasonable, my friend. Yes, I call you friend! Be my friend while I explain this to you. (Here, hold this bowling ball with a firecracker on top while I explain.)
It isn’t really unreasonable, for one simple reason: Arab states do not consider treaties binding in the first place. They are merely pretexts for the temporary cessation of overt violence.
So Israel does not have to fear this formulation, my friend. It should accept the offer, then negotiate it, and then learn to swim.
March 29, 2007 at 9:55 am
The historical world class liars of humanity now want to offer assurances. What a great deal.
March 29, 2007 at 11:19 am
Ron, truly sorry you consider Robert Spencer dispositive.
I refer you to the op-ed I co-authored with David Perlmutter in Asharq Alawsat last year.
I also call your attention to the desperation for a solution to this problem that is evidenced in Arab media across the region. There’s lots of it to be read at my blog.
March 29, 2007 at 12:33 pm
John, it’s great having someone with your level of expertise participate in this discussion. In fact, I don’t consider Robert dispositive on this topic, in part because his focus is on Islam and not on 20th-century Arab politics which while they are informed, obviously, by Muslim culture, have frequently been anything but Islamic. Of course the question of treaty compliance by Arab governments is hardly an Israel-Arab issue alone.
I am going to read your article and get reacquainted with your blog and come back and comment some more.
UPDATED: John, I read your article (and fixed the URL link on your comment), and I must tell you I agree with you about the need in principle to “swallow poison” — in principle. In practice, it is not even what Saudi Arabia suggested — it is clearly very committed to the “right of return” (for Arabs in Palestine, not for Jews expelled from Arab countries). The problem with this formulation, however, is that there is a far greater imbalance of risk in that diet than most of your readers seem willing to appreciate. In short, the Arab world is suggesting it would have been better to accept the 1948 partition plan because, after all, it seems that it won’t be so easy to get rid of the Jews.
You suggest all that has happened since then is bitter water that must be allowed to flow under the bridge — but it is more than that. I agree with you that wrongs will never be righted, and that the goal must be to find a way to live side by side in some tolerable way. The 1948 plan was premised, because of the high degree of strategic vulnerability, on immediate and essentially complete mutual toleration. The ensuing 60 years have demonstrated that this could not exist. Those 1948 borders are utterly indefensible. Meanwhile, the Arabs have only become radicalized — it is almost an understatement — to an extent not even imaginable in 1948, when even contemporary Arab leaders who suggested coexistence were assassinated. What good are the signatures of governments that have spent two generations demonizing the Jews on a level comparable to the Nazis (a phenomenon you recognize) when the “Arab street,” including the Palestinians whose territory is now to be essentially interwoven into Jewish Palestine, have grown up on more than a half a century of bloodllust?
Israel would have been wise, as cynical as it sounds, to call Arabia’s bluff here, though. In fact Syria, Iran and the remaining ultra-rejectionists would not and could not have signed such an agreement. Nor would the Hamas government of Arab Palestine.
That doesn’t mean I have a solution. I don’t. I actually believe in land for peace, not because it is right or even, in every instance, strategically wise, but because Israel is at a long-term strategic and political disadvantage in so many ways that it has little choice but to surrender tactically where it can to preserve resources. But the concept of “agree to our conditions” as a premise of negotiations is preposterous unless, as I suggest, the entire exercise is not really a sincere endeavor anyway.
March 29, 2007 at 1:20 pm
When you assume a can opener then you make an ass outta the guy who invented the pop top.
I say, “Always prepare for the easy open, but if it doesn’t work, then have a real can opener ready for action.”
It pays to be prepared, because assumptions are like miracles. It’s good when they happen, just don’t plan on their timely arrival.
March 29, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Well, put it this way — you want to both swallow poison? Sure, I’m game.
Who’s first?
March 29, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Who’s first?
That’s always the question ain’t it?
But if you ask me swallowing poison isn’t much of a meal. It don’t do much for the digestion either.
March 29, 2007 at 7:10 pm
The Arab insistence on the “right of return” is a dead giveaway that they are not serious. They expect Israel to refuse, as it must. They wll then use this a pretext (”He didn’t accept my demand that he swallow rat poison! He has refused peace!”
for going to war again.
The Arabs have as much right to return to “Palestine” as the Germans have to return to the Sudetenland.
That is, none whatsoever.
March 29, 2007 at 10:21 pm
As much as the pose is “we’re not negotiating,” it is a pose. Arab governments know that a full right of return is not going to happen. They are waiting to hear what solution/compensation is on offer. The Arab governments need to maintain the posture at present because there’s nothing else they can point to and say, “See, negotiation is working.”
The Arab masses are not going to be pleased with any deal short of the ideal, but they’re going to have to lump it. And the Arab governments are going to pay some price for having spun up those masses in a quest for the impossible.
March 30, 2007 at 7:59 am
“And the Arab governments are going to pay some price for having spun up those masses in a quest for the impossible.”
Such as what price? Before or after we cease our dependency on Arab oil?