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After Gaza Attacks: Does Arab Initiative Possible for the Middle East? |
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written by
Serpil Acikalýn |
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After the cease fire on 18 January, three weeks after Israeli assaults, we have enough data for an evaluation of the events. In 2006 (Israel's War on Hezbollah in Lebanon), we saw that Hezbollah was more successful than today’s Hamas –if we measure the success with the number of dead people-. Hezbollah killed 120 Israeli soldiers and 40 civilians. Apart from the ideological and deeper relationship with Iran, Hezbollah won the right of veto in Parliament after its long resistance which resulted in postponement of presidential elections for 19 times. On the side of Hezbollah there were more than 1200 dead and a big damage of infrastructure in the country. To gain the veto right also shows that Hezbollah was the winner after the war. Hezbollah provided electricity to the places where even government was not able to provide electricity and big amounts of money were transferred to affected families in the war. The positive atmosphere reflected to Israel in a opposite way. Increased criticism, demonstrations against Olmert government and Winograd reports were all disclosed bad balance sheet of Lebanon war for Israel. Olmert has been waiting the February elections to leave his office as a result of Tzipi Livni’s failure to establish the government after his resignation.
When we focus today’s situation in Gaza, according to UN, the numbers of dead people is 1314 (at least three fourths are civilians) and on the Israeli side there are 9 soldiers and 4 civilians who were killed. For the war Avigdor Lieberman, chair of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home), said that “it returned our national pride to us”. Here both parties are claiming that they reached to victory. Our minds are confused with the statements of Olmert and Hamas, both said they reached to victory. At the beginning, the rockets were shown as one of the main reasons of the assault by Olmert, but when the ceasefire was announced, the rockets were still being launched. Thus we know that the reason of the ceasefire was not to stop of rockets. Besides that Israel couldn’t get Gilad Schalid back.
Before the ceasefire, Hamas announced its demands for ceasefire: 6 months of ceasefire, the opening of borders, transfer of the coastal and air space control to Hamas. There were some missing points in the Saturday’s cease fire : Although Olmert said that they reached to their goal in the attacks, there is no concrete condition for the ceasefire. Although the troops completed their pulling out from Gaza, there is no statement about borders or any international negotiations. The fundamental question here is that “shouldn’t be the ceasefire between two parties?” (the same way of the peace negotiations or the last tacit ceasefire for six months). After the assault Israel believes in that it gained its dissuasiveness power again. When Israel was announcing ceasefire expectation was the convincement of Hamas by Egypt. Apart from a partner for a ceasefire, another point is the lack of an observer for the continuation of the ceasefire. In the first ceasefire both of the parties blamed each other to break the ceasefire. Another point is that a ceasefire without specific conditions will be broken by rockets or air strikes.
After all, at the end of the assaults one of the main losers is the United Nations. Its respectability has already deteriorated for years. As a cold war body, UN is not seen as an important actor in international conflicts because it proved its failure in Somalia, Ruanda, Bosnia and Palestine. The visit of the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon to the region after more than two weeks of the assaults, was perceived more as an indication of good faith. Today international bodies are the ineffectiveness in the region. The US, active in the region since 1970s, has not been mediating in the region after Clinton. All these conditions enforced Israeli to wage assault when it feels insecure. In the context of human rights and law of war there has not been any deterrent decision by international bodies for any future Israeli assault.
Considering Arab countries, the approach of the countries not to participate to meeting on Palestinian issue in Qatar and to participate Kuwait meeting after two days proves the polarization among the Arab countries. Although some of the countries in Qatar called for suspension of Arab Peace Initiative except Lebanon. In the Kuwait meeting, Saudi King Abdullah said that even one drop of Palestinians’ blood is more valuable than whole money in the world. This kind of speeches was given by the Arab leaders after the announcement of the cease fire. They donated 2 billion dollar for Gaza. Israel is trying to prevent the money to go Hamas. Besides that Israeli officials are calling for refraining from accepting Hamas as a legitimate power and it wants to cut the any link with Hamas.
Saudi King accused Israel of using disproportionate power against Gaza and called for the application of Arab Initiative. Arab Initiative, which was brought into agenda in 2002 by Saudi Arabia and approved by the members of Arab League –except Jordan and Egypt as they didn’t participate to meeting-, is the first general agreement made by Arab countries against Israel. There were some conditions in exchange for the recognition of Israel and for normalization of relations with Israel. According to this decision the conditions were: withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories after June 4 1967, reach a common solution for Palestinian refugees (UN Resolution 194), establishment of an independent Palestine with its capital, East Jerusalem (Security Council Resolution 1397). The Plan is based on the land for peace principle instead of war with Israel. The Plan is coming up in each Arab League meeting and it was renewed by Saudi Arabia in 2007. Apart from the discussions on whether the Plan is dead now or not, the Plan seems as the only way for a common Arab decision on the topic since it is comprehensive and has the potential to provide solutions.
After a month of the issue of the Plan in March 2002 we witnessed Jenin massacre in Palestine. But importance of the Plan is that it was argued by most of the Arab leaders in an atmosphere of the increasing antagonism against Israel in 2002. If the leaders insist on the application of the Plan by the new Obama government it will prove that Arabs can come together to reach a common ground and they can find solutions to maintain peace in the region.
Serpil ACIKALIN
Middle East Desk – USAK
sacikalin@usak.org.tr |
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Monday, 26 January 2009
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