Vw SI 4111
This Week
A Changing Arab World?
Saudi plan shows how far the Arab world has come since the Six-Day War.
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Jerusalem
IV
hen Egyptian President Gamal Abdel
Nasser swept into Khartoum for an
Arab summit less than three months
after the Arab debacle in the 1967
Six-Day War, he was greeted like a hero.
Newsweek ran a cover story entitled, "Hail to the
Conquered!" The summit passed the notorious
"three no's" defining future relations with Israel:
No negotiations, no recognition and no peace.
In July the following year, Nasser took a young
Yasser Arafat, traveling on an Egyptian passport
under the name of Muhsin Amin, with him to
Moscow on an arms shopping spree. In the war
against Israel, Nasser told Arafat, "You can be our
irresponsible arm."
Nasser's pan-Arabism meant mobilizing Arab
power to defeat Israel — and support for
Palestinian terror was part and parcel of the pack-
age.
Palestinian terror today may be more intense
than it was then, but the political context is totally
different.
Part of the importance of the recent Saudi
Arabian peace initiative is that it re-emphasizes, at
a time of crisis, how far the Arab world has moved
since Nasser's day.
For moderate Arab states, Palestinian terror is no
longer an "irresponsible arm" of policy, but an
embarrassment, undermining their relations_with
the West and encouraging radicals opposed to their
regimes.
Whatever the final nuances, the Saudi initiative
envisages an Arab world at peace with Israel and
conducting normal relations with it — though the
definition of normalcy may differ from country to
country.
Some Israeli commentators see that as a concep-
tual breakthrough on a par with Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat's trip to Jerusalem in November 1977.
.
Voices Of Doubt
Others are more skeptical. They say the Saudis
launched their initiative to improve their image
with the United States and quiet Muslim radicals,
and that it offers no mechanism for ending
Palestinian violence against Israel or renewing
Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.
3/29
2002
34
Moreover, they point out that the Saudis played
a similar gambit with an eight-point peace plan
presented at two Arab summits in Fez, Morocco, in
the early 1980s. Nothing came of that, the skeptics
say, and nothing will come of the, current initiative
— because when Arab countries finish watering it
down for the sake of consensus, there will be noth-
ing left for would-be peacemakers to latch on to.
Until the last minute, Israel and the Palestinian
Authority kept sparring over whether Arafat, the
Palestinian Authority leader, would be allowed to
attend the summit, with Israel demanding that
Arafat first call for an end to Palestinian violence
and take some steps to put his words into effect.
In the end, Arafat decided not to go, in part
because Israel would not guarantee to let him
return to Gaza City after the meeting. Separately,
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced
that he also would not attend.
Still, the Arab leaders said they were likely to dis-
cuss the Saudi initiative whether or not Arafat and
Mubarak are present.
Lebanese President Emile
Lahoud, right, and Qatar's Prime
Minister Abdullah bin Khalifa
Al-Thani, second right, listen to
their national anthems at Beirut
airport after Khalifiz's arrival
at the Arab Summit on Tuesday.