Is There Arab Acceptance of Israel?

 by Aaron Goldstein  

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As Afif Safieh demonstrated last week, acceptance of Israel is not a treasured Palestinian value, let alone an Arab one.

Last week week I was invited to attend a talk by Afif Safieh, the PLO Representative to the United States, at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Safieh, a one-time adviser to the late Yasser Arafat, has been going around the country promoting both the new Palestinian Authority government and the so-called Saudi-backed Middle East peace initiative.  

In a talk titled, “The American, Israeli, and Palestinian Triangle,” Safieh’s angle proved to be particularly obtuse. “The perpetuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict is due not to the Arab rejection of Israeli existence, but to the Israeli rejection of Arab acceptance,” Safieh audaciously claimed. I wasn’t quite sure about the Arab acceptance of Israel to which he was referring. Perhaps what he meant by acceptance was the Arab League boycott of Israel. Or maybe it could have been Syria’s shelter of Hezbollah so as to facilitate the firing of Katusha rockets into northern Israel. Or perhaps he was thinking of the absent-mindedness of Palestinian geographers who somehow left Israel off Middle East maps in the textbooks used by Palestinian schoolchildren.  

But I did not want to leave anything to chance. So I asked him what he meant by Arab acceptance of Israel. Safieh replied, the Saudi peace initiative itself constituted Arab acceptance of Israel. Of course, Israel first had to give up all lands gained during the Six Day War and then the Arab world would discuss the terms of acceptance or “normalization” as “a reward for good behavior.” In other words, give up your land and we might consider recognizing you. Somehow I don’t think Israel needs lectures from the Arab World as to what constitutes good behavior.

But if Arab acceptance of Israel is contingent on giving up Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, what is the Arab idea of normalization? Somehow I suspect it will be much like it is now. While reading National Review Online, Mark Steyn provided a link to this article.  Evidently Saudis are panic stricken after receiving a text message allegedly from the Saudi Interior Ministry that claims Israeli melons are contaminated with the AIDS virus. For its part, a Saudi government spokesman said the Ministry “did not issue any such announcement.  This is just a rumor.” Putting aside the fact the AIDS virus cannot be spread through plant life, notice that the spokesman did not deny the veracity of the story. Rather the spokesman said only that the story did not come from them. Simply put, any reports of Israeli wrongdoing won’t be confirmed but neither will they be denied.

So where does the United States figure into this scenario? Safieh wants the United States to act as a third party in negotiations between Israel and the Arab states but added that it ought to pursue a policy of “non-alignment” and “evenhandedness.” In other words, the United States should stick it to Israel.   Specifically, he called on the United States to utilize the approach taken by the Bush 41 Administration, which withheld loan guarantees for Israel to settle Russian Jews unless they participated in the James Baker-inspired Madrid Conference.  

Yet somehow I am not sure that Safieh has won many converts. When one accuses American politicians of “campaigning more in Tel Aviv than in Tennessee” or accuses an unnamed Presidential hopeful of not “reading the script AIPAC (American Israeli Political Action Committee) writes for him” as Safieh did, it will not win him a lot of friends. Indeed, Safieh raised the ire of Florida liberal Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler last month. Just before the AIPAC policy conference in Washington, D.C., Safieh circulated a letter to Congressional offices lambasting AIPAC. Wexler immediately issued a press release calling Safieh’s letter “reprehensible” and stated that Safieh’s allegations against AIPAC were “false, wrong, and set back the Palestinian cause.”

There is also the small matter that Hamas does not accept the State of Israel nor does it renounce terrorism. Safieh argued that Hamas recognizes previous agreements negotiated with Israel and that future negotiations (and all foreign policy matters) are the prerogative of the Palestinian President.   Maybe Safieh should acquaint himself with Article 13 of the Hamas Covenant which states, “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” But Safieh was on a roll and why let facts inconvenience things.   Without the slightest hint of embarrassment, Safieh argued that if Richard Nixon could make peace with China and if Menachem Begin could make peace with Egypt, why couldn’t Hamas make peace with Israel? Never mind Article 13 of the Hamas Covenant. Never mind that neither Nixon nor Begin called for the destruction of China and Egypt. Any Hamas leader who publicly recognizes Israel will live about as long as it takes me to write this sentence.  

Indeed, when asked by an audience member if he would condemn Hamas, Safieh demurred and equivocated. Safieh claimed he condemned every suicide bombing against Israeli civilians but (there’s always a but when Palestinians are concerned) stated, “Whoever does not condemn Israeli military incursions . . . is not morally qualified to have an opinion on suicide bombings.” Sadly this statement drew applause from the overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian audience assembled. In Safieh’s dim view, Israeli soldiers are morally equivalent to suicide bombers whose mission it is to massacre civilians. But moral equivalence is a treasured Palestinian value. Unfortunately, acceptance of Israel is not a treasured Palestinian value, let alone an Arab one.

Foreign Affairs: Israel-Palestine

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