The Mideast peace alignment

March 20, 2007

IT IS in the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that all the elements needed for a final peace never seem to be properly aligned. But recent developments suggest that some requisites for a serious peacemaking effort are falling into place. Conversely, another failure to reach a mutually acceptable accord on a two-state solution may expose Israelis, Palestinians, and their regional neighbors to ever more calamitous violence.

The formation this past weekend of a Palestinian unity government, forged in Mecca earlier this month under Saudi auspices, has as its immediate aim the avoidance of a civil war between Hamas and Fatah. A secondary purpose is to end the economic boycott of the Hamas-majority government.

But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was also authorized to negotiate on behalf of the unity government, a move that indicates a willingness to negotiate. This opening is all the more significant against the background of an Arab League meeting scheduled in Riyadh on March 28, when the Saudi peace plan first broached in Beirut in 2002 is to be renewed. This is an offer of peace with Israel from all the Arab states once a Palestinian state is established alongside Israel.

Both Saudi initiatives originate in anxiety about Iran's ascendance as a dominant regional power extending its influence not only into war-torn Iraq, but also into Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank.

The Saudis have decided they cannot wait for the Americans or Europeans to resolve regional problems that Tehran can exploit to its own benefit. Consequently, the Saudis have taken an uncharacteristically active role in seeking a solution to Lebanon's governmental deadlock, making peace between Palestinian factions, and creating conditions for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace. Saudi officials are telling their interlocutors there must be Arab solutions to Arab problems. That is their way of saying the solutions cannot be either Western or Persian.

The Arab regimes' anxiety about Iran matches Israel's and Washington's. This accounts for the current alignment of strategic interests that favors a negotiated two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz suggested he appreciates this new regional configuration when he called on fellow Cabinet ministers Sunday to start negotiations with Abbas on a final-status peace agreement without waiting for the Palestinians to disarm their militias. Peretz was echoing a sage prescription of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin: that Israel should negotiate as if there is no terrorism and fight terror as if there are no negotiations. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, unpopular as he is, would be wise to heed the advice of Peretz and other ministers who grasp the opportunity that has opened up for Israel.