Middle East watchers are so desperately starved for the slightest glimmer of hope these days that they're prone to seize on even the smallest bit of good news as a genuine breakthrough. Sadly, we've seen would-be deus ex machinas before in the last few months, most prominent among them the dead-on-arrival Saudi Arabian peace plan. Each was full of hot air and false promise.
And yet, even with that cautionary history in mind, the recent revelation that Saudi and U.S. officials have agreed to a "division of labor," in which America would exert diplomatic pressure on Israel and Saudi Arabia would use its leverage with the Palestinians, holds genuine promise.
What makes this development different from past ones? The key here is that Saudi Arabia has apparently offered to use its diplomatic influence to push Yasir Arafat toward peace. That's something Arab states have been extremely reluctant to do in the past. At Camp David, not only was the influence of Arab states not brought to bear in support of peace, but one could easily have gotten the impression that those states wanted Arafat to hold out for more concessions -- which he ultimately, and disastrously, decided to do.
This impression was confirmed when, after jilting Ehud Barak at Camp David, Arafat embarked on a tour of the Arab world, where he received a hero's welcome. And what excuse did he later use for having refused Israel's offer? That other Arab leaders had wanted him to be firm on the status of Muslim holy sites. "In his tour of the Arab world, Arafat has been encouraged to stand tough on Jerusalem," The Associated Press reported at the time. "Even at the risk of straining ties with Washington, Egypt has scoffed at U.S. and Israeli requests that it use its influence to soften the Palestinians' position."
Far from being aids to the peace process, moderate Arab leaders have served quite successfully as impediments, mainly by providing after-the-fact political cover for Arafat's monumental blunder. And as Camp David made abundantly clear, the United States is in a far better position to lean on Israel than to lean on the Palestinians. That alone would make Saudi Arabia's offer to do what the United States can't and Egypt won't -- pressure Arafat -- important news.
The latest initiative is obviously a vastly more significant development than the original Saudi peace plan, which offered nothing new. Everyone knows that what the Arabs -- at least the moderate ones -- want is a full withdrawal to the 1967 borders. And everyone also knows that Israel can't and won't give that to them. As I've argued before, the key therefore lies in the give-and-take of negotiation. And if Saudi Arabia is now actually willing to serve as a facilitator of difficult compromise on the Palestinian side, rather than as an enabler of Arafat's rejectionism, there may be hope for negotiations after all. King Hussein of Jordan played an indispensable role in facilitating the Wye River accord, but since his death, no moderate Arab leader has filled his shoes as a peace broker. Perhaps Prince Abdullah is signaling a willingness to finally step forward and play that role.
There are at least two other reasons to believe that this is a hopeful moment of sorts. The first is that peace in the Middle East has traditionally emerged after one side or both suffer military or strategic setbacks that nudge them toward the negotiating table. Egypt signed its 1979 treaty with Israel because of its conclusive defeat in the 1973 war -- but Israel also proved open to negotiation because it had suffered heavy and demoralizing losses in that conflict. The Oslo process was the direct result of Arafat's picking the losing team in the Gulf War and the accompanying loss of strategic face he suffered; the disappearance of the Soviet Union, which had long served as a patron of the Arab world, also weakened his position.
In this light, Sharon's offensive into Jenin and the rest of the West Bank may have laid the groundwork for peace, counterintuitive as that may seem. Having finally gained something of a military upper hand over terrorism, Sharon could now conceivably take Israel back to the bargaining table. (Whether he wants to or not is, of course, another matter.) And having seen their ability to fight back at least temporarily impaired, the Palestinians may be more inclined to see negotiations as their last, and best, resort.
The other reason for hope is that Prince Abdullah apparently told President Bush he would pressure the Palestinians -- but he does not appear to have made a similar offer with regard to the Syrians. That is a positive development because one of the original flaws of the Saudi peace plan was that it sought to tie peace with the Palestinians to an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Such a withdrawal would be foolish for Israel and, in any event, I doubt Sharon would consider linking the two. By offering to focus on the Palestinians, Abdullah may be letting the Syrian piece of his proposal fall by the wayside -- a good development for all parties.
Of course, all of this may be an overanxious reading of the diplomatic tea leaves. Even if the United States and Saudi Arabia succeed in getting Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table, that won't erase the same intractable problems that landed the Middle East in this awful situation in the first place.
As if to drive home the case for pessimism, this morning -- as every morning -- when I walk into my office at the corner of 20th and L streets in Washington, I will see a Washington Jewish Week newspaper box that has not been refilled in more than two years. Inside the box will sit -- as always -- a yellowing, crumpled edition of the tabloid-size paper from January 2000, mockingly frozen in time on the busy Washington sidewalk. The lead headline will announce, as always, that Israel's negotiations with Syria have recently derailed. It was, of course, the first sign that Barak's sweeping plans for peace might not be so easy to implement -- the very tip of a pessimism that would soon sink the entire peace process. Then again, that grizzled old newspaper may not be ridiculing passersby quite so stridently this morning -- because just down the street will also be The New York Times, sporting a headline about a new Saudi posture, and maybe, just maybe, the very tip of optimism.
