Peacelessness

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia:
Israel’s Missing Peace Partner

By Abraham Berkowitz and Tom A. Milstein

May 13, 2008

Does any diplomacy have a more sordid history than the peace process? From its inception at
Madrid, through its many reincarnations (the Oslo Accords, Oslo II, the Hebron Agreement, the
Wye River Memorandum, the Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum, the Camp David 2000 Summit,
the Taba Summit, the Beirut Summit, the Quartet, the Road Map, the Annapolis Conference – the
list goes on), no initiative in international relations has ever been more loudly ballyhooed or
proven so bereft of positive results (and replete with their opposite – disappointment, terror, and
bloodshed), than the Middle East peace process. And this despite a history of unilateral concessions
by Israel to the Palestinians, both implemented and offered, that would have shocked and
awed earlier paragons of “peace with the Arabs” in Israeli political history.

The peace process is truly the famous snake of Gnostic symbolism – “My end is my beginning” –
which grows by devouring itself. No matter how humiliating or grotesque the actual outcome of
each of its initiatives in terms of crashed hopes and escalated terrorism and violence, it simply
refuses to die. It always returns, somehow strengthened and renewed by each new debacle. No
wonder many wonder if this “magical” rebirth somehow masks a hidden agenda that has more to
do with compromising basic Zionist values – the unity of Jerusalem, the territorial sanctity of the
Land of Israel – than with its ostensible goal of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
There is a certain paranoid charm to this dismal suspicion. There may even be a measure of truth
in it. But we do not believe that the ultimate “secret” to the peace process snake’s many lives lies
in a diplomatic conspiracy to undermine Israel. The real explanation is more mundane and political.
The peace process endures because most Israelis continue to believe that there is no viable alternative
to it. Public opinion polling shows a consistent majority in support of this proposition,
even though the same polls also reveal deep pessimism on the part of this same majority that
peace is actually attainable.

The reason for this apparent paradox lies in the transformed nature of the Middle East conflict.
Israel’s main security threat no longer comes from massed Arab armies on her borders. The Camp
David accords – the only “peace process” that actually worked – put an end to that threat by
yanking Egypt out of the Arab military front against Israel. The nation no longer faced the mortal
danger of a two-front war; no viable Arab military coalition against Israel could be assembled
without the participation of the Egyptian army.

As this reality sank in on the Arabs, their tactics shifted, from pan-Arab nationalism to Palestinian
nationalism and Islamic fascism. Against these new threats, the prowess of the IDF proved to be
less of a bulwark. In some ways, it even became a liability, as the “David vs. Goliath” image
slipped away from Israel and more and more became the (spurious) possession of stone-throwing
Palestinian youth. The stark reality was that a military solution to Israel’s security problems ceased to be viable. Palestinian nationalism and Islamic fascism do not pose a military threat to
Israel. Terror, however monstrous in its effects, will never defeat the IDF or drive the Jewish people
from their land. The threat is political – less tangible, but no less sinister, than the previous
military threat.

The people of Israel grasp this. They sense that no military solution to the Palestinian problem
exists, that the ball has bounced into a different court, the court of politics and diplomacy. In this
court, the peace process appears to be the only game in play. And so, no matter how fruitless that
process has been, they conclude that the only conceivable alternative to it – direct military action
– is no alternative at all, but merely a rationalization for endless bloody stalemate, punctuated by
periodic asymmetric warfare yielding little except casualties and recriminations.

The absence of an effective alternative, however, does not guarantee the success of a fundamentally
flawed policy. And the peace process is so flawed, which is why it always fails.

The peace process is premised on the assumption that some sort of permanent accommodation is
possible between Israel and the Palestinians. A corollary of this assumption is that since Israel
already has a state, accommodation implies that the Palestinians ought to emerge from the process
with a state as well. A state implies territorial sovereignty, recognized borders, a capitol, and
other generally acknowledged attributes of national independence. The details of all these attributes
constitute the stumbling blocks of the peace process. Inability to agree on them has led to the
string of failures which mark each phase in the history of the process.

The peace process always fails because it has been structured from the ground-up, rather than
from the sky-down. A top-down view emphasizes the regional and global factors necessary for an
Israeli-Palestinian accommodation, rather than beginning with the actual facts and players on the
ground in the conflict area. The correct approach to making the peace process actually work to
produce peace should focus on how to realign regional, international and transnational forces so
that negotiations between the actual parties “on the ground” have a chance of yielding practical
results.

The only peace process that ever actually worked – the Camp David Accords – proceeded in exactly
this fashion – from the sky-down. The daunting task of actually implementing peace between
Egypt and Israel came after the two nation’s leaders had taken daring and courageous steps
to reach out to one another, astounding not only all the region’s other nations, but indeed the entire
world – most especially their own native populations. When the Mid-East conflict still took
the form of a primarily national struggle between the Arab states and Israel, the key to neutralizing
the conflict lay in a series of first steps at the leadership level of the two principal combatants,
leaving the laborious but now-soluble details of actual conflict resolution for later.

Each leader made compromises with the other in order to achieve success at Camp David which
remain controversial in their national communities to this day. In some quarters of Israel, Menachem
Begin is still reviled as a traitor for returning the Sinai to Egypt. Anwar Sadat paid with
his life for his dedication to ending the conflict. Nevertheless, the Accord has held, and no Arab
war against Israel has occurred (or can occur) since Egypt opted out of the Arab anti-Israel military
front. This was a tremendous victory for peace and for the national security of both nations.
If the politics of “sky-down” was key to the success of the Camp David Accords, why do the
promoters of the peace process in its present form keep mindlessly insisting on attempting to restore
the process from the ground up? Road maps and shelf agreements are only the latest in a
host of failed “blueprints” for progress toward peace that have emphasized “confidence building

measures” and “interim steps” ad infinitum, all of which have failed miserably to produce the intended
results and most of which have actually engendered additional friction, conflict and enmity.
Reformulating the peace process in terms of the Begin-Sadat model means, first and foremost,
taking into consideration the tremendous change in the character of the Middle East conflict that
occurred in the wake of the success of that model, from the military to the political theater. When
this shift occurred, the leadership of the anti-Israel cause, also shifted: from the Arab nation with
the most powerful army, to the Arab nation with the most political power. Only one state fits this
definition, by virtue of its custodianship of Islam’s two holy sites, Mecca and Medina, and its
parallel mastery over the world’s most powerful wealth machine, the Oil Cartel: the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia, whose twin religious and economic roles have endowed it with vast political
power.

For the peace process to work in the post-Camp David Accords Mid-East environment, the Saudi
leadership must play the same vanguard role vis-à-vis Israel that Egypt’s Sadat did in 1977. This
requirement is based not just on the analogy to success of the Camp David Accords, compelling
though that analogy is. It derives even more powerfully from the political realities on the ground
of the conflict itself. The Palestinian movement, in both its Palestinian Authority and Hamas incarnations,
is deeply indebted to and profoundly influenced by Saudi economic largesse and Wahabi
religious influence.

The fact that the Saudis play this role behind the scenes rather than openly should not be allowed
to discount the enormous effect on all shades of Palestinian opinion which a dramatic Saudi overture
to Israel would have. And not just on Palestinian opinion – a corresponding sea change in
Israeli opinion, even religious Zionist opinion, toward the prospect of a successful peace process
resolving the Mid-East conflict, would also occur. Matters now considered non-negotiable would
come to be seen in a new light – the light of civil relations between Israelis and Palestinians, Jews
and Muslims. The settlers might feel obliged to make painful compromises – but no more painful
than those they would ask of their Palestinian, Muslim and Saudi neighbors.
The actual details of how this unwinding of the Mid-East conflict might work itself out are beyond
the scope of this article. Indeed, it is our core thesis that these details ought properly to be
addressed after, not before, the leadership breakthrough that is their prerequisite. They are not
now the proper subject of any realistic approach to a viable peace process in the Mid-East. What
is proper, is to consider the state of current Saudi diplomacy regarding the peace process. That
consideration is not very encouraging, but it is not altogether discouraging either. Saud al-Faisal,
the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, did break precedent (under intense American pressure, to
be sure) and attend the latest peace process conference at Annapolis, Maryland, on Nov. 27, 2007.
But he did so most grudgingly, and stated that he would not shake the hand of the Israeli representative
nor even converse with her during the summit. He was true to his word. This performance
was far from what is needed.

But the vicissitudes of Annapolis and its aftermath should not cloud the essential desideratum of
peace in the Middle East, which is that the ground-up approach has failed miserably, and only the
sky-down approach has any chance of success. That means that it is time for Saudi Arabia to
show the statesmanship and courage that its tremendous religious and economic weight in the
world require of it. The demand for such a role should become both the cardinal element in the
opposition’s critique of the peace process in its present form, and the keystone of a new peace
process that could actually work.
 
The U.S. State Department is the main promoter of the “ground-up” model. This unrelenting
dedication to a failed model of diplomacy suggests what the real “hidden agenda” of the official
peace process is: to shield Saudi Arabia from having to play a leadership role in bringing about
peace in the Middle East. But this agenda is in contradiction with America’s oft-declared commitment
to the noble goal of peace in the Middle East. There cannot be a peace process unless
Saudi Arabia and Israel join hands in taking the risks necessary to bring it about.

In the absence of such boldness and courage, and of a U.S. State Department committed to helping
rather than hindering its expression, there can be no viable peace process in the Middle East.