The cold-blooded killing of the journalist Khashoggi, however gruesome, pales compared to the brutality and gross human rights violations Saudi Arabia is committing in Yemen. The Saudis are deliberately preventing food and medicine from reaching areas where children are dying from starvation or disease. Their indiscriminate bombings are killing thousands of innocent men, women, and…
As we approach the sixth year of Syria’s civil war, the whole international community remains completely inept and has failed to join together in the search for a solution that could end the horrifying slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians each month. Sadly (but for obvious reasons), each of the countries and other groups involved,…
One of the most momentous declarations to come out of the
Arab world since Israel's inception in 1948 is the Arab Peace Initiative, launched in March 2002 in Beirut, Lebanon, and re-adopted by the Arab League in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in March 2007. It would be tragic to allow the Initiative to languish as it offers a solid promise for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace.
The momentum generated by Crown Prince Abdullah's peace proposal, the United Nation's resolution calling for the immediate cessation of hostilities and the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the Bush administration's renewed commitment to end the violence, coupled with the growing internal Israeli as well as Palestinian pressure on their respective authorities to halt the escalating violence, could produce a cease-fire that will subsequently lead to political negotiations.
Both Prime Minister Sharon and Chairman Arafat owe it to their own people to provide the Arab League meeting in Lebanon with an opportunity to deliberate Crown Prince Abdullah's peace proposal in an environment not poisoned by the mounting body count. President Bush's belated decision to change his strategy and take a more active role to end the bloodshed is welcome. We must exert all necessary pressure on Sharon and Arafat to prevent the premature death of the peace initiative because of the continuing violent extremism. If there is a time for the three leaders to demonstrate leadership, that time is now.
Whatever motivated Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to propose a general formula for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace, the proposal and its timing are extremely significant and warrant serious consideration by all affected parties. The proposed peace plan, however, will not work unless a number of conditions involving the Saudis, Israelis, Palestinians and the United States are first established.
The Arab world will probably never be the same as it was before September 11th. The question is what kind of changes will we witness? Will they be the type of changes geared toward meeting public yearnings for human rights, freedoms, better social and economic conditions and personal security or will they be cosmetic and therefore only intensify the social and political discontent leading to political instability and escalating violence.
The fallout from the tragedy of September 11 indicates that those who masterminded the attack seriously miscalculated the reaction by the United States, the international community and the Arab and the Muslim world to the scope and the consequences of the attack. We must now fully exploit the perpetrators' miscalculations while remaining alert to their ruthlessness and insidious fatalism.
Since the establishment of a Palestinian state appears to be only a matter of time, the question is how such a state might coexist with Israel. Both the Israelis and Palestinians continue to claim the same land, and both are demographically interspersed in Israel and in the territories. So far, neither Israel nor the PLO have been able to project a wide view of how a two-state solution might work. They have engaged in wishful thinking, ignoring the fact that, in the end, the final outcome of their negotiations will be determined by the realities on the ground.