Leadership will Determine the Roadmap's Fate

June 11, 2003

Leadership will Determine the Roadmap's Fate

By Rami G. Khouri

We will probably require several months to learn if the two mini-summits that US President George Bush attended last week in Sharm El Sheikh and Aqaba will push Arabs and Israelis towards a negotiated, comprehensive peace or fizzle out as initiatives that were driven more by romanticism than realism.

Keep your eye on three elements that will prove crucial to the outcome: public opinion in Israel and Palestine, the quality of leadership in both lands, and the role of the US and other supporting external players. It is also important today to separate the roadmap's goal of short-term resumption of peace negotiations from the long-term outlines of a permanent peace agreement. This phase is not about making peace, but rather about reestablishing immediate, short-term mutual trust and the intent to achieve a full peace accord some years down the road.

The Palestinian and Israeli publics exhibit contradictory and offsetting sentiments: they are ravaged by war, but willing to keep fighting; they desire a negotiated peace accord based on adjacent sovereign states, but neither wants to make the first move in that direction. We simply do not know if the war fatigue among the Israeli and Palestinian publics is strong enough to push them to pressure their leaders to make this peace process succeed. My guess is that the fatigue on both sides is deep enough to prompt both publics to give the roadmap a chance to succeed, despite its many flaws. Operationally, this means that nobody expects rapid movement towards a comprehensive peace accord, but rather that small, incremental steps will prove crucial in the weeks ahead.

Each side must get meaningful actions from the other side: Israel wants to see the Palestinian government rein in militants who attack Israelis, and the Palestinians want to see Israel roll back its occupation and ease restrictions on Palestinians. Both publics will support their leaderships in these spheres if progress is significant, tangible and persistent; if moves are superficial and episodic, public support will quickly vanish, to be replaced again by long-term occupation, colonialism and armed resistance.

The last 33 months of Palestinian-Israeli low-intensity warfare have heightened both sides' appreciation of what the other side wants and needs. This is why the Palestinian prime minister speaks of ending the armed resistance against Israel, and the Israeli prime minister speaks of ending the occupation of Palestinians.

The leaders, however, have to decide if they plan to lead their people into tough new negotiating territory where concessions and compromises must be made, or if they will simply follow their public opinions into the kingdom of perpetual stalemate and warfare. The quality of leadership can make an enormous difference. Decisive leadership for an honourable, fair peace process will carry public opinion and defeat extremism if it delivers to both peoples movement towards what they crave — a normal life in their own secure, sovereign states.

We are likely to witness messy political times inside Israel and Palestine, especially if the leaderships decide to mobilise their majorities for a negotiated peace and confront and control their minorities that opt for colonial expansion by some in Israel or terror attacks against civilians by some Palestinians.

Military force and iron fists will not work. Only the mobilised and repeatedly affirmed political will of the majority in Israel and Palestine can ultimately delegitimise militant extremists and end the cycle of Israeli colonial occupation and Palestinian armed resistance.

Here is where the role of the US and other external parties comes into play. These parties can enhance the prospects for success only if they act to strengthen and help mobilise the majorities for a negotiated peace on both sides. If the US, the EU, Russia, the Arab states, the UN and others clearly condemn both Israeli colonial occupation and Palestinian terror resistance tactics, Israeli and Palestinian public opinion will be more likely to support the leaders' moves to implement the “roadmap” and negotiate the birth of a viable Palestinian state.

A permanent, comprehensive peace agreement is unlikely to be negotiated by the current Israeli government whose right-wing, predatory ideological programme offers the Palestinians limited statehood on about 40 per cent of the occupied West Bank and Gaza. A different, more reasonable, Israeli leadership will be required to negotiate permanent peace, but that is for the future.

The new dynamic that defines the situation today sees novel elements: a reengaged American administration and the president's commitment to work for a Palestinian state, Israeli and Palestinian leaders who speak respectively of ending occupation and ending armed resistance, public opinion on both sides that seeks a negotiated settlement, and the globally backed “roadmap” that points a way out of the current war cycle.

The critical link that will determine success or failure in the coming months is the quality of leadership among Palestinians and Israelis. Decisive leadership that elicits tangible steps from either side can mobilise the other elements into a powerful coalition for a just peace. Mediocre leadership that panders to base fears will only perpetuate the pain that all now suffer.