The Arab Peace Initiative
In part a response to criticisms that the Arab states had failed to support Arafat at Camp David, the Arab Peace Initiative (API) was endorsed by the Arab League summit in Beirut in March 2002.10 The API offered Israel an end to the Arab–Israeli conflict, comprehensive peace and normal relations. In exchange, it called on Israel to withdraw fully from the territories it had occupied since 1967, to accept an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, and to agree ‘a just solution’ to the Palestinian refugee problem.11 The solution to the refugee problem was ‘to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194’. This formulation was problematic for Israel, given that the resolution was the basis for the Palestinians’ claim to a right of return for refugees.
Yet whatever its shortcomings in Israeli eyes, the API could have served as the basis for renewed Israeli–Palestinian negotiations, had Prime Minister Sharon being willing to explore its potential. Instead, he chose to regard it as an unacceptable take-it-or-leave-it offer. At the same time, the Arab leaders who had agreed the API did nothing to correct Sharon’s characterization of it. For its part, the US administration of George W. Bush either did not understand the possibilities that the API offered or (for whatever reason) refused to acknowledge them. Moreover, the launch of the API took place in the midst of the Second Intifada, which included a series of major terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians that greatly reduced Israeli receptivity to talk of peace and the concessions it might entail.
The lesson from the API is that peace initiatives require energetic ‘marketing’ and committed backers if they are to gain traction. This may require sustained sponsorship from the wider international community.
At a meeting in April 2013 hosted by US Secretary of State John Kerry, the Arab League reaffirmed the Arab states’ interest in peace by accepting the idea of a two-state solution with mutually agreed land swaps – thus modifying the demands that the API made of Israel.12 But the promotion of the API still lacked the vigour that the situation, and the enormous potential of the initiative, demanded. The Arab states reaffirmed their commitment to the API at their summit in April 2018.
10 AbuZayyad, Z. (2007), ‘The Arab Peace Initiative’, editorial, Palestine-Israel Journal, Vol. 14, No. 4. On Crown Prince (later King) Abdullah’s central role in the formulation of the initiative, see Friedman, T. L. (2002), ‘An Intriguing Signal from the Saudi Crown Prince’, New York Times, 17 February 2002, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/17/opinion/an-intriguing-signal-from-the-saudi-crown-prince.html.
11 AFP (2002), ‘Text of Arab peace initiative adopted at Beirut summit’, 28 March 2002, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/empa/dv/1_arab-initiative-beirut_/1_arab-initiative-beirut_en.pdf.
12 S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace (undated), ‘Arab Peace Initiative’, http://www.centerpeace.org/explore/arab-peace-initiative/.