• The Iraq war: implications for Middle East peace - by  Thomas R. Pickering

• The US presence could be destabilizing - an interview with  Osama El-Baz

• A prelude to Israeli-Palestinian peace - by  Shlomo Ben-Ami

A European Union perspective
by Javier Solana

There are some simple equations in the Middle-East conflict. Without a comprehensive peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the potential for instability in the region and in the wider world will remain. Without an end to the Israeli-Arab conflict, and mutual recognition, any peace between Israel and Palestine will continue to face challenges. And last but not least, there will be no peace without the United States. These three elements underpin a proactive EU policy. The Iraq war changed some parameters, but did not remove the need for continued efforts towards a comprehensive peace in the region. Nor did it change the vision that we Europeans wish our neighbors in the Middle East to adopt and promote.

The Iraq war has not completely transformed the Arab world, nor the Middle East in general. But there have been important consequences. The fall of Saddam Hussein's regime has some strategic impact. Iraq was a major actor in the Israel-Arab conflict and wars. In 1991, it struck Israel with Scud missiles, fortunately in a rather ineffective way. During that war, the Palestinian leadership made a strategic error not to oppose the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and then had to pay a heavy human and economic price for that position. Until a few months ago, Baghdad continued to support some rejectionist Palestinian groups.

Javier Solana, of Spain, is EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).

The Iraq war, whether you hated it or loved it, was a game changer. The biggest influence has been on Middle East peace. Most of it has been positive from the American perspective, but some too has been negative.

We begin with the first Gulf war model. President Bush senior and his secretary of state, James Baker, took advantage of the unique opportunity posed by the first defeat of Saddam Hussein to bring the parties together at Madrid. The first Gulf war opened the door to a new look at the process and shook up the elements enough to make it possible to see new opportunities. Most prominent among them were the Arab partners in that war, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria, and the additional leg up which the United States had been given by success in Kuwait to use that accomplishment to argue strongly that it was time, after 30 years, to come to the table at Madrid.

The Iraq war, the second Gulf war, and its fallout are different, but end up producing some of the same possible results. Israeli Prime Minister Sharon has lost the kingpin--Iraq--of any Arab coalition against Israel, which most conservative Israeli generals and thinkers posited as their worst case against which to plan in war and peace. The theory generally was that whatever happened on the battlefield and in the peace process, Israel had to guard against a united Arab front, including a strong Iraq, arrayed against it at some future time of the Arabs' choosing in a kind of gottedamerung strike against the existence of Israel. Removing Iraq from the board--seemingly permanently--makes it possible for Ariel Sharon to think bolder thoughts. If he wants to be the Nixon-in-China of the peace process, this significant strategic change opens one formerly closed door for him to do so.

Two other strategic shifts are also worth examination. The victory in Iraq allowed the United States, and especially its combative secretary of defense, to speak first about Syria and then Iran, in feisty if not apocalyptic terms. It worked or began to work with Syria. Secretary of State Powell's rapid follow up visit--after a week of talk in Washington to the effect that the next US military move might be to have the Third Infantry Division turn left in Baghdad toward Damascus--showed some softening of traditional Syrian positions on a peace settlement and support for terrorist groups. It has worked because the Rumsfeld-Powell one-two punch, not a regular feature of the Washington scene, seemingly has begun to succeed, at least for now.

Iran is harder, but no less worrying to the United States, with its nuclear and missile programs and, in the peace process context, its support for Hizballah and others and its opposition to Israel's survival at least among top-level hardliners in Tehran. What makes it different are several other factors. Is the US really ready to take on militarily a country three to four times the population and twice the area of Iraq while it still has 150,000 to 200,000 troops tied up in Iraq and many more elsewhere from Bosnia to Korea? And the one-two punch capability seems at the moment to have gone missing. The United States appears not to want to talk to Iran due to the possibly mistaken impression that conversation means some kind of recognition or compromise of the regime change objective espoused by some in the administration. However it would seem that to be effective in support of President Bush's objectives of promoting peace in the region, talk will have to occur. And in this case Iran, for an entirely different set of reasons, is more like North Korea than it is like Iraq as a problem for a military solution.

Another positive factor since the war has been the apparent shift in views: by Sharon, who is more open on peace issues with his new look at "occupied" territories and his more forward although still possibly limited view on "illegal" settlements; among the Palestinians, Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and the efforts at reform; and perhaps most important of all, President Bush's personal engagement for the first time in the peace process. This has now produced a kind of three-month truce with Israeli withdrawal beginning in Gaza and Bethlehem.

The negative side of post-Iraq fallout is also worth examining. Arab attitudes toward the United States have been further shaped by the war and its prosecution and have continued to be almost unrelievedly negative, to be offset for a short time perhaps by the president's engagement at Aqaba. More will need to be done to support continued change there.

European attitudes also continue to be confrontational in France, Germany and to a lesser extent in Russia, and supportive at least to some degree elsewhere. While they are important, they are not central to success; the same may be said of the other member of the Quartet, the United Nations.

Violence continues to be a dangerous and highly disruptive factor. While experts on the region have always felt that the hallmark of getting closer to final agreement would be exceptional violence by those groups opposed to peace, it is also not possible to remain optimistic if Palestinians do not move to control violence in an open and apparent way, and Israel does not persist in an effective settlement freeze/rollback and stop its assassinations of Palestinian leaders. The truce presents that opportunity.

With all this, the Iraq war still has great potential as a game changer. What is made of it depends as always on the US and the parties. The engagement of the US president as he emerged from the conflict is the crucially important new and somewhat unexpected event. Nevertheless, in the present circumstances, he has his work cut out for him.-Published 24/7/03©bitterlemons-international.org

Thomas R. Pickering's long career at the US State Department included postings as ambassador at the UN, the Russian Federation, India, Israel and Jordan, and culminated in the position of under secretary of state for political affairs.

BI: How would you characterize reactions in the Middle East to the war in Iraq?

El-Baz: In general, most Middle Easterners are not sure of the real reasons for the American-British role against Iraq. Many reasons were cited, but most observers noticed that there was no coherent agenda: pursuing weapons of mass destruction, deposing Saddam Hussein, gaining a footstep in a strategic part of the Arab world to influence governments and others; some thought they had a hidden agenda to control Iraq's huge oil reserves.

I believe the Americans made a mistake in Iraq when they began to speak of the necessity to remain there for years. People thought the idea was to colonize an important Arab country and establish an American model there and then try to force this model on other Arab countries. I believe this hidden agenda is not true. They came to show how tough they are in fighting extremism. When they found their job was completed in Afghanistan they thought of getting into another area. If the US stays it will obstruct the process of political normalization inside Iraq.

BI: The entire focus of Middle East reaction is on America?

El-Baz: Some Arabs think Israel incited the US to fight Iraq. I don't agree, but the impression many Arabs got is that Israel did this either to weaken an Arab country that could be strong in the future, thus weakening the Arab front in general, or because Iraq could be asked in future to be part of the solution of the refugee problem.

Some Israelis make a mistake when they talk about formulas of this kind because they give rise to Palestinian and Arab fears that what is in store is to force the Palestinians out--not only the 1948 refugees but also a good number of the residents of the territories (22 percent of Palestine) and ship them to Iraq.

The Israeli government and intellectuals would be well advised not to give the impression they are for targeting and weakening an Arab country. It makes the dispute look like a zero sum game, [and makes] Israel look like an enemy. The weakening of an Arab country is not good for Israel, because it weakens the region and encourages the hardliners.

BI: How did the war affect Arab unity and cohesion?

El-Baz: It had no effect on Arab unity. I don't think it's going to influence the Arabs more than the war on terrorism. In the case of the occupation of Iraq, an Arab front has been weakened, but let's face it, for 30 years Iraq did not contribute to Arab military strength except against another Islamic state, Iran.

What more could the Arab League do vis-à-vis the US? Nothing. Even the Europeans got nowhere with the US.

We shall not benefit by trying to guess the motivations behind the invasion of Iraq. Now we have to try to make the best of the situation, so that the US shortens its military presence in Iraq as much as possible, and turns over rule to the Iraqis.

BI: How do you address the US as regional neighbor with a new regional vision of democratization?

El-Baz: I don't think they're going to stay for that long. Their best option is to leave rule to a new group of Iraqis who will concentrate on rebuilding Iraq. Most Iraqis are for the maintenance and preservation of unity and territorial integrity of the country. The Kurds know the difficulties of going it alone; like them, the Shiites too realize this. There will not be an extreme Shiite regime. Many Iraqi Shiites are moderates. Even the clergy want a moderate state.

BI: How will the US presence affect Syria, Iran and other neighbors of Iraq?

El-Baz: The US presence could be destabilizing not only to Syria and Iran but also to the region as a whole, creating problems for the governments of Arab countries. Here the conspiratorial interpretation of history will take over. (It's very common in the region, and becoming so in Israel as well; it's contagious.) There are so many voices in the US questioning why they went in; in England the opposition is growing. Casualties are growing; they'll have financial problems.

BI: How do you assess the chances of the nascent Palestinian-Israeli peace process?

El-Baz: I give the roadmap a 70 percent chance for phases one and two. I have the feeling the Israeli people are going to be supporting the government to move in this direction. They don't want to go back to insecurity. I think Bush has invested a lot and made commitments; so has Blair, so it will be embarrassing for the US to let the roadmap slide, leaving the Europeans alone in the forefront.

As for phase three, final status, if the Sharon government remains, the chances will be 30 to 35 percent.

I believe the Palestinians will be very anxious to continue, because they have suffered from recent history. So it's important to keep the negotiating process alive, otherwise the consequences can be bleak for everyone. If insecurity spreads it will hurt both sides.

BI: Finally, how is the Middle East likely to change in the near future?

El-Baz: I believe the Middle East is going to move in the direction of peace and coexistence. Many will now say enough is enough, let us concentrate on not missing the train of progress. Arabs and Israelis have too much at stake. The Arabs know the US cannot impose its way of thinking and governing on a region that is so different. We want to modernize and strengthen democratic institutions, but few want to do so to please the Americans or under American pressure. On the contrary, the pressure can backfire. I believe America is making a mistake by giving the impression that it wants to rebuild the Middle East in the image of the US.-Published 24/7/03 ©bitterlemons-international.org

Ambassador Osama El-Baz is political adviser to the president of the Arab Republic of Egypt.

In the Arab-Israel conflict, one must admit, wars were sometimes a catalyst for a political process. Arabs and Israelis alike learned the lesson of compromise only after they had exhausted all other possibilities.

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir rejected a peace initiative by Egyptian President Sadat in 1972 and condemned the parties to live the trauma of the Yom Kippur War before they could assume the inevitability of compromise and reach a settlement some years later under the auspices of United States President Carter. And it was the first intifada and Gulf war that served as the introduction to the Madrid Peace Conference and eventually to the Oslo Accords.

I never believed that the American invasion of Iraq was justified and legitimate. Nevertheless I welcomed it with the hope that it would force the Bush administration to repeat the logic of the first Gulf war and assume, once the war was over, a more resolute and assertive involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The immediate effect of the war was indeed that of creating improved conditions for a reactivation of the peace process. Iraq is defeated, Syria has presumably been "disciplined" and a formidable American military machine has been deployed on the Iranian border. The concern of the Arab regimes for their stability in the wake of the Iraq war, and their fear of Bin Laden or "Bin Ladenism", combined with American pressure, produced regional conditions for an attempt to create an all Arab envelope of active support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process that are better than those that existed when US President Clinton invited the parties to Camp David. Clearly the Saudi peace initiative and its eventual endorsement by the Arab League were closely linked to the effects of 9/11 and the Iraqi situation.

The major weakness of Clinton's peace enterprise lay in the deficiencies of his international diplomacy. Desperately short of quality political time at the end of his presidency, Clinton was unable to rally the Arab governments to his enterprise and could not build an alliance with the Europeans and the Russians to sustain his peace deal.

It is precisely on this point that the Bush administration is now positioned to perform better. The new global and regional conditions produced by 9/11, the dramatic decline in the position of the "rogue" states in the region--Iran's penchant for a revolutionary foreign policy may also be undermined by the very serious domestic challenges now faced by the regime--and the exhaustion of both Israelis and Palestinians by an intifada neither can really win, offered President Bush a unique opportunity to build an international alliance for peace in the Middle East (the Quartet may be such an alliance) that his predecessor could not put together.

After two years of relative indifference with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian track, the Bush administration learned from the Iraq war that a vital pillar of any grand strategic design to "restructure" the Middle East will have to be an Israeli-Palestinian peace. The administration finally recognized that in a region where the leaders are mostly "pro-American" and the masses "anti-American", one does not have to embrace the cynical discourse that all the ills of the Arab world come from Israel's occupation of the territories in order to accept that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a major cause of instability in the region, and a convenient platform for mass hysteria throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

America's Iraq adventure is not the first case in history where a "war of liberation" declined into a "war of occupation," and the "liberator" became the "occupier". America is today an occupying power in the heart of the Arab world, a condition that is bound to perpetuate the sense of humiliation and rage throughout the region. Addressing the Palestinian dilemma with the pledge to help create a Palestinian state is for the US a way to acquire a legitimacy of sorts for an embarrassing situation.

But with the specter of dead American soldiers and civil chaos in Iraq, and with no clear outline of an exit strategy, not to mention the domestic constraints on the president in an election year, it is very doubtful that the administration will be able to maintain for long such a high level of commitment and involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian labyrinth.

A totally different matter is whether the roadmap as such is the right tool for bringing about an Israeli-Palestinian peace. If a high degree of American involvement is maintained, the roadmap can perhaps help reactivate the peace process and probably even bring about a temporary end to violence.

The international platform that produced the roadmap, and the mechanisms of monitoring and supervision that the Americans plan to put in place, are all principles I have been advocating as a lesson from the collapse of our peace enterprise.

However, I believe that the roadmap is still inadequate. It repeats some of the major fallacies and weaknesses of the Oslo process. Sooner or later, peace will require that the parties be presented not just with a vague framework but with precise parameters for a final settlement, and that an American-led international mandate with a multinational force be put in place to assist the Palestinian Authority in its transition to full statehood and in disarming the militias. The mandate should likewise monitor and supervise Israel's compliance with its commitments.-Published 24/7/03 © bitterlemons-international.org

Shlomo Ben-Ami was foreign minister of Israel.