The Saudi

Home

The Saudi's Are Coming

March 8, 2007

A New Middle East?

Both for its own survival and for peace of the Middle East region, it is obvious that the Saudi Government is becoming increasingly more engaged in foreign affairs. As the Arabs prepare for the Arab League Summit to be held later this month, the issue of the Israel–Palestine conflict may surpass the urgent need to address other issues such Iraq and Lebanon. Chief amongst the documents to be discussed will be the Arab Peace Initiative choreographed in 2002 to end the Israel- Palestine struggle.
It may be argued that the Saudis have advanced the cause of peace in immeasurable ways; first by coercing the Palestinian factions to agree on unity government besides supplying them with much needed financial backing. By so doing, the Saudis have effectively undermined the political and financial influence Iran may have had on Hamas, the strong Palestinian faction vying for control of Palestinian polity. Additionally, it is rumored that Saudi national security advisor Prince Bandar bin Sultan has engaged his Israel counterparts on ways to make the peace plan more palatable.
With a supposedly implicit American support and a visibly increased Saudi diplomatic leverage,, Palestinians and Israel's are at an historic turning point to make peace possible on the basis of land for peace, two-state solution, and mutual recognition and an agreed upon resolution of the expelled Palestinian refugees.
It is time for the United States to assert its parallel foregin objectives in the Middle East: a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians and a marginalized or a contained Iran. A stable Middle East, long a goal of US foreign policy may have to surpass our untenable push for a democratic Middle East.

Since the United States has set a high (and unreasonable) moral ceiling in its dealings with any Hamas-led Palestinians government, resulting in a continued financial strangulation of the Palestinian people, it may be argued that Washington's green light to Saudi Arabia is an opening for a third party (namely the Saudi or the Europeans) to provide the much needed aid to the Palestinians. By so doing, the Palestinians will not to forever continue to pay for their democratic choice of electing Hamas.
The diplomatic drought which best describes President Bush’s Middle East policy may finally receive its life sustaining water (and cheap oil) from the dessert kingdom of Saudi Arabia. If the Arab peace plan, ratified by all the Arab states from Morocco to Yemen, is used as a basis for peaceful negotiations, Israel will cultivate peace not only with the Palestinians but all of the Arab world, effectively excluding Iran from reaping the benefits of a future peaceful Middle East. The convergence of mutual interest may finally lead to a sound policy.