Aref Assaf, 11-22-2007

1977, that whole year was a wasted one because I could not get a proper military clearance from the Israeli military Administration to come to the United Sates to further my studies. I was only 18 then , having finished high school a year earlier and now taking several English courses at Bir Zeit University, while working at a sweets shop in Ramallah, West Bank. 1997 was also the tenth anniversary of killing of 111 year old brother, Abdul-Karim during the 1967 Six Day War. But the year 1977 was most remarkable for something else: an event that would shape my political views.
It was  late on the evening of  November 19, 1977 that then Egyptian president Anwar El-Sadat emerged  from his Presidential plane,  tense, stiff and apprehensive, and he  proceeded to walk  on the red carpet then Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin rolled out for his long time nemesis who almost lost  a war to him a few year earlier.

 
Sadat turned the heads of the entire world, including his own bewildered  citizens when he embarked on that fateful  36-hour visit. That trip  that included the first ever speech by an Arab leader before the Israeli Knesset,  People were stunned to see the Egyptian president, whose country at the time was the undisputed  leader of the Arab world, honor  a  promise  he made  few days earlier in an address to parliament, declaring that in order to save the lives of Egyptian soldiers he was willing to "travel to the end of the world, and as Israel would be surprised to hear me say now, before you, that I am willing to go to their own house, to the Knesset, and to argue with them." Before the Knesset, Sadat stated that he took the decision to visit Israel "knowing that it constitutes a great risk."

The Arab world, expectedly,  was not ready for Sadat's adventure.  Every Arab country, with the exception of Oman boycotted Egypt. The Arab League moved its headquarters to Tunis in 1979,  after the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.  Egypt was no longer considered worthy to lead the Arab world. Sadat was left to his own means, stripped of Arab support, to negotiate a peace deal with Israel under unmistakably biased American sponsorship.

As of that evening of November 19, Sadat changed, almost  unilaterally, and  may be forever, the narrative  and fate of Arab-Israeli relations. The relationship that was known from 1948 as "the Arab-Israeli struggle" swiftly was encased within new terms of reference: negotiating an Arab-Israeli peace. As the years went by, the world -- Arab countries included -- stopped talking of the Arab-Israeli struggle. The name of the game, until today, became "the Arab-Israeli peace process", even while it appears clinically dead.

Thirty years after Sadat's gamble turned against him, Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is soon expected to arrive in Annapolis, Maryland. Abbess's trip to the US is certainly less momentous than Sadat's trip to the entity of Israel. And judging from appearances, far less will be attainable there than was conceivable for Sadat at the time he played his hand. Permanent peace is not something more than but a few expect.

If Abbas, like Sadat, is taking gamble, it is of an altogether different kind. To both his supporters and detractors,  failure of the Palestinian leader to secure some gains for his people out of Annapolis, especially a firm Israeli commitment to launch final status talks on clear and agreed upon terms of reference, is likely to force Palestinians, already tired of long unfulfilled promises, to turn their back on the so-called peace process indefinitely. It would be a vote of no confidence in the Abbas strategy of "negotiations over resistance" that already has split the Palestinians. It would be basically the political end of Abbas and the declaration that it is only resistance that works.

Just as Sadat told the Knesset that he journeyed to Jerusalem with no prior coordination with Arab states, Abbas in recent press statements said he was "not going to wait for [all Palestinian political groups] to agree on Annapolis. I am going to go anyway." Unlike Sadat, Abbas must know that the dream of a durable peace is very far from reach. Indeed, it would be without credibility for Abbas to call upon Israeli leaders present to stand with him in "the courage of men and the boldness of heroes who dedicate themselves to a sublime aim," as Sadat told the Knesset 30 years ago.

Stark differences exit between Sadat's trip to Jerusalem and that of Abbas to Annapolis.  It is questionable to  compare between Sadat and Abbas as two negotiators with Israel, For Sadat was the president of Egypt, the largest and strongest Arab state. He was the warrior nearing -- even if missing -- victory. As such the mere fact that Sadat decided to accept negotiations... was a great lure to Israel, Unenviable, as for Abbas, he is in too miserable a position to be a negotiator. Abbas is the chairman of a weak authority that enjoys little Arab support. whose mere existence is dictated by Israel. It is a divided authority engaged in bloody internal fighting while Israel  continues to oppress Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza.

Obliviously, Israel, like the US, has another motivation for pursuing the Annapolis track: Iran. Arab leaders silently talk about it also. The American  government has been promising support for some Palestinian rights in Annapolis in return for a freeze of any public Arab criticism of US plans -- or even perhaps their implementation -- to attack Iran. It is also argued by observers that the designs of Olmert today are what Begin proposed three decades ago, which in effect translates as giving the Palestinians as little as is imaginable in return for extracting from the Arabs as much for Israel as possible. In 1977, they argue, it was Sadat and Egypt that Israel got, even as it gave Sinai back in return. Today, they say, it is final Arab submission and full normalization that Israel is hoping to exact in Annapolis.

According to critics of Sadat and Abbas, it is Sadat that should be held responsible for a good part of Abbass's dilemma today since it is through the marginalization of Egypt in the years between 1977 and now that the Palestinian cause was most challenged. When Egypt lost its place in the driving seat, they argue, the whole wagon went astray. Now the situation is such that Arabs do not start wars against Israel -- after all Sadat declared that the 1973 War was "the last war". Israel, however, starts wars against the Arabs -- in Lebanon and Palestine, and also in Iraq, backing the current Palestinian leadership against a wall so that it might eventually sign on to a deal that undercuts the essential and basic national and human rights of the Palestinians, including the constants of the Palestinian struggle: Israeli withdrawal to the lines of 4 June 1967, uncontested Palestinian and Arab control over East Jerusalem, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

One of the most obvious outcomes of Annapolis would be some sort of Saudi-Israeli direct engagement, if not even a direct handshake between Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and her counterpart Saud Al-Faisal. Arab officials involved in the preparations for Annapolis say that such a handshake would be possible only if Israel was to make the Palestinians a decent offer in terms of the start of final status negotiations and of constraining anti-Palestinian aggressive measures, including the construction of the apartheid wall.

 Political pundits of Arab official policies on the peace process for the past 30 years would argue that Arab regimes have already granted Israel an end to war and commitments to harshly contain Arab resistance. These regimes need to save normalization for a trade off, otherwise the Arabs would have nothing left to offer Israel, If Arabs fail to agree amongst themselves that Israel is not going to be granted normalization for free, then they need not get into a prolonged process of blaming Sadat for having allegedly sold out the Palestinian cause.

In press statements hours before the arrival of Sadat to Jerusalem, former Israeli prime minister Begin argued, "the very fact of the visit is important". He added that he hoped to receive an invitation to visit Cairo to pursue dialogue with Sadat. Now Olmert and other Israeli officials have been making military threats against economically starved Gaza in the lead up to Annapolis. Abbas, 30 years on, is going to the Israelis without the prior condition of securing Israeli commitment to end the occupation and withdraw to the lines of 4 June 1967. In recent public statements that were not widely published by the Israeli press, Israeli author Amos Oz, an Israeli novelist and journalist, said that he did not trust his country's current political leadership to have enough courage to reach an agreement with the Palestinians in Annapolis.

Each Arab state has been 'secretly' engaged in what Sadat was so harshly blamed for. With the odd exception here or there, most Arab capitals are seeking a relationship with Israel, irrespective of whatever is happening on the Palestinian front. If Sadat is perceived by Arabs to have made a mistake by going to Jerusalem with no unified Arab agenda, then there is much self-criticism that many Arab capitals need to apply in assessing their management of the peace process since Madrid -- even before as they were conducting secret talks with Tel Aviv -- and especially after Oslo.

From Sadat to Abbas, and not excluding  the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Arabs were never, with some few exceptions, very clever in handling the process of negotiations with Israel. The number one mistake is Arab failure to stake out a collective strategy. By contrast, there was, especially during the last decade, an abnegation in the minimum is accepted approach.

Arab leaders tend to conditions each new US administration as the savior of the peace process. As time erodes that sentiment,  it is perceived as the worst ever administration in the history of the peace process- until the next administration changes that perception. As for building solid bridges with Congress and influential pressure groups, we can not claim much credit. For this diplomat, by the criteria of public relations and that of effective diplomacy, Arabs have not gained much at a time when Israel's standing is high and on the increase.

 This Arab failure has contributed to the  lack of an effective mediator claim that the peace process has been dogged by recently and even during the last years of the Clinton administration that held Arafat solely responsible for the failure of Camp David II in 2000. If the US wants to be an effective broker -- not because it wants to monopolize the peace process but because this process cannot take many mediators and because it has a relationship with Israel that allows it potentially to deliver -- then it has to make sure that its relation with Israel is not exclusive.

It is worth noting that in 1977, there were about 150,000  Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Today,  there are no less than 500,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This number  is the result of a deliberate  Israeli policy to depopulating the occupied areas irrespective of the four decades of peace  negotiations between Arabs and Israelis. This is not just about the control of land ; it is also about the unilateral control of natural resources and deciding other peoples' future.

Reflecting on the past 30 years since Sadat's visit, many would argue that despite the long and complicated history of the Arab Israeli conflict, it was charismatic and daring leaders that made the most significant moments. Had former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin escaped assassination in November 1995, and had the Israelis and Americans made Arafat a credible offer that he could sell to the Palestinian people, some if not all, before his mysterious death in November 2004, the history of peace process might have been changed dramatically. This November pundits argue that  the US and Israel need to empower Abbas with some credible practical gains on the ground by easing restrictions on the Palestinians.

In 1977, I was struggling to leave Palestine and come to the US to further my studies. In 2007, I am struggling to return to Palestine, my homeland. But that's another story.