Good Neighbor Policy

Or just “neighbor policy.” One of the interesting, but little-noted aspects of the political awakening in the Middle East is that it no longer suffices to lay blame at the feet of the Israeli boogeyman. Both the good guys and the bad guys in these stories are Arabs.

Or just “neighbor policy.” One of the interesting, but little-noted aspects of the political awakening in the Middle East is that it no longer suffices to lay blame at the feet of the Israeli boogeyman. Both the good guys and the bad guys in these stories are Arabs.

The first good sign was a demonstration of several hundred Iraqis in Baghdad in December, protesting suicide bombings. At the funeral for Iraqis killed during the January election, the dead were laid to rest with speeches calling them “Martyrs for Islam,” and calling their killers “apostates.” Mithal al-Alusi, imprisoned under Saddam, called last year for Iraqi relations with Israel. After his sons were killed in an ambush laid for him, al-Alusi is called “the father of martyrs.” The Iraqi public has been out in the streets furious with Jordan since some Jordanians enthused about a Jordanian suicide bomber who blew up a line of recruits at an Iraqi police station.

Jordan has other problems – 53 deputies in Parliament asked the government to oust the Jordanian-appointed Greek Orthodox Patriarch in Jerusalem for abusing his office and trying to “implant an Arab-Greek ethnic dispute when he replaced Arab religious leaders with Greek ones… in the Patriarchate.” The Syrians tried to blame Israel for the assassination of Rafik Hariri, but the Lebanese weren’t buying it. Anti-American and anti-Israel signs at the Hezbollah rallies looked stilted and out of date – the chic people were in the counter-demonstration with American flags and “W” signs. Hosni Mubarak had to come to grips with an unhappy Egyptian public by releasing democracy activist Ayman Nour and accepting at least one challenger in the next election.

So it was with interest that we learned about King Abdullah II’s proposal to the Arab League to drop demands that Israel give up all land acquired in 1967, and to offer Israel normalized relations with Arab countries. The proposal did not mention a “right of return” for Palestinian “refugees.” It was with interest, too, that we noted the AP story written by Salah Nasrawi in Algiers, explained that UN Resolution 242 “calls on Israel to withdraw ‘from territories occupied in the recent conflict’ but does not say explicitly that the pullback should be from all such territories.”

The proposal was not expected to get much traction in the Arab League. But it was on the agenda. And while the Jordanian Prime Minister made a speech in Amman to reassure the Palestinians that Jordan remains cognizant of their concerns, he noted that the Arab League “is convinced that a military solution can not achieve peace and security for either side.” It is a far cry from the “Three Noes” that characterized the Arab League’s view of Israel in 1967 – no peace, no recognition, no negotiation. And it is a far cry from the days when all Arab problems could be ascribed to Israel and all solutions involved the destruction of the Jewish State.

We remain far from convinced that consensual government will become the norm in the Arab world, but it does appear more likely that, at a minimum, a more realistic appraisal of the problem is at hand.