Judea Pearl-Saudi Gazette, 13 February 2007
LOS ANGELES - While attending a Muslim-American conference in Doha, Qatar, in 2005, an Arab leader asked me at the dinner table: "Tell me, why didn`t Israelis accept the Saudi peace proposal of 2000; in fact, they did not even respond to it. Did it not offer them everything that they ever wished for: peace, recognition, security, you name it?"
I confessed to him what I knew about my friends in Israel: "Do you know what Israelis see when they read a peace proposal in the newspaper?" I asked. "They skip the text about peace, recognition and security and search for one word: `refugees`. The rest is trivial; if that word is embedded in `right of return` or `a just solution` or `Resolution 194` or some other phrase that may threaten the demographic makeup of Israel, the proposal is automatically deemed a non-starter."
"What did the Saudi proposal say about the refugee problem?" he asked. "Like you, I don`t have the precise language," I answered "but, like most Israelis, I recall the words `just solution,` which should settle your question right there."
"Interesting!" my Arab colleague said. "I have always assumed that if we build trust and solve the land problem, some solution will eventually be found- for the refugees` problem."
"Yes, many Israelis made this assumption during the Oslo period," I said. "Now they want the solution spelled out in advance."
I was reminded of this conversation last week, when I read President Jimmy Carter`s book "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" and found the following passage on page 211:
"The Delphic wording of this statement [the Saudi proposal]was deliberate, in Arabic as well as in Hebrew and English, but the Arabs defend it by saying it is there to be explored by the Israelis and others and that, in any case, it is a more positive and clear commitment to international law than anything now coming from Israel."
I recalled how the Delphic wording of the Oslo agreement was deliberate too, and how, in the aftermath of the Oslo breakdown, leaders of the shattered Israeli peace camp confessed in public that they had been fooled and betrayed by their Palestinian comrades. Specifically, they felt that promises to prepare the Palestinian public for some compromises on the refugee problem were never acted on (Haim Shur, Maariv, June 2001) and that this inaction was the main reason for the out break of the second intifada; Arafat could simply not face his people with "an end to the conflict" after decades of promising them a return to Haifa and Jaffa.
More than six years have passed since the breakdown of the Oslo process, and memory is short. People tend to forget the bitterness of yesterday. Last month saw renewed calls from both Israelis and Palestinians to revitalize the Saudi proposal (e.g.Collette Avital, Jerusalem Post, 23 January 2007) and many were watching to see whether the Israeli peace camp would endorse the Saudi plan without further clarification of the nature of the "just solution" to the refugee problem.
The answer came last week as part of an unprecedented candid exchange between two of the Middle East`s most respected journalists, Salameh Nematt, an Arab, and Akiva Eldar, an Israeli, published simultaneously in Arabic, Hebrew and English. In the third round of this exchange, peace activist Eldar wrote:
"...We, the Israelis, need to be convinced that there is a solution to the refugee problem. Nothing is more likely to deter Israelis than the expression `right of return`. In their eyes, these words are a synonym for the destruction of the Jewish state. Politicians on both sides know that it is inconceivable to strip a sovereign state, such as Israel, from its authority to decide whom to accept as its citizens. New cities have been built on the villages in which the refugees lived. Children and grandchildren of Jewish refugees from Europe were born in houses that remained standing. Anyone in their right mind knows that the solution to the Palestinian refugee problem is not to create a Jewish refugee problem. The solution can be found in a peace process that is based on two states and the absorption of most of the Palestinian refugees in their new state." (2 February 2007, Common Ground News)
Indeed, this position is shared by every Israeli whom I know, including the strongest advocates for a Palestinian state, and it poses two problems in the way of the Saudi peace plan. First, would the Palestinians be willing to sign a peace agreement with the provision that most refugees will be absorbed into their new state?
Second, assuming they do, would Israel be willing to make irreversible concessions in land and security for a reversible promise by the Palestinians to settle the refugees, rather than keeping them as a reservoir of militancy against Israel?
Here comes my modest suggestion, resting again on Saudi wisdom and goodwill. Instead of waiting for negotiations to commence and peace agreements to be signed -- a long, tedious and precarious process by any account -- the Saudis together with other oil-rich countries should launch a "Palestinian Marshall Plan" to build permanent housing for Palestinian refugees, in the West Bank and Gaza.
Such a plan, if launched immediately, would create the conditions necessary for negotiations, agreement and a viable Palestinian state. Israel would welcome it as a signal of peaceful Arab intentions, and the Palestinians would welcome it as a genuine investment in their future.
And mother history would certainly welcome it as a meaningful, effective and much belated step toward peace and reconciliation: It should start today!
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* Judea Pearl is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation .
